Drama project tools, iconic teens, and chatrooms!

The first site I selected, Drama Project Tools, is a topic located under media and discusses a drama project tool, Celtx, that is free to download and use with your class. I found this tool to be something that could students could use within a highschool drama class for group projects. Otherwise I found this to be too complex for the younger ages. This is a free software that can create media projects such as movies, advertisement, screenplays, and theater plays. This software might work if it is teacher led in the younger grades and could actually be something exciting for the students to work on as a month long project.

The second site I selected is located under culture. I found this particular site, Iconic Teen Video, interesting because it could motivate students to do the same kind of filming of their own issues. It encourages students to take control of their world and touch upon issues and discuss some topics that directly influence and interest them. Even though this particular situation turned out to be staged and actually had a script writer, students could turn it around and make it about them and thier lives.

The last site I selected was located under the tab chat. Make your own chat room, discusses how people can make their own chatrooms. This can be used in the educational environment for having discussions on particular topics within the classroom. Instead of having an open oral discussion, you can create an online chat that shows how many times each person participated. This could also be useful for those students that are not very vocal and can help them participate in class discussions. It would be important to discuss appropriate behavior and how people can agree to disagree.

The best sites for ELL's !

Many of Larry Ferlazzo's blogs are excellent resources for teachers to encourage their students to learn through technology. Larry's blog, The Best Internet Sites For English Language Learners — 2007, gives a list of great websites that teachers can use with their ELL students in the classroom. Larry highlights each of these sites and gives a little information about each one so that teachers can select the ones they like the best. Students can surely benefit from the sites that Ferlazzo discusses in his blog. He also encourages others to discuss how they feel about the sites he selected. An excellent class assignment would be for each student to reflect on the sites they explored and provide feedback to Ferlazzo so he can hear suggestions or ideas directly from the users.

The Good the Bad and the Ugly!

Teachers often have classes that they find to be quite a challenge. This year I have a class that is one of the most challenging classes I have ever had. After reading Larry Ferlazzo's, When A "Good" Class Goes "Bad" (And Back To "Good" Again!), I am excited to return to my class to try some of these strategies. I think that the first few suggestions about having students answer question that reflect their own behaviors is a good way to start. Have the students think about what they can do to make the learning environment more pleasant. Another suggestion from Larry Ferlazzo is creating a grading system that each student will grade how they think they have been during the class. I also like how he informed the students that each day they will start with an A, just in case the previous day didnt go exactly how it should have, it wouldnt ruin the whole week.

Online Learning Games

Larry Ferlazzo's blog, The Best Online Learning Games - 2007, provides teachers with great sites that encourage learning through educational games. I find this to be a very useful site because once a week in my Science class, we go to the computer lab to practice skills that will help my students achieve higher on the state mandated test called the MSA (Maryland State Assessement). I make a deal with my students that if they complete the selected lesson with a 70% or higher than they have the option of going to a website that has educational games. Ferlazzo's blog provides more sites for my students to explore and learn.

The meaning of Web 2.0 ( Perscilla stole my title!!)

This blog was far too long for the content. I think the only interesting thing I read about in Basics for Beginners: What is Web 2.0? is that the original Web was read only. The original Web was also a>called Web 1.0, the launch of Web 2.0 allowed users to interact with webpages. I think this was also when validity comes into play and you have to be concerned with the information you are looking at and whether it is true and valid as opposed to someone just making up information. Overall, this entire article could have been condensed into three sentences total.

Teaching Blogging

I dont think I am ready to teach blogging to my students. I was very skeptical about blogging because they are there for the world to see. I find that information for class is acceptable to post because it is an insight into my opinion on academic subjects. I think I am still in Phase 1 of the Thinking About Teaching Blogging to Your Students?. The only con for teaching blogging to our students is the assumption that all of our students have computers. This is a problem because it may make some students feel less fortunate than others by knowing they dont have a computer at home and they cant go home and continue to work on blogging.

20 Reasons to enlighten a child!

Anne Mirtschin article, 20 reasons why students should Blog, is an excellent resource to refer to when you need to provide benefits to blogging. If you were asked to lead an inservice in school, based on blogging, this website would assist you in enlightening your co-workers and helping them understand the benefits to blogging. In class, students can take control of their own work and be interested in the learning without even knowing that they are learning.

Shift Happens

This video Did you Know? is a phenomenal way to create conversations within the academic environment. I think it is an eye-opener for Americans as well as American children. The information is out there for everyone to utilize and America is not keeping up with the rest of the world. This is the new information age and as exciting as it is, it is also scary to think that we are not leading the world of technology. Is this a foreshadow of losing the title of superpower?

This video also gets educators thinking, what new ways can we get our students to want to achieve and want to be the best?

NeighborhoodWiki

I don't think that this website is very user friendly. I find that you have to be moderately tech savvy in order to navigate through this website and get to the useful information. Once I was able to find the information on the NeighborhoodWiki website, I found that it was a nice way to incorporate interesting information posted by students. For example, I clicked on articles and found a posting related to skin. As a Science teacher, I was interested as to what students would have written about skin. I found the information to be quite interesting. A student posted that "Skin covers organs and items in bodies. In a lifetime a human sheds more than 18kg. Every minute about 35,000 skin cells fall from the body." (Retrieved from "http://theneighborhoodschool.org/wiki/index.php?title=Skin) This is information that others can use for projects and reports. However, it is not accurate and maybe could be used as an assessment tool. I think that with easier navigation this Wiki website would be a very useful tool and could be a model for other Wiki's to be incorporated into academic classes.

Teens and Social Media

I find it interesting that overall, girls tend to post more via the Internet than boys do, whether it is blogging or simply posting pics for friends to see. However, in one particular area, boys dominate and are nearly twice as likely (19% vs. 10%) to post videos or video content that others are able to view. Other forms of social media that teens engage in are "traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social networking sites, instant messaging, and email." This is a representation of approximately "28% of the entire teen population and they are more likely to be older girls." This doesn't surprise me in the least, because girls tend to need more social communication than boys do. I am glad to see there is an interest in social media regardless of its form.

Macgill, A.(2007). Teens and Social Media: The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media. Retrieved January 12, 2009, from, http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/230/report_display.asp

Computer Access

I teach in a temporary and in turn do not have any computers in my classroom for students to use. However, our school has two computer labs, one of the labs is based on a sign up process. The other computer lab is used by each teacher that teaches a discipline tested on the MSA's. This computer lab is used to allow students to practice their MSA skills through a program called study island. Students in Math, Science, and Language Arts go to the computer lab once a week in each of the three disciplines. My school also has 3 mobile labs. These are laptop computers that travel to classrooms and teachers are allowed to use them during instruction. Each student has access to a computer equipped with Internet at their own desk. As teachers we also have the technology to control all laptop computers, deciding what the students are and are not allowed to view. They can be required to only see what is being seen on the teachers computer or be allowed to surf the Internet visiting appropriate sites at will.