Thing #2 (11.5 Things)

Image Generators were one of my favorite things last year, so I was excited to start this thing.

I chose the Wordsift for the first part, since I have done Wordle last year. I like that the words can be linked, so if I made a Wordsift, my students could click on the word. This would be great to use on a wiki that my students and I were using together.

For the second part I chose Glogster. When I first got to the website, I was pretty excited, this looked neat! However, I was frustrated quite a bit using the website. I had to make my glog 3 times, because it wouldn't save. The concept of making the glogs was exciting - the end product looks very nice, and I would like to see my students turn in a project that looked like the samples. Most of my students would be able to make a glog after about 5 minutes of instructions, because it was not difficult - as long as everything saves correctly. Below is the link to my glog that I made about our student council this year.

Link to Glog

For the third part, I chose Animoto. I have used animotos before in my fliphcarts. I found pictures that were copy-right free, of nebulas (which personally I think are the best universe picture), and put them into a 30-sec animoto. I have chosen not to pay for the longer videos - I think I would pay for that, if I had children and had pictures of them.

I enjoyed looking through the archives at bookr. This would be a great resource in my classroom for timelines. Instead of making a poster, students could make the timeline in chronological order using bookr. Students would be limited to the amount of text, which is great in a timeline, and can still include pictures.

I liked this think, but it did involve quite a bit of time. I feel like wordsift will be the one I try next year in my classroom!

Thing #1 (11.5 Things)

I am so excited to be back blogging - my last post was in July when I finished my 23 Things. I didn't use this blog during the school year - but was able to use a few of the "things" I learned during the year.

Starting this year, and watching the video - I wish that I had the time to get my students to the point of me only a facilitator in the classroom. This year 4 of the 8th grade teachers received 8 classroom laptops and are being encouraged to get our students online, find information and making products to post as well. They each made a 4 minute video and posted it on a wiki - but I can't take all of the credit for the creation and publication. Being 3 other teachers (all with the same goals), some of the students were able to show me about the wikis, beyond what I knew.

One role in particular where our librarian is a huge supporter is in letting students know that just because they read it on the internet that it is not 100% credible. She has groomed them since entering middle school that they need to find credible source, and where to go to find them. By the 8th grade, many students are able to discern for some websites, but they still need some guidance in which sites look reputable or not.

My goal this school year is to use a wiki with my students - there would be a page were students can find classroom information (becoming comfortable with the wiki) and then throughout the year, I will add pages with questions, where my students can answer them online. Hopefully this will get my students a step closer to the student in the video who didn't rely on his teacher to show him what to do, but is able to use the media available to them become a thriving 21st century student!