Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Presentations: Great job everybody!

Last class consisted of group presentations, which were all very well done! I left the class having tons of things to think about. The snacks were also amazing; delicious cookies, thank you! And now that I mention that I realize that I haven't mentioned snacks in any other blog post! That being said I will say it now: thank you to everyone for bringing snacks! They have all been so great, I love leaving class with a good sugar high!

Anyway to get back on track here. I liked seeing how everyone chose a different way to present their information. Just goes to show how many great tools are out there! My quick thoughts and appreciations on the presentations:

- BYOD: I thought using Today's Meet during the presentation was a really good idea! I had completely forgotten about that tool, which I now remember learning about in Devin Caldwell's PD. In a school that allows BYOD this would be a great tool to use in the classroom. Thanks for the reminder! Also really liked the infographic used to represent the stats; quick and to the point, and attractive!
- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: It was interesting to hear about the bad aspects of the internet. But I was happy to see that the good aspects outweighed the negative in the end! You gave a great list of GOOD resources too. Thanks!
- Should Schools use Filters? : Thanks to this presentation I now have two new tools to add to my toolbox: Glogster and Padlet. Glogster looks like a really neat way to make a presentation. I will have to try that out. Padlet would be great to use in the classroom; I hope to try that too!
- How Not to Steal From the Internet : First off, awesome video at the beginning! This was a great topic because I am sure it is relevant to everyone. I know that I am guilty of stealing from the Internet, in terms of citing (unintentionally of course!), especially when I think back to high school. Thank you for creating the website with all this information. I am sure it will come in handy for me!

Thanks again everybody for the great presentations!

Looking forward to tomorrow's class... Mmmmm Chilli Chutney's. And tech help!

Show and Tell

So... I still consider myself a bit of a newbie when it comes to the iPad and apps. I have not explored a lot of apps yet; I mainly stick with downloading the ones that are free. I will admit I download a lot of games... due to no cost! I find that many of the good educational apps are not free. Because of this I was a little worried about having something awesome to share! I have awesome games of course, like Jurassic Park and Candy Crush.

But after widening my scope a bit, I thought about tools/sites that I have seen on the internet, and a couple came to mind (other than all of the great ones I have already learned about in this class and last years ICT class). During my last student teaching placement, I attended a few staff meetings. At these meetings teachers would share different apps or websites that they had found useful, just like a show and and tell! It was a great idea. After attending one of these meetings I started using some of the online apps that were discussed, and now I love them! And now I will share them with you; keep the learning train going!

http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/home_tumblebooks.asp
- This is a website that any one can use for free. It is basically a library of picture books, all of which include audio. So you can just click on it, and the book will be read aloud. You also have the option of muting it, if you would like to read the book to the students. Sometimes I would use this at the end of the day, to settle the students down a little bit before home time. I turned off the lights and the students would listen; they enjoyed it, it was relaxing!

http://www.online-stopwatch.com/
- This is a really great tool available online. It can be googled easily (online stopwatch) or you can click on the link here. It is simple, but I have found that the students go nuts over it. Basically it provides a bunch of different kinds of timers. I would use this in the classroom when we were doing a short activity and the students had limited time. As you can imagine.. ."5,4,3,2,1!!!!!!!!!!" They would all scream at the end. A little crazy at the end, but that's why it's great; just adds a little fun!

BrainPOPJr. 
I was introduced to BrainPOP as a website, but recently I found that it does have an App in the iTunes Store as well. The app is free! There is a free trial available, but then I believe you need to subscribe. This website provides TONS of short animated videos on different subject areas. I used this during my last placement when I was doing a healthy body unit. I pulled up videos about washing your hands, brushing your teeth, etc. The students enjoyed the characters and really listened to the information; provided a great activating activity.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their apps as well, I have already added some new ones to my iPad and checked some out online!

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Donald Girouard and Sophia Palahicky: WebBased Courses

Recently we had 2 consultants from Manitoba Education come in to speak to our class about web-based courses. They discussed the advantages of web-based courses, for both the students and the teachers. They also explained the 4 ways to use WBC's: as a teacher resource, with a face-to-face class, with distance Learners, and as part of a mixed learning environment. Sophia and Donald also described the tool Manitoba Blackboard, and give us a tour. While writing this blog I took a few minutes to explore the site as well. I previewed as a guest, so I assume I saw the site from a students point of view. From what I saw it seems very student friendly; very organized and clear. I can definitely see the benefit of using Blackboard, even in the regular classroom as part of a mixed environment. This would allow students to have access to what is going on in class, if they ended to be away.

I have never taken a web-based course. I am not even sure if I had that option when I was in high school. I did consider taking distance courses during the summer months of university, but never did. I doubted myself, thinking that if I were able to go at my own pace to get the assignments done, I would not be successful. Simply because I am a procrastinator. I also thought that I wouldn't get as much out of the course taking it by distance education then I would in a face to face course. But after hearing Sophia and Donald speak about web-based courses and their lets, they sound much better than how I pictured them years ago!

On the topic of web-based courses: While I was browsing around and looking at infographics for my previous blog, I happened to stumble upon one about online education. It compares online teaching and regular classroom teaching, with a definite favouritism for online education. Have a look at it:

http://infographicsmania.com/online-vs-classroom-education/

Thanks to Sophia and Donald for coming in to talk about the aspects and advantages of web-based courses. This is definitely an area of education I'd like to learn more about!

Infographics: My new Love!

Dear Infographics,
       Where have you been all my life?!

Thank you once again to Mike, for introducing me to yet another great new idea! I love infographics; such a creative way to display information. It's not that I haven't seen infographics before, because I know I have... mainly on Pinterest (haha..). I think it's just new to me because I never attached this name to the visuals before now. I also never thought about using these kinds of visuals as an educational resource. Now that I have thought about these things and looked at tons of different infographics, they are my newfound love! An infographic can tell tons of information while being interesting and visually appealing. I would take an infographic over a PowerPoint presentation any day!

As I was browsing the internet looking at different infographics to go off of in order to create my own, I came across this website: Infographics Mania:  http://infographicsmania.com/
This website has TONS of infographics on a lot of different topic areas; some informative, some funny, and all are very well done. Here are a couple that I found interesting:

1. http://infographicsmania.com/social-media-in-education/

2. http://infographicsmania.com/green-lifestyle/

I think this would be an excellent idea to use in the classroom. This may be a tricky task to do with early years students, but I think that introducing this idea to middle and senior years students would be great. There are tons of ways to integrate infographics into the classroom, and many purposeful reasons for students to create their own. For example, students could create an infographic as a way to present information that they have learned, say from a research project. This just gives the students another opportunity to showcase their creativity, as well as showcase what they have learned. As a plus, it gives the teacher a way to assess their learning! I think it's a great way to incorporate those different learning styles as well. Many students out there are visual learners, and they need to be reached too! The only trouble I am having is thinking of ways to incorporate these into the early years classroom, because I would love to use them in my class. I know that I can show my students infographics which highlight the topic areas that I am teaching. But how do I help them to create their own? Based on the examples I have seen I think it would be too difficult for them to create these on the computer. Perhaps I could allow them to create one using the old-fashioned option of pen and paper? This way they still have the opportunity to be creative, as well as the option of showing me what they have learned in a different way. Hm.. options to think about! If you have any ideas as to how to use these in the early years classroom, I would love to hear them as well!  

All that being said, I took a stab at creating my own. I am sad to report that I was having a lot of difficulty doing this! It is probably just my poor tech skills coming into play. I tried using infogr.am and visual.ly. Both of them were giving me trouble. Is it just me?! Looks like I am going to have to ask my tech problem solver for help again! Thanks in advance Scott!
                            Infographic yet to come 

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

My Digital Footprint

In many of our classes we have discussed the concept of our digital footprint. As I briefly discussed in a previous blog post, my digitally footprint is basically non-existent to the public eye. In a previous blog I had also shared the results of my google search. That was when I googled my name only 1 result came up (that was actually me), and that was my Pinterest boards. While writing post, I figured I should google it again... You know just in case a typing changed. Well it turns out that now my name will give 2 results; my Pinterest boards AND the comments I made on Lisa's blog! I do enjoy that I have my privacy, but at the same time I feel that I need to create a more public digital footprint.

Being close to the end of my Education degree I feel that this is a necessity. I believe I took my first step by creating this blog. But I do not want to stop there! As I have said before my goal is to create a bigger (is that the word I am looking for??) online presence. What I really want to do first is create an online portfolio. I know this will take me forever and a day, because I will want it to be flawless, and then I will worry about making it public, and then I will want to change it again, and so on. But the day I hit the publish button instead of the save will be a great day! I also want to be a more frequent educational tweeter! (Who would have thought I would be saying that right)

The Edublogger that I follow posted a really good infographic entitled "Managing your Personal E-Reputation." (I will tell you more about her in a blog that is yet to come! ) Here are a few details which were on the infographic that stuck with me:

- 48% of recruiters refer to personal websites when deciding whether or not to hire you.
- 78% of recruiters check search engines to find out more about potential employees.
- 8% of companies have fired someone for abusing social media
- SET YOUR OWN REPUTATION!

Here is the link to the infographic: Check it out!
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.ca/search/label/digital%20footprint

Yikes. Staggering, but yet not surprising statistics. Although I think this blow was softened for me by first hearing about it from George Couros. It makes you realize just how important your digital footprint is to your career.

I will take this advice and I will set my own reputation. I will be alive online soon enough!




EduBlogger: The Innovative Educator

When initially looking at this tech task, I was a little stumped; I didn't even know of any other than the ones discussed in class and listed on Moodle. So I will be honest... as with many things, I googled it! Is that embarrassing? I believe I googled something like "edubloggers to follow" or something along those lines. Somehow I ended up on a SlideShare that gave me 25 or so inspirational (in their words) educational blogs to follow. From this, I chose about 10 and added them to my RSS feed. From time to time I would look on these blogs and see which blogs I enjoyed the most.

This is how I came across the blog of Lisa Nielson, who has a blog entitled The Innovative Educator. Who is she?
"Ms. Nielsen is a seasoned public school educator who has worked for more than a decade in various capacities including full-time as a permanently certified teacher and educational administrator who supports learning in real and innovative ways that prepare students for success." This description is one that I found on her "About Me" page. Se has also recently written a book.
Her blog focuses on sharing ideas and thoughts about the future of education, as well as resources. Lisa is an advocate for the use of all kinds of technology in the classroom; being an innovative educator. She discusses topics such as Professional Learning Networks, Facebook, Twitter, SmartBoards, social media, cellular phones in education, and much much more! Her blog is very organized, which is appealing to me. In the right hand side she lists the categories that she speaks about, so if you want to read about a certain topic you can just click on the category.

The best thing about this blog I have found so far is that many of her posts are accompanied with an audio option; a podcast. Instead of reading the article, you can listen to it! There have been times that I have listened to something on her blog while doing other homework; how convenient!

One thing I didn't consider until recently was following her on Twitter. It didn't occur to me until I took another look at the tech task description. Goes to show how much of a Twitter newbie I am! I started following her now, and from what I can see she often tweets the same ideas and resources that she puts on her blog. Just another way she is sharing with the world!

Lisa and her commitment to this blog is something to admire. I definitely recommend to everyone to check out her blog. Turn it on while you are doing the dishes! ;) Here is her blog:

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.ca/

Class last week: Diigo vs. Pearltrees

Last week was a mix up of different topics in our Internet for Educators class. On Tuesday we discussed social bookmarking tools (such as Diigo and Pearltrees)and watched some videos I had never seen (loved the bad lip reading one). Thursday we were alotted a period to with with our groups for our presentations.

 The main question I have in this post is, what bookmarking tool should I use? Diigo or Pearltrees? I know, I am a little behind on this tech task... But I couldn't make up my mind! I downloaded both apps on my iPad, and I have signed up for both. I am trying both out trying to get a handle on how to set them up. This is probably the silly way of doing it.. I really should just pick one and go with it. As you can see I am a fairly indecisive person. I'm leaning more towards Diigo, just because it seems easier due to the option of having the "Diigolet" in my toolbar. Maybe Pearltrees has that option as well and I just don't know it? It seems that as it stands right now I am leaning more towards Diigo. Good luck to me! If you have a moment let me know what you prefer for a bookmarking tool - I could use the input!

My group and I are doing our presentation on Cyberbullying. We went down a rather creative path for this project... and I do like our final product! We decided to try and lighten up the mood a little bit on this one, but do note the WARNING, and that we do not think lightly of this issue. I'm sure you are confused by that statement right now, but you will understand later! Anyway, that is all I will say for now; wouldn't want to spoil it!

Now to comment a little on my time so far in this class. The blogging has been surprisingly enjoyable! I do enjoy writing them, even though I am often slightly behind in doing so. I feel good about getting my thoughts out there, and becoming a little more public. However I am beginning to feel slightly overwhelmed with the tech tasks that I still need to do! The ones I left are sort of unfamiliar territory for me, and I am talking about the Video, the Podcast, the Infographics, and web-based Apps. By that I just mean I have not explored these different things very much. So I will need to do some exploring before I can complete the tasks. I better get going... I can't believe how fast this term has flown by!

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Presentation by Clarence Fisher

Recently we had the privilege of speaking with Clarence Fisher, who is a teacher in Snow Lake. He had a short, but excellent discussion with us through Skype while his students were in Gym class. So I would just like to start off by saying thank you to Clarence, for sacrificing your break to share your thoughts with us!

If you have it - use it, and use it well!
This is one thing I took away from the discussion with Clarence. He spoke about the importance of actually using the technology that is available to you, and using it in meaningful ways. In other words if you have a SmartBoard in your classroom, use it. And not just as a screen! If you have computers in your room, use them. If you have cameras available to you, use them. You get the picture. Many classrooms may have these tools available, but are not necessarily using them to their full potential. But in the same breath, the way in which these tools are being used needs to be meaningful. As Clarence put it, "the use of technology needs to have a deeper reason than just being interesting and fun." As teachers we need to think about WHY we are using the technology; how will it be beneficial for the students? What will they learn from it?

Clarence also shared with us some of his experiences doing collaborative learning projects. He connects with classrooms around the world using Skype. His students will Skype with these classrooms, whether it is just to have a discussion or work on a project together. I love love love this idea; there is so much learning that can be done! I really enjoyed the story Clarence told us about Skyping with a class from L.A. To make a long story short, through discussion with the students in L.A. his students were able to appreciate the privileges they have living in a rural community. Privileges such as riding their bikes at night! I think this is a wonderful realization for the students. It may be a small insight for the students, but an insight nonetheless! Everybody who lives in a small rural community should realize just how awesome it is! (Do I sound biased??) Okay perhaps I am. I grew up in a small town, and I loved it. Sure, I had a half hour bus ride to school every day, and I had to travel at least 15 minutes if I wanted something from the grocery store. But still, the pros heavily outweighed the cons believe me!
While on this topic, once upon a time I took a PD presented by Devon Caldwell on SmartBoards (which by the way I recommend everyone take). She shared with us things she does in her classroom with the SmartBoard (among other things). Something her class always takes part in is collaborative learning projects via Skype. I believe she was the first person to introduce me to this idea, and since then I have been very anxious to try it! Though sadly I have not yet tried. One day though, one day. I do recommend checking out her blog if you haven't already, she has some great ideas and resources on there! Here is the link: http://kinderdiva.blogspot.ca/

On that note I think I will sign off on this blog! This cold I have is really kicking my butt. It is only 8:30 and I am ready for bed... Sad? Ah well. Goodbye iPad, hello Tylenol Cold, and goodnight world!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Guest Speaker: George Couros

Recently we had the opportunity to speak with George Couros, who is the Division Principal of Innovative Teaching and Learning for Parkland School Division via Skype. His discussion focused mainly on creating a clean and professional digital footprint, as well as elements that make a mastery teacher.

For his introduction he shared with us a story from his past, regarding an inappropriate Tweet on Twitter. Needless to say things did not end well for this 'tweeter'. He went on to share with us that as a Principal, he would often google potential teachers. All of these examples were used to stress how important our digital footprint is, and how we need to be aware of what our own looks like. I will be honest, while he was talking I was beginning to feel a little paranoid! (What happens when my name is typed into google? What would show up?) So what did I do after class? You guessed it, I google myself! I didn't find much. Two items came up: this blog and my Pinterest boards. For the first second I was relieved, because I consider myself a fairly private person. But then I reminded myself of what George spoke about, and thought perhaps this is not a good thing after all. George expressed how it is an asset to have an easily accessible online presence, especially when looking for a job. Share your experiences, your insights, your learning, your projects, etc.; give people something great to find about you, it can go a long way.

My new goals: become less private, share more (worry less), and create on online portfolio!

George also spoke about some of the elements which make a great teacher, and what kinds of things he looks for (as a Principal) in teacher candidates. I really enjoyed this discussion. It was nice to hear these things from a Principal's perspective, and helpful to hear what kinds of things he looks for in a teacher. For those of you reading who did not hear him speak, here are some tips for you!

1. Make connections and build meaningful relationships with your students and your colleagues.
2. Teach the students first, and the curriculum second.
3. Embody lifelong learning. "Be an expert in learning, not teaching." (George Couros)
4. Focus on character education; how you are going to make your students better people.
5. Be passionate about what you are teaching. If you are passionate about it, the students are more likely to adopt that attitude as well.
6. Be a school teacher, not a classroom teacher. That is, be involved with the entire school, not just your own classroom. Help out with activities, get to know the students in the hallways, get to know colleagues, etc. I really liked the way he separated these two types of teachers. I completely agree; a great teacher strives to be involved school wide, not just in the classroom.
7. Have an appropriate and accessible online presence; share the great things you do!
8. Develop effective communication skills. This is especially helpful when dealing with parents and discipline.

Thank you George for the excellent discussion and great tips! Thanks also to Mike for arranging it, and to Skype for being the tool to make it all happen! And to end this blog post, I will leave you with another video by Kid Snippets (yes I have become addicted). These just make my day.


Are these great communication skills or what!?