Do You Know Your State Geography?

This video is a fun way to review state facts and could be integrated into the classroom several ways. For younger students, you could play it through once, and then replay it and pause in places for discussion. For older students, you can figure out a variety ways to use the video. If you do state projects with students, this video might give students some ideas of how they might report back on what they're learning. After watching the video, consider how this video could be implemented in the classroom. What ideas do you have? What did you think of the video?

Tap Into Your Creative Self

I'm taking a course now, and the story of why is a story for another day. In the meantime, someone in the course shared this video on her blog, and thought I would pass it along to see if it inspires others. Let me know.

Who Doesn't Love a Comic?

There are lots of comic-making tools available to use with your students. Consider how creating comic strips in your class can promote creativity, storytelling, conversation, collaboration, and reading and writing skills. Bitstrips for Schools is part of the Bitstrips site. This component allows teachers to set up a class site. At the site,  students not only create comics, but also view one another's comics and write replies.

Check the site, specifically the Bitstrips for Schools, and set up a class account when you're ready. Experiment first yourself with the site, creating a comic strip you want to share with your class. Your students can view it on the website, or once you start a class blog, you can embed your creation there, as I am here. Use the arrow keys to move through the panels.




You can also do a screen capture and display the full comic as an image.

In the meantime, I've set up a class account, so just let me know when you want to start experimenting, and I'll give you the access code.

Young Children Creating Read-Aloud Storybooks

Storybird is a website and can also be downloaded as an app. Students create their own books by drawing, typing some text, and possibly recording their voice. Here is one example. To learn more about the tool, check this blog post by a kindergarten teacher, Mr. Gomez: Little Bird Tales--Digital Storytelling. After reading through his post, and possibly exploring the tool yourself, would you recommend this tool to teachers K-2? Why or why not? Make sure you have the volume turned up while viewing the story.

• Click to view my tale.
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Watch These First Graders on the iPads

Speaking about literacy skills, watch how these first graders engage in a poetry workshop and how the teacher organizes it. What's your take on this kind of workshop? How are you feeling about iPad integration into the lower grades? Do you see them as valuable tools for promoting students' literacy skills?

Click on the image to view the video in Vimeo.

Down and Up the Slope of Challenges

Keeping up with technology and the new tools can be a challenge. But watch how this 4th grader dealt with the challenge of ski slope. Plus, tech challenges have no broken bones.


Okay, now you should be ready for the challenges of using tech tools and integrating them into your teaching, right?

Quick, Effective Literacy Activity

Six-Word Memoirs is an easy activity to implement in the classroom. This activity could be done with students of any age and with any materials, including paper and pencil. However, it would also be fun to do it with computer tools and post some of the memories online. It works like this:

• Think of 6 words who define you or tell your life story--form a 6-word sentence--how you arrange the words helps
• Find an image to go along with the sentence

Students can find the picture that represents them first and then write the sentence, or do the activity in reverse. Most of all, figure out a way for students to share these memoirs with one another and others. 

Here is some information about the project, which includes images of 6-word memoirs. 

Illustrated Six-Word Memoirs by Students from Grade School to Grad School

Here is a video explaining the concept of the 6-week memoir, a technique derived from writer Ernest Hemingway. The video contains tips for creating the memoirs. 

Here is an example of a series of 6-word memoirs from a high school students who gathered theirs into a video and posted the video on YouTube.

Although simple, the activity can create a fun, interactive, and reflective learning environment.

Have you tried this activity in your classroom? If so, how did it go? If you have not, would you consider it, and how would you proceed to implement it? How would you have students share--among themselves, or in a more public way, like the video above? Regardless of the age level you teach, keep in mind this activity can be adapted to fit the learners' literacy skills.

Digital Learners

I was on YouTube viewing a video, and this one listed in the sidebar caught my eye, Youth and Digital Learning. It was uploaded to YouTube in 2006, but wondering about its relevance today. Has the situation changed much since then? Does this video speak to how kids are today? If you were to update this video, what would you add, change, or delete?

Bio Poems

Bio Poems enable students to introduce themselves in a creative way. Check this website posting for some samples: "Bio Poems, Created and Composed by Div. 2." Use the Play button to scroll and see each sample.

Mr. Kaliar is the teacher, and on his website, Our Learning Journeys, look for the tab, Student Showcase" to find examples of other student projects.

Here are two examples of the students' Bio Poems.

After looking through more examples of the Bio Poems, what do you think of this class project? Have you tried similar projects? If you looked through samples of other students' projects on the class site, what do you think of theses? How do you feel about teachers publishing student work on websites or blogs?

Three Approaches to Blogging

One of my favorite bloggers, Richard Byrne, just posted a blog, "Three Approaches to Blogging," on his famous blog Free Technology for Teachers.

image: headers on http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

In this post,  "Three Approaches to Blogging," Byrne outlines the benefits of blogging, its varied uses, and its potential for reaching a wide or varied audience. Do you believe teachers should maintain blogs? Do you have one? If you don't, would you consider having one for your students as an audience or for the parents of your students to read? With what points that Byrne makes, do you agree?

The New Digital Divide

In this recent feature article (Dec. 2012), "Bridging the New Digital Divide," from District Administration Magazine, we hear advice for school superintendents to take the lead in integrating technology into the schools. Some key points addressed include:

• Teach students with the tools they are already use
• Students in the most poverty-stricken schools need even more so to be introduced to the technology early on to level the playing field
• Teachers need more guidance in the successful use of technology tools
• Principals as well need to take on leadership roles in pushing for technology integration
• The digital divide separates the world of education from the world of business, with the world of education behind the times

One image in the article speaks to the very last bullet point:

Read the article in full. What is your response to the assertions found in the article? With which to you agree? Which do you believe need further analysis? Where do school systems with which you are familiar fall in terms of the "new digital divide"?

Help Desk

This video, Medieval Help Desk, produced in 2007 is still worth watching today. Its message remains relevant through the ages, but particularly as a parody of our adaptation to technology. Take a look, and leave your reactions. What does this video say to you? Why do you think it was produced? Why is it a good spoof?