Hockey Videos

I'm not really a hockey fan but my grade sixes definitely are into the game. So it was exciting to find the following site and create my own Mash Up video. I can't wait to have them try it in class.

My Mash Up

The Mash Up Site

Blogging From Afar

I'm out in B.C. and it is so cool because I just approved several blog entries and comments which my students made back in Saskatchewan. The power of being connected even though I'm two provinces away. I have been mulling over one question though and that is how much should I edit my student's blogs. Should I be fixing every capitalization, punctuation, and spelling error? Anyone have any feedback?

Using Technology to Create New & Different Learning Experiences

A post called Evaluating Technology Use in Classrooms got me thinking again about what I struggled with when I did my Masters. How do you use the Internet, and now Web 2.0 applications, to make student learning new and unique from traditional methods? The article was for administrators to think about how they evaluate teachers who use technology and the four following questions were given:

1. Is the technology being used “Just because it’s there”?

2. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?

3. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways?

4. Is the technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students?

I think that there is a natural progression through the first three steps above. I'm thinking of my own journey, which is ongoing, with student blogs. Initially I started them because they were there (step one). Then it became a way of publishing student work whereby instead of printing it out the students posted it to their blog (step two). I am currently working my way through step three whereby the students are publishing their work and having the students comment on each other's writing. They are now typing their comments rather than telling the person what they think, face to face. The fourth step is of course the biggest leap. I am working towards step four by publicizing the fact that my students are publishing their work on a blog. I have started by letting parents know and I have found another grade three class which blogs and I think it would be great to communicate with them and get their feedback on our stories. Inadvertently this has already happened to one of my students who received a comment on one of her stories from someone in France.

I am hoping that I will also be able to reach step four in some of my student's French projects. Sometimes the students' biggest complaint is that we always seem to do computer projects in French, which since I teach Computers and French, to every grade, is a natural fit. The students all learned numerous ways to use Word, Publisher, and PowerPoint by doing French projects. I'm excited about using many of the new applications I've learned about, such as Photo Story and Voice Thread, for upcoming projects, and I hope that my learning curve will allow my students and me to go beyond the first three steps.

Dr. Randy Pausch - from Oprah

Using Google Image Search

Another point which came up at one of my sessions was should we let our students use Google Images to search for pictures. The presenter's point of view was that as long as you had the student's record the url it was not a problem but one teacher was very worried about students coming across inappropriate images. The presenter said that most of what came up was no worse than what they may see on television.

I, of course, could not keep my big mouth shut and had to share that my students use Google Images all the time but that I have trained them to tell me if they accidentally come across something inappropriate be it a picture or a web site. I have them do this for two reasons. Firstly, if I do a history search and find an inappropriate site I should already know why it is there and secondly, they need to be aware that you do come across inappropriate items without trying and it is important to be responsible about it. I still believe this method works for myself and my students.

I, perhaps flippantly, also said to this woman that my elementary students were mostly hunting for kittens and puppies so it wasn't usually too much of a problem. When I thought about it later I realized my students actually do searching for much broader topics. I should have added that for grades one to three I often do the searching myself and put into a folder but this is more a time factor than my worry that they will come across something bad. I have also searched using the projector and have the younger students tell me which pictures I should save for a project.

I have only had one potentially disastrous situation in the last several years. I was searching, a few years ago, with my grade three's watching on the big screen for pictures of sea creatures. We were busy hunting for octopuses and I had the screen with all the little preview pictures up and I was enlarging ones which the students wanted a better look at. We had done several with no problem when I clicked on one which we couldn't really see in the small preview picture. When it came up on the big screen I realized it was an ice sculpture on the hood of car, the only problem was that it wasn't an octopus it was an ice sculpture of two people have sex, lots of legs. I quickly reduced the size and said it wasn't in the ocean so we couldn't use it. We moved on and I'm pretty sure none of my students were any the wiser.

It definitely made me aware of what was out there but it hasn't stopped me from using Google Images. I have tried some projects where the students have had to draw all their pictures and scan them in but it frustrates that students who can't draw and takes a lot of time both to complete and then to scan. I was wondering what other teachers do with their classes.

Blog Comments

I discovered another neat Blog add-on at convention. It is called Clustr and allows you to put a small world map in your blog. Then when ever anyone comments on your blog it adds a read dot to your map. In this way you can see where the people who are commenting on your bog are located. I think it is pretty neat and was quite easy to set-up. So now I need some comments to see how well it works.