1. Netsmartz: This is an informative website designed for parents, educators, and students. For parents, the topics are divided into different kinds of technology and issues: blogging, cell phones, children as victims, cyber-bullying, email/IM/chat rooms, file sharing, gaming, identity theft, inappropriate contact, internet safety, predators, revealing too much, sexting, social networking, and webcams. Although this site was created by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, it goes far beyond predators. Netsmartz also has some great videos, including 15 videos for just for tweens. Check out Six Degrees of Information, where an expert finds out as much as he can on individual teens in six clicks.
2. Although it's from Disney's website, Walt Disney's Internet Safety gives a succinct but helpful overview of Internet safety for parents. The tips emphasize communication with children. I liked the reminders to parents to read up on the parent or privacy sections on websites or social media; there may be options they don't know about. An interesting idea is to print out a contract to use with children.
3. The article Ten Simple Steps for Internet Safety stresses that good internet habits develop young, such as: asking to use the internet, explaining what an ad is, knowing the right "starter websites" for kids, bookmarking sites with high learning potential, and limiting sessions. These habits can carry over to older kids, especially if communication between parent and child is an ongoing conversation.
4. The Family Online Safety Institute is a whole site devoted to parent education about internet safety. There's a great overview video called "What Can Parents Do?" The site posts a family internet contract, and links to hotlines to report inappropriate content
5. Parents should monitor their children's online activities, but what if they don't understand the Internet themselves? This website, Learn the Net, starts with absolute basics like surfing the web, and even has a quiz at the end. Parents who are savvy with their own computer use are better able to monitor their children's use.
6. There are tons of YouTube videos and a few podcasts about internet safety for parents. Some favorites: Internet Safety: A Parent's Guide with Mr. Arturo Trejo (funny overview for parents of elementary school kids, created by PBS); Internet Safety for Middle School Parents, and The Internet Safety Podcast (which has over 50 episodes about various subtopics on internet safety).
7. On a more academic level (perhaps to educate yourself before educating parents), this article advocates a protective stance. Notable points are that the Internet is an opportunity, not a right; that 1/3 of teens and 1/6 of tweens have been victims of cyber bullying; to educate kids about exchanging personal information for "perks" on a game; and that filters may be complicated for parents to understand.
Olagunju, Amos O. "Harmonizing The Interests Of Free Speech, Obscenity And Child Pornography On Cyberspace: The New Roles Of Parents, Technology And Legislation For Internet Safety." Online Submission (2008): ERIC. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.
8. PC Magazine offers an overview of different kinds of filters parents can use to monitor internet use, categorizing filters into hardware-based protection, mobile parental control, social network safety, and "just plain spying."
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Monday, March 24, 2014
Professional Development for Teachers Using Web 2.0 Skills
This week in class, we created a Professional Development presentation for teachers. We needed to teach about a tool we'd learned about in class.
I chose to make a PowerPoint on classroom blogs. Now, total disclosure here - I've made about four PowerPoint presentations ever, which has to be a record low for a graduate student. I've used PowerPoint once, Keynote once, and Haiku Deck twice. My children (ages 8 and 11) laughed at me. They'd made more PowerPoints than I had for sure. My husband, a biology professor, has one set for each class. So my challenge with this assignment wasn't content but methods. I was seriously proud of myself for one thing, though. I managed to embed a podcast and a YouTube video within the PowerPoint. It took me about an hour and a half to figure out the video. My husband laughed at me, and said that I had to go from 0 to 60. Well, I'm in my classes to learn, right?
Anyway, like I said, I chose to focus on classroom blogs. In most schools I've been in, the teachers have a link off the school website, and they post homework and maybe a few pictures. But in my own experiences, I've never seen a teacher post collaborations with their students. I went looking for examples online, and I found so many great blogs. Some blogs I liked were Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog, Step Into Second Grade, Miss Jordan's Class @ Barwon Heads Elementary School, and Mrs. Duncan's Grade 7/8 Blog. There is so much kids can do on blogs! Just to name a few, there can be parent communication, posting student work, students writing posts and commenting on each other's posts, communication with other students around the world, and pictures from school events.
Here's my PowerPoint:
I chose to make a PowerPoint on classroom blogs. Now, total disclosure here - I've made about four PowerPoint presentations ever, which has to be a record low for a graduate student. I've used PowerPoint once, Keynote once, and Haiku Deck twice. My children (ages 8 and 11) laughed at me. They'd made more PowerPoints than I had for sure. My husband, a biology professor, has one set for each class. So my challenge with this assignment wasn't content but methods. I was seriously proud of myself for one thing, though. I managed to embed a podcast and a YouTube video within the PowerPoint. It took me about an hour and a half to figure out the video. My husband laughed at me, and said that I had to go from 0 to 60. Well, I'm in my classes to learn, right?
Anyway, like I said, I chose to focus on classroom blogs. In most schools I've been in, the teachers have a link off the school website, and they post homework and maybe a few pictures. But in my own experiences, I've never seen a teacher post collaborations with their students. I went looking for examples online, and I found so many great blogs. Some blogs I liked were Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog, Step Into Second Grade, Miss Jordan's Class @ Barwon Heads Elementary School, and Mrs. Duncan's Grade 7/8 Blog. There is so much kids can do on blogs! Just to name a few, there can be parent communication, posting student work, students writing posts and commenting on each other's posts, communication with other students around the world, and pictures from school events.
Here's my PowerPoint:
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Wordle and Motivation
I am always a sucker for stickers and badges. Just like a kid getting a sticker on a paper, I love that concrete mark of approval, even as an adult. Motivating? Sad? I'm not sure.
My professor sent us a link to a site called Worlds of Learning
Here's my Wordle made from all the text of my writing website. It's a little blurry but otherwise it's impossible to read.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Putting it Together and Taking it Apart
This week, we created a unit that incorporated 10 of the tech tools we learned about this semester. Whew, it was hard. Not to find 10 apps I liked, but to put them all into the same unit. The only way I made it work was that I grouped some of the tools together for the same lesson (like posting podcasts to a blog, and then uploading to iTunes). It also worked because I picked a unit I've love to teach, on Newbery Award books.
Looking back at all the tools we've been introduced to in the last module, here are my favorites so far:
1. Glogster
Glogster is the multimedia version of the poster making projects of the past (or, let's face it, now too!). Your creativity takes you anywhere. Starting with a template, you add colors, graphics, text, audio, and video, all mashed up into a Glog. I've seen good Glogs about everything from Judy Blume or Christmas wish lists. Here's an awesome one.
2. The humble blog
It may not be as flashy or new, but the blog is still a great way to hear unique voices around the world. No matter what your interests are, there's someone out there whose blog calls your name. My current find this week.
3. Flickr
Although I'd used Flickr briefly for transporting a picture, I see so many more benefits to it now. Curating, tagging, mapping images, etc... the applications are endless. I like the idea of having a school or class repository of images that can be used for the school. I've been thinking of uses for artsy Flickr accounts like this one, Passionate About Stairs:
4. Diigo
I love Diigo! It's great to have a place to keep those links that I used to bookmark even just put on sticky notes. The tags are great, too--no need to go through the whole library. I like saving things I don't have time to look at now.
5. Twitter
Although I've been on Twitter for a while, I'm really starting to see the benefits of using it to connect to other teachers and librarians. Twitter is like having your own list of headlines. Opening up mine right now, I get: Jerry Blumengarten with cybraryman; comedy; Huffington post; Downton Abbey; edutopia; US Weekly; Book Riot; Savvy Authors; Writer's Digest; psychfeed; Disability in Kidlit... all in that order! I love the mix of the fun with the more serious tweets; I don't want it any other way!
Looking back at all the tools we've been introduced to in the last module, here are my favorites so far:
1. Glogster
Glogster is the multimedia version of the poster making projects of the past (or, let's face it, now too!). Your creativity takes you anywhere. Starting with a template, you add colors, graphics, text, audio, and video, all mashed up into a Glog. I've seen good Glogs about everything from Judy Blume or Christmas wish lists. Here's an awesome one.
2. The humble blog
It may not be as flashy or new, but the blog is still a great way to hear unique voices around the world. No matter what your interests are, there's someone out there whose blog calls your name. My current find this week.
3. Flickr
Although I'd used Flickr briefly for transporting a picture, I see so many more benefits to it now. Curating, tagging, mapping images, etc... the applications are endless. I like the idea of having a school or class repository of images that can be used for the school. I've been thinking of uses for artsy Flickr accounts like this one, Passionate About Stairs:
4. Diigo
I love Diigo! It's great to have a place to keep those links that I used to bookmark even just put on sticky notes. The tags are great, too--no need to go through the whole library. I like saving things I don't have time to look at now.
5. Twitter
Although I've been on Twitter for a while, I'm really starting to see the benefits of using it to connect to other teachers and librarians. Twitter is like having your own list of headlines. Opening up mine right now, I get: Jerry Blumengarten with cybraryman; comedy; Huffington post; Downton Abbey; edutopia; US Weekly; Book Riot; Savvy Authors; Writer's Digest; psychfeed; Disability in Kidlit... all in that order! I love the mix of the fun with the more serious tweets; I don't want it any other way!
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Social Media and Gaming in Education
For this week's class, we played around/investigated social media sites and gaming.
Most of the social media sites on our list were sites I'm already on - Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter. I focused on Facebook for my in-depth media site.
I've been on Facebook since 2008, Facebook tells me. I started off to connect with friends who lived out of state; I was living in Ohio and missing my Massachusetts friends. Over time, I started finding people I'd lost touch with, like a housemate from college and a friend living in Amsterdam. I used the messaging feature a lot, because I wasn't really texting yet. Posting pictures was so much fun. When we moved back to Massachusetts, I was able to show my Ohio friends my new house. I stopped printing out pictures altogether and just posted them. My mother joined, just so she could keep up with pictures of my kids! Then came videos, and it was fun to repost other people's videos, or post my daughter's floor routine from her gymnastics meet. When my mother joined, I started being more aware of what I was saying. All of a sudden I didn't write about how much wine I'd had. Stories about teachers who had lost their jobs for posting inappropriate things scared me. I even deleted a few pictures of me at a bar with friends. I like to look back to see all of my old posts, old pictures, and basically get a look at how my life was 5 years ago. It's my (semi-)permanent record at this point, like a modern photo album.
I'd never really thought about Facebook as related to education before, other than the communications we get from my daughters' school district, or posts from the superintendent's blog. My Facebook friend list is almost exclusively personal, except a few friend/authors' professional sites. A few acquaintances post thought-provoking articles, sometimes about education. Today on Facebook, a former colleague posted an article about Common Core math, and a college friend posted an article about charter schools. Rather than friending/liking any organizations or other PD sources, I find that the professional development I get out of Facebook is incidental but fascinating. When others curate the articles for me, it's almost more fun.
In terms of using social media for educational purposes, I find professional resources on Twitter and sometimes Pinterest (I'm sure I'd find more resources on Pinterest but I can't handle this many social media sites as it is!). I find article links to follow and reviews of books coming out. I would love to follow the library/education/writing chats, but I can't find time for it right now. I haven't used Tumblr or Instagram for anything but fun.
For kids, I think there's limited educational value in using Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram. One exception is Fakebook; I love the idea of making fake Facebook accounts for historical figures or literary characters. Ning could be a part of a classroom experience if an issue took center stage, like an environmental issue or a government campaign. It's less personally focused and more interest focused.
We also explored gaming this week both to see what our students do in their free time and to see if we could find ways to use gaming in the classroom. I looked at Second Life, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Minecraft, and Omegle (which I thought was bizarre and totally inappropriate for children because of safety concerns). All of these games were unfamiliar to me except for Minecraft, which my daughter plays. I have to admit that I have a huge dislike for anything set in a high fantasy world, and any gaming that involves violence doesn't appeal to me at all. Second Life, World of Warcraft, and League of Nations can teach problem solving and digital citizenship, and some teachers have used them for teaching about science or social studies. For example, NASA has a Second Life site here. However, these topics can be taught in other ways that eliminate all of the extraneous elements, especially violence.
Minecraft is the only game that I thought could have educational applications. In creative mode, I think it's an excellent tool to let children cultivate their imagination, and it also reinforces spatial relations skills. I interviewed my 12 year old daughter, L., about Minecraft. She loves that she be creative as she builds structures and that she can hook on to her friend's structures. Lately she's built bedrooms for two friends in her house, and has been putting art on the walls. L. focuses in when she plays, instead of multi-tasking like she might do for Instagram. She's not addicted; she probably plays it an hour a week. For virtual reality games, she likes Sims better.
L. does think that Minecraft could be used educationally. She says it's good for geometry and 3D figures, and she thinks kids could use it in the classroom. Teachers could create destinations for the students to visit (which sounds like a lot of work to me!), and make connections with history. I tend to think it's good for kids, but is a better idea for a club or after school program.
Most of the social media sites on our list were sites I'm already on - Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter. I focused on Facebook for my in-depth media site.
I've been on Facebook since 2008, Facebook tells me. I started off to connect with friends who lived out of state; I was living in Ohio and missing my Massachusetts friends. Over time, I started finding people I'd lost touch with, like a housemate from college and a friend living in Amsterdam. I used the messaging feature a lot, because I wasn't really texting yet. Posting pictures was so much fun. When we moved back to Massachusetts, I was able to show my Ohio friends my new house. I stopped printing out pictures altogether and just posted them. My mother joined, just so she could keep up with pictures of my kids! Then came videos, and it was fun to repost other people's videos, or post my daughter's floor routine from her gymnastics meet. When my mother joined, I started being more aware of what I was saying. All of a sudden I didn't write about how much wine I'd had. Stories about teachers who had lost their jobs for posting inappropriate things scared me. I even deleted a few pictures of me at a bar with friends. I like to look back to see all of my old posts, old pictures, and basically get a look at how my life was 5 years ago. It's my (semi-)permanent record at this point, like a modern photo album.
I'd never really thought about Facebook as related to education before, other than the communications we get from my daughters' school district, or posts from the superintendent's blog. My Facebook friend list is almost exclusively personal, except a few friend/authors' professional sites. A few acquaintances post thought-provoking articles, sometimes about education. Today on Facebook, a former colleague posted an article about Common Core math, and a college friend posted an article about charter schools. Rather than friending/liking any organizations or other PD sources, I find that the professional development I get out of Facebook is incidental but fascinating. When others curate the articles for me, it's almost more fun.
In terms of using social media for educational purposes, I find professional resources on Twitter and sometimes Pinterest (I'm sure I'd find more resources on Pinterest but I can't handle this many social media sites as it is!). I find article links to follow and reviews of books coming out. I would love to follow the library/education/writing chats, but I can't find time for it right now. I haven't used Tumblr or Instagram for anything but fun.
For kids, I think there's limited educational value in using Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram. One exception is Fakebook; I love the idea of making fake Facebook accounts for historical figures or literary characters. Ning could be a part of a classroom experience if an issue took center stage, like an environmental issue or a government campaign. It's less personally focused and more interest focused.
We also explored gaming this week both to see what our students do in their free time and to see if we could find ways to use gaming in the classroom. I looked at Second Life, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Minecraft, and Omegle (which I thought was bizarre and totally inappropriate for children because of safety concerns). All of these games were unfamiliar to me except for Minecraft, which my daughter plays. I have to admit that I have a huge dislike for anything set in a high fantasy world, and any gaming that involves violence doesn't appeal to me at all. Second Life, World of Warcraft, and League of Nations can teach problem solving and digital citizenship, and some teachers have used them for teaching about science or social studies. For example, NASA has a Second Life site here. However, these topics can be taught in other ways that eliminate all of the extraneous elements, especially violence.
Minecraft is the only game that I thought could have educational applications. In creative mode, I think it's an excellent tool to let children cultivate their imagination, and it also reinforces spatial relations skills. I interviewed my 12 year old daughter, L., about Minecraft. She loves that she be creative as she builds structures and that she can hook on to her friend's structures. Lately she's built bedrooms for two friends in her house, and has been putting art on the walls. L. focuses in when she plays, instead of multi-tasking like she might do for Instagram. She's not addicted; she probably plays it an hour a week. For virtual reality games, she likes Sims better.
L. does think that Minecraft could be used educationally. She says it's good for geometry and 3D figures, and she thinks kids could use it in the classroom. Teachers could create destinations for the students to visit (which sounds like a lot of work to me!), and make connections with history. I tend to think it's good for kids, but is a better idea for a club or after school program.
Monday, March 3, 2014
A Look at iPads and Multimedia Sites
I have had an iPad for a while now, but I took time this week to really explore it in a way I hadn't before. (Something about looking at it for an assignment that all of a sudden forced me to stop playing Quiz Up and look at it as a whole...) First, I love the stylish look of my iPad. I like the touch screen so much; I find myself trying to touch my laptop, and I'm annoyed when it doesn't do anything. The app store is amazing. I still haven't explored anywhere near all of it. I find apps for my children, work, classes, games, and productivity.
For the last two years, I've been lucky enough to work in schools with iPad carts. In the first school, the younger children (K and 1st) mostly used the iPads for learning games. By the time they were a little older, they typed stories and illustrated them. At the second school, teachers used the iPads for things like presentations on new concepts in math (Khan Academy, learnzillion, etc.). Students were able to replay the lessons if they got stuck on their independent work.
Some other ideas for using iPads in the classrooms could be: listening to or reading e-books; accessing databases or reference websites; exploring 3D images of the heart or dissected animals; listening to podcasts; making presentations on Keynote; making movies about what they've learned on iMovie; and taking pre- and post-tests on sites like Quia. The list is endless!
iPads are also a great tool for differentiation. They help students learn in different modalities (videos or podcasts), provide support for struggling readers (with content read to them), and assist students with poor fine motor control (with the touchscreen).
In class this week, we also took at look at some great online multimedia sites. I'd used YouTube many times, but this was the first time I explored creating playlists and saving videos to watch later. It was great to have a playlist specifically for work videos. I liked TeacherTube's focus only on education, although I found it as difficult to find specific things as I did on YouTube. That might just be my lack of experience! I loved the clean, classic look of Vimeo, and think I would rather upload videos there than on YouTube.. I also looked at VoiceThread; one idea I had was to have a piece of writing put up (a student's or my own) and have commentary in different formats.
I explored podcasts on iTunes; I'd never even looked at them before. I downloaded the Podcasts app to my iPad. Even though it's hard to find something specific (I had a hard time finding podcasts for reading comprehension for one of our assignments), I enjoyed poking around, and am listening to some podcasts in my car. I wandered around on Pandora, but didn't find anything out I hadn't known before.
I made a simple animated video this week for the first time, using Jing. I chose homework as the topic - what I wish parents would know about homework. Check it out: http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=9463221&height=267&width=200
For the last two years, I've been lucky enough to work in schools with iPad carts. In the first school, the younger children (K and 1st) mostly used the iPads for learning games. By the time they were a little older, they typed stories and illustrated them. At the second school, teachers used the iPads for things like presentations on new concepts in math (Khan Academy, learnzillion, etc.). Students were able to replay the lessons if they got stuck on their independent work.
Some other ideas for using iPads in the classrooms could be: listening to or reading e-books; accessing databases or reference websites; exploring 3D images of the heart or dissected animals; listening to podcasts; making presentations on Keynote; making movies about what they've learned on iMovie; and taking pre- and post-tests on sites like Quia. The list is endless!
iPads are also a great tool for differentiation. They help students learn in different modalities (videos or podcasts), provide support for struggling readers (with content read to them), and assist students with poor fine motor control (with the touchscreen).
In class this week, we also took at look at some great online multimedia sites. I'd used YouTube many times, but this was the first time I explored creating playlists and saving videos to watch later. It was great to have a playlist specifically for work videos. I liked TeacherTube's focus only on education, although I found it as difficult to find specific things as I did on YouTube. That might just be my lack of experience! I loved the clean, classic look of Vimeo, and think I would rather upload videos there than on YouTube.. I also looked at VoiceThread; one idea I had was to have a piece of writing put up (a student's or my own) and have commentary in different formats.
I explored podcasts on iTunes; I'd never even looked at them before. I downloaded the Podcasts app to my iPad. Even though it's hard to find something specific (I had a hard time finding podcasts for reading comprehension for one of our assignments), I enjoyed poking around, and am listening to some podcasts in my car. I wandered around on Pandora, but didn't find anything out I hadn't known before.
I made a simple animated video this week for the first time, using Jing. I chose homework as the topic - what I wish parents would know about homework. Check it out: http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=9463221&height=267&width=200
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