This morning I was reminded again about a HUGE resource available to teacheres around the country for free – PBS. The national PBS websites have many resources available, and our very own WNED here in WNY has its own website that acts as a portal (entry page) to these resources. The WNED site, called ThinkBright, has areas for teachers, students, families, and the community.
Go there – use it – enjoy it! www.thinkbright.org
I was just in Bernie Dodge’s session on “Obstacles to Faster Webquest Creation.” If you have ever done a webquest, you know that they are great, but take time to create and manage.
Bernie unveiled a new webqeust generating (and hosting) tool called QuestGarden that will be available Sept. 1st. It takes many of the technical hurdles out of the picture, and provides a nice scaffolding for creating deep webquests for students. Since Bernie is developing the tool, it will have all the pieces that make webquests great.
Price? For the first year, free, and then starting in 2006, $20 for 2 years – an unbelievable deal.
BTW, sorry about the blurry pic, but I was at the back of the aud. during the presentation and had to move fast so I did not block anyone during the shot.
Wikis are websites that anyone can edit. It is another unique product of the online revolution.
One of the neatest projects that has come out of this is Wikipedia – an online, community-created and edited encyclopedia. In concept it is just like traditional encylopedias. The primary difference is that the authors are anyone who chooses to contribute. You can look up an area of your own expertise in the Wikipedia, and if you so choose, can add or edit an entry to your liking. Try it – you’ll be hooked!
Wikipedia has been out for about 4 years now – I’ve used it some in the past. In the first 12 hours at NECC, I’ve heard at least a half-dozen references to it, so I thought it would be a good one to bring up here.
For my Additional Professional Hours for this year, I have been participating in an online professional development community titled Tappedin (www.tappedin.org). It is an online campus that has virtual buildings for colleges, teachers and students. In a typical event, there is a live chat among participants on a given topic (ELA, Science, Blogs, Library of Congress, etc.). The participants come from al parts of the globe. One recent chat I was in had folks from Brazil, Texas, Spain and Germany! Our common interests and the power of the internet brought us together from the comfort of our own homes. The opportunities that Tappedin provide are ones that can enrich the learning opportunities we provide here.
Video editing on the computer has brought an awesome new level to learning. Some ESL students just finished projects in which their teacher filmed them acting out skits to practice/reinforce common sayings in English. The finished products not only demonstrate the content, but have so much more in that they are finished pieces with audio/video, effects and titles. They are reflections of the individuals and they are very proud of their work.
No matter what the content, video can add some neat things to the classroom!
If you have not (and I’m the first to admit I have not read poetry in a while…), you should! Check out the following links for some great poetry. Or…maybe better…turn off the computer, go to the library, and get a good book of poetry 🙂
Poetry 180 – A Poem a Day for America’s High Schools (so we are a middle school but noone should mind if we read them…)
And be sure to check out the Library of Congress Poetry Page for many great links on poetry.
We had a fun time tonight with our ELA inservice, Supporting ELA with Technology. We spent some time at ReadWriteThink, a great site for lessons and online activities for ELA. Next we went on to Brainpop to check out the movies there for ELA.
We finished the night with a discussion about blogs. After visiting this site and Xanga, we looked at Blogmeister, a place to create educational blogs. Next week we will look a bit more at Blogmeister, then move on to some other tools.
I was just in a cool online forum where I learned about the Writing Project, a national program that focuses on helping teachers improve their own (and their students) writing though summer professional development. WNY has its own chapter of the Writing Project, based at Canisius College. An english teacher from the district, Margie Herberger, was a fellow last summer at the Project.
To learn more and see a schedule of events, check out:
Western New York Writing Project
We have a computer lab license for brainpop.com, an awesome website for short animated videos on just about any topic in the curriculum. If you are looking for material to introduce, reinforce, or review a topic, Brainpop may be just what you need. Check it out at:
See someone in the computer lab for the school username and password.
Ideas are awesome. Thinking out of the box is key to having a unique voice. Oneword.com provides just that – one word – and you have 60 seconds to write the first thing that comes to mind about the word. Very cool. Very fast. Very fun.
Go for it – what do you have to be afraid of?