Blessed to Teach and Read

Whew! First 7 days of school down, 180 more to go! While looking in Karen Bolotin's LiveBinder , (Online News and Magazines for Kids and a fabulous resource that in some way should be linked to your teacher webpage to get students reading high-interest, non-fiction articles online), I linked to Karen's Pinterest page , which has LOADS of picture ideas for the classroom! (Was that the longest sentence ever? Possibly. I hope it was intelligible.) Pinterest, if you haven't discovered it yet, is a place where you "pin" your virtual, visual "interests". While you need an invite to join, you can request one from their website by submitting your e-mail address. It's a place to collect quotes, recipes, ideas for home redecorating, ideas for school, etc. and to credit the source that created it. While looking through Karen's Pinterest page, I went another layer deeper onto Mrs. Morris' Simply 2nd Resources blog to a very simple way to sho...

How awesome is this ?!? The picture resources from The Library of Congress are phenomenal and an untapped resource! How cool will it be to show my students actual photographs of Native Americans and have them make deductions and inferences before they start researching?!? SO glad I saw this link before Monday. LOVE this! And I thought using JogtheWeb was going to be cool. Old school awesomeness!

I'm back from our first leadership meeting for the 2011-2012 school year and what should be in my Twitter feed, but a stunning list of ideas for using different technology tools in my teaching. I plan to officially start BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) this year with my class with guidance from our Instructional Technology Specialist, Susan Brandon. Students bring the technology they already own at home for use during class. Those who can't bring something can borrow a school laptop so that less laptops are needed per class, thus freeing up a greater number of laptops for other classes. Skimming through some of the ideas makes me feel like I need to get an iPad...

Ooo! This site is similar to Wallwisher, but BETTER! It is free to people ages 13 and up, so while it would be fun for students to use, mine aren't over the age of 13. However, it would be a very fun tool to use with parents to communicate questions and answers that are permanently on a board linked to my class webpage. This could save having to answer the same questions over and over while providing vital information, attachments, videos, or photos of events happening in class. This would also be a fun tool to use to collaborate with teaching peers! Your free account allows you to create as many canvases (backgrounds) as you'd like for posting notes. While there are 25 pre-made canvases to choose among, you could also upload an image to use as your canvas. There are yellow, green, blue, or pink notes to post. On each note you can change the color and size of the font, add tags, and a due date. (A great way to remind parents of project due dates or upcoming tests.) ...

Another find from a Tweet about a LiveBinder has led me to a great website called PicLits . Sign-up for a free account and it gives you access to a gallery of photos and a bank of drag-and-drop words to add a caption to create a poem. There is a "freestyle" option if you would prefer to type in your own words. The best part is the "Learn It" tab. Under this tab is: - "Write It", which tells about basic sentences, compound sentences, and paragraphs - "Rhyme It", which talks about why you would choose to rhyme your poetry (or not) - and "Master It", which has advanced lesson plans on all manner of figurative language techniques, and different genre of poetry. Granted, because this site has photos, it will likely be blocked at school, but it is also a great site that students could explore at home and then share on FB or Twitter, save, print or e-mail to share at school.

Saw this posted on Twitter via Audrey Lash, a LiveBinders user. It is a wonderful resource for numerous books leveled with Fountas and Pinnell's A-Z lettering. Each tab has subtabs with found discussion questions or activities for the books listed. This is a resource I will definitely be using this year to save me from having to do the searching for myself!

I love Twitter ! It took me awhile to start using it, but it is an exponential wealth of information via links to education articles, discussions, and Web 2.0 tools. I started following LiveBinders recently. If you haven't explored LiveBinders before, it is a website that allows you to create an online binder that is similar to a physical binder. You can name your binder, add tabs and subtabs, and organize your resources into it. Resources can include webpages, videos, pdfs, and images. You can share your binder and/or look at binders that others have shared. I had originally set up an account with LiveBinders in my last graduate class hoping I would start using LiveBinders to store my units online as well as having my physical unit. But, if it is usable at school, it would be an AWESOME tool for students to create their own LiveBinder of learning for student-led conferences in the fall and spring! LiveBinders posted a link to this binder about Web 2.0 that heyjudeo...