Cool Way to Poll Students

You all have to check out this site!  I was at a conference last week on Westminster's campus and the speaker for one meeting asked everyone who was able to get out their phones and use them to text their answers to various poll questions he gave us.  We sat there and watched our audience's answers to his questions tally up on the board right in front of our eyes!  Imagine if you could have your students take a test like that or even a poll.  They would be as psyched as we all were.  It was so cool! Check it out:

http://www.polleverywhere.com/

Cool Video to Boost Morale

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/matt-damons-clear-headed-speech-to-teachers-rally/2011/07/30/gIQAG9Q6jI_blog.html

If you need a little boost for your educational self-esteem check out the above link. It happens to be Matt Damon giving a speech in support of teachers.  Much needed.

New Programs, New Problems, New Possibilities

So I have been diligently working on an ebook that I can use as an on-line portfolio for all things education related.  I am excited to have this digital compilation of my skills as they relate to education. I love the idea of being able to share it with potential new employers (heaven forbid that I should ever lose my job or have to move). I love that I can go and edit it at the drop of a hat and not have to worry about resubmitting new information/packets (via snailmail, email, or otherwise) to multiple people at multiple addresses.
   
It's always frustrating to learn a new program.  After watching Dr. John's tutorial videos I felt pretty excited and fairly confident that I could accomplish creating an ebook portfolio. There are always little glitches in learning the ins and outs of a new program, but this one is really very user friendly. My only gripe so far has been that the site itself seems to be rather slow.  At one point, the Flash-something-or-other completely crashed. Thankfully the program has a feature that asks you to save every so many minutes, so the work that I lost was only minimal. Whew!

It's amazing to me how quickly one can adapt to new features and new ways of doing things on the web.  It amazes me that they can change the layout of a sight or program and you hear people completely freaking out because they can't find anything.  In a matter of hours to days they have figured out where all of the features are again and would be just as upset if anything were to change in this new layout! I am just as guilty. I think what it boils down to is how busy everyone is.  We like knowing exactly where to find everything because we all just want to log on, get it done, and move on to the next thing. We don't want to spend even a few minutes or hours reestablishing our virtual equilibrium.

Tech Tools

Before the end of the school year, my school's technology guru asked me to lead a three day workshop on the Promethean Board and on-line applications that can be used with it.  Although I was totally overwhelmed and had major anxiety attacks about having to lead my peers through three days of meaningful technology instruction, I felt that I had done a fairly decent job and was able to answer most of their questions.  After having taken this class and exploring the myriad of tools that are available for teachers' use, I feel utterly sickened by what I could have been exposing my colleagues to.  Although the Promethean board and it's software are a fantastic resource to have, the Activ software is nothing more than a fancy PowerPoint presentation.  Now that I have seen these amazing tools that are out there, I can hardly think of why we would even need to use ActivInspire. Sure, It's a great standby, but allowing students to make digital storybooks, comics, videos, is so much more relevant to what they are going to be asked to do in their post-grade school years. I just saw a bunch of my teacher-friends at a retirement party last night and was gushing about all of the cool things that we could do this year.

     One huge thing that comes to mind, is the fact that we have Social Studies books from 1997 and most likely will not be able to get new ones anytime soon.  A lot has happened in the world since 1997, and so we are constantly having to adapt and find resources to expose our students to more current events. I am thrilled to know about news feeds and the various iGoogle homepage aps that we can explore.  Most likely we would make a digital field trip for each of four different units we will do throughout the year, which will kick off our exploration of four major world cultures.  We can then incorporate trade books that the students will read and most likely our old books will be used as resources for our study of geography and geographical terms. I know that their eyes were glazing over as I was explaining that we can use our virtual field trips as a means of cultural immersion, but I know they'll be psyched once they've seen the possibilities!

Virtual Field Trip

Wow.  Now that I've explored Google and feel so comfortable with Google Docs it has been really fun collaborating with my group on our doc together!  Today, I played around with making a map of Plymouth, Massachusetts and a Google Presentation that we can all collaborate on!  This is amazing!  When I think back to my college days, I just can't believe how far we've come! I remember one particular professor who made us make a PP presentation for EVERY chapter of our geography class.  Ugh. We had to collaborate in a group to do it too, which meant that we exchanged our dorm phone numbers (only the lucky few had cell phones at that point), exchange email addresses, and plan a time when we could go to the library to collaborate face to face because wireless wasn't an option.  Even if we had had wireless back then it wouldn't matter because we ALL had desktop computers at that point.  Of course in every group you get stuck with at least one who is happy to sit back and let the rest of the group hash it out because the frat party was just too sweet the night before and he/she was probably still in bed at 2 in the afternoon.  If we had had Google docs, forms, presentations, maps, etc. back then we would probably all be sitting around in our pajamas in our dorm rooms, letting our muscles atrophy, but at least we'd all be connected in such an amazingly efficient way!

Open Office, Think Free

I'm not sure if I feel overjoyed or annoyed about Open Office and Think Free  - FREE software because it was not that long ago that I shelled out a LOT of money to install the Microsoft suite on my laptop.  I also shelled out a TON of money to put Microsoft Publisher on my computer because I needed it for my summer job.  Ugh. You hate to invest in anything anymore because right around the corner they'll come out with something better or something free that not too long ago you paid hundreds of dollars for.  I think I'm leaning more towards annoyed the more I think about it, because Open Office is just too cool...Ugh.

Google Fiend

     As a teacher, you know that your time is precious and if you aren't choosy about how you spend your time, you can find yourself frazzled, cranky, tired, and ineffective.  This past week I have unleashed the power of Google.  Well, at least my personalized iGoogle page.  I have to stay up-to-date on current events, family matters, weather, and so much more.  I can easily spend 10-15 minutes throughout the day checking on the personalized aps that I added to my page.  I love this. I feel much less frantic checking multiple sites all over the web.
      Furthermore, with the school year stretching out ahead of me I am truly looking forward to being able to use Google docs, Google forms, scholar, Blogger, and many of the other programs under the Google umbrella to unify my students, classroom, colleagues, and be more effective in authentically communicating with people.
      I'm also involved with several other organizations-church related, and otherwise.  I can already see the beneficial impact that being able to make up surveys and documents that can be collaborated on is going to have on these groups!  I am so excited.