Our Rosie reading program is very successful. As of today, we have twenty-one students who have qualified for the field trip. We are expecting to take at least seventy students to Indianapolis to the IRT to see a play, then to lunch at the Spaghetti Factory. The students look forward to this every year. They are also improving their reading skills and comprehension!
It is Wednesday, and I just wanted to add another post to my current blog. I don’t want to forget what I have learned in the past few months, so I will try to post every couple of weeks or so.
We have three news books for our staff which will be housed in the Media Center. They are (in no particular order): Classroom Blogging: A Teacher’s Guide to Blogs, Wikis, and Other Tools that are Shaping a New Information Landscape; Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms; and Digital Storytelling in the Classroom.
We are trying to put together a multi-media lab where the PowerPoint lab now exists. We want the lab to be fully functional for podcasts, wikis, and digital storytelling. We will also have digital cameras, video cameras, and audio resources available for our students to create their projects. It is exciting to be able to envision some of the new things that our students will be able to create.
Good afternoon! I am attending another conference. Today is a conference on wikis, blogging and moodling. I have learned a lot about wikis, so I am hoping to be able to take some of this information back to my colleagues. I have found blogs and wikis to be very similar in their makeup and uses, but I can see difference strengths andweaknesses in each of them. I would use the blog for more of a personal journal, and the wiki would be used for collaboration with other students.
I can see Rick, Sara, and Anna also being interested in wikis too.
I am looking forward to the ICE Conference tomorrow. I am hoping to learn more about podcasting and blogging. I am also interested in any new technology that is available. I would like to add a Smartboard to the media center. It would be a great tool for classes, teacher inservice and after school trainings.
I will bring you up to date on the conference once I return.
For our assignment, I looked at five online citation guides. In the order of appearance, I will comment on each one…
Citation Builder is easy to use, but many of our books have editors. This site did not offer students that choice for their citation option.
Citation Machine was my least favorite. It was too busy and the color of the font was red. The print was also small, and in my opinion, difficult to read. There was also no place to create a citation for an edited book.
EasyBib was good. It was easy to use and the format was pleasant. It was my second favorite.
Knight Cite was my favorite citation guide. It was very easy to use, and I think students would like the format.
Online! was in book format. I thought it might be too advanced for some of the younger students ie. frosh. Students would have to read directions in a book format.
Today is the first day I have created a blog. I feel as if I am writing on my daughter’s MySpace page. I think this is something that we educators can use in many ways – particularly as writing in the classroom. I think the kids will really like the fact that they can personalize their blogs, and most of them will already be familiar with this as they use Facebook and MySpace.
