Using Glogster with Students

Today, I experimented with my Glogster Edu account and I've made a sample candy commercial with student work. I've decided that I need to have the teacher I'm working with set up her own Glogster Account... but the good news is it looks like the Mp3 files in Garageband and the photos in iPhoto are all going to come together nicely! At this point... I still only have 10 students' commercials recorded... so we have a ways to go.

As of today... I've got a wiki titled ICTechProjects so that I can upload samples of things I'm working on in the Crozet Cluster! Not sharing yet... as I have to check student permissions. But soon... very soon.

20 Great Websites for Teachers | Blogging & Technology | So You Want To Teach?

20 Great Websites for Teachers | Blogging & Technology | So You Want To Teach?

I hope to explore in more detail later. But in the meantime... I'm documenting the link here! I want to learn more than I have hours in the day! But... need some sleep and balance in my life as well. Carry on...

Pam writes...

This has been such a sad week for my friends and my Woodbrook School Community. Pam says it so well in her post. Death of a young one is so hard to understand. But... as we've seen this past week...We all make such a difference in each other's lives... not just during bad times, but all of the time. My conversations with sad students on Monday morning when I was at Woodbrook, really affected me. These children were so sad, yet we were able to help each other by walking and talking together... and with hugs. Remembering Carson and gathering together to share memories and move forward in ways that will make our community even better is what we take from this loss. Friends can help us mend our broken hearts, but we may never truly understand why things of this nature happen. They just happen. We must continue to give of ourselves to make the world a better place each and everyday... but we do not have to do it alone.

schoolnet.com - Viewpoint Post



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About the teaching of Reading...

I've learned today and many days leading up to today...that there's so much confusion on what reading instruction really is. Thanks to Hollins for sharing this video with me today. SO... Do we KNOW how to teach reading? It is so abstract... but yet needs to be done so explicitly. We know that many students learn to read by reading. (I think of Carole's famous quote... "some just learn in spite of us!") We know there are some students that don't learn to read without intensive interventions and lots of phonemic work. Decoding, fluency, prosody, comprehension... There's so much talk about reading instruction and so much jargon. Instructional levels vs Independent levels? Running records... PALS! And ultimately let's not forget the Balanced Literacy Diet. The cohesive collections of daily work that we must do with children... the writing for a purpose and connecting our work with authors' text. Learning and sharing with others around us and from literature that we are reading. Building meaning... building schema. Being a Writer, yet another program in ACPS, offers a fabulous structure for writing instruction for even the most reluctant and struggling teachers of writing. My GOODNESS what a strong writing teacher can do with the scaffolding and texts offered by Being a Writer! Then we have the Daily Five... which is a structure that can support reading instruction... but it is NOT a reading program. Do we all understand this? As I said... there is so many misunderstandings about how to teach reading. How long should our literacy block be and how can we dedicate an hour to Being a Writer... and OH! I hate this word study stuff!! Sit UP! This video will give you something to think about!! Enjoy. pssst... it will require 10 minutes of reading... and some schema!

Teaching our Children

As teachers, do we not treat our students as if they were our own children? This is a question I have today. Sometimes there's a student that may be hard to love... sometimes we forget that there's such diversity in this world and we sometimes just want people to be just like us. Sometimes it is impossible or very hard to understand student actions and odd behaviors. Why is that so? We have to find the good in each and every student and build from that. We must work to crack the codes of our students... to see what makes them tick. It is hard at times to love ...but as I remember Lucy Calkins saying once at a workshop in DC..."you gotta love them and you gotta love 'em quick!" She's referring to the beginning of school and building relationships. We must develop a trusting and loving relationship with our students. We are powerful adults in their impressionable lives. Our students are with us for a huge portion of their life for that single year. The power of teachers is not to be underestimated! Powers that I never really understood until my own children were in school and experienced both positive and negative powerful effects of teachers in their lives. So... I ask myself. Who is that outlier in the classroom? Why is he such a bully, or sad, or sassy? What can I learn about him and from him? How can we build the relationships? You must touch the heart to reach the brain... they are someone's children... and they send them to US. Treat them as you would your own.

webmail portal

This is the portal or login page for our county web mail. I am trying to understand how the new Google sidewiki works. So this is just a test. And yes...!!! I use my blog to ramble, test, document, etc.

in reference to: Microsoft Outlook Web Access - Logon (view on Google Sidewiki)

Learning in Hand... the ipod touch

So another round of grants are due in a couple of days. I'm hoping to brainstorm some ideas with a teacher at one of my schools who is interested. Last grant was written on final day of school while home sick and for my old school. I gather it was partially funded. Need to follow up.

Some documentation as a resource is here.

http://learninginhand.com/ipod/touch.html

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