Why Blog?

Why Blog?
This is a post for my JHU Technology and the  Science of Educators (Summer 2010) course. I was trying to decide how to present information about what a blog is and I decided that what better way than to do it than within a blog post! Plus I can encourage folks to respond to my blog, since they are getting graded on their class participation. (of course anyone out there in the blogosphere is welcome to comment as well) Wow, I love the power of being in education ;)

Explore some blogs (You can take a look at the blogs I have tagged on www.delicious.com --we will talk about Social Bookmarking in a couple of weeks).
Make some observations about some of the blogs you look at:
You might comment on any of the following:

* What do you see as common components of all/most of these blogs?
* What are some things that may be very different from one blog to another?
* What are some of the audiences for these blogs?
* What are the tone of the blogs?
* Are all blogs equal? Why or why not?
* What other comments do you have about these blogs? (Remember you will be choosing a blog to follow for 2 weeks--it can be any of these or any other blog related to your educational interests)
* How are these education related blogs similar or different from any blogs you may have looked at on a more personal interest level (ie, politics, news, sports, etc)

I am Blogging Now Because My Teacher Told Me To...

What did you think of the blogging experience? Answer any or all of these questions (or give us some other insightful comments that related back to our readings, etc). Did you have a hard or easy time finding a blog you were interested in following? Have you ever blogged before? Do you see yourself continuing to use blogs as a professional resource? Would you consider using blogging as an instructional tool to get your students reflecting and writing?

Podcasts We Recommend

The following are podcasts the JHU MCPS cohort recommends for educators.  Please check them out and add your own suggestions!

Why Blog?

Why Blog?
This is a post for my JHU Technology and the  Science of Educators (Spring 2010) course. I was trying to decide how to present information about what a blog is and I decided that what better way than to do it than within a blog post! Plus I can encourage folks to respond to my blog, since they are getting graded on their class participation. (of course anyone out there in the blogosphere is welcome to comment as well) Wow, I love the power of being in education ;)

Explore some blogs (You can take a look at the blogs I have tagged on www.delicious.com --we will talk about Social Bookmarking in a couple of weeks).
Make some observations about some of the blogs you look at: 
You might comment on any of the following:

* What do you see as common components of all/most of these blogs?
* What are some things that may be very different from one blog to another?
* What are some of the audiences for these blogs?
* What are the tone of the blogs?
* Are all blogs equal? Why or why not?
* What other comments do you have about these blogs? (Remember you will be choosing a blog to follow for 2 weeks--it can be any of these or any other blog related to your educational interests)
* How are these education related blogs similar or different from any blogs you may have looked at on a more personal interest level (ie, politics, news, sports, etc)

I look forward to your comments! 

"And I am blogging now because my teacher told me I had to."

What did you think of the blogging experience? Answer any or all of these questions (or give us some other insightful comments that related back to our readings, etc). Did you have a hard or easy time finding a blog you were interested in following? Have you ever blogged before? Do you see yourself continuing to use blogs as a professional resource? Would you consider using blogging as an instructional tool to get your students reflecting and writing?

Key Question Revisited

 In April 2007, Scott McLeod asked, "Given the realities of our modern age and the demands of our children's future, is it really ok for teachers to choose whether or not to incorporate modern technologies into their instruction?".  This past September he made this question even more relevant (despite his claim to be Dangerously Irrelevant) with his latest version of Did You Know? (Did You Know 4.0) 

It makes it worthwhile to debate this question again. What is your opinion, and even more importantly, if you agree with Scott, how can you take an active role in realizing the potential of modern technology in an educational setting?

Using Glogster as an Educational Tool

Kids love to do poster projects and kids love to use the computer.  Combine these 2 mediums into one using GlogsterEDU.  This educational (ie, cleaned up--no questionable images, etc) version of Glogster is just what you need to engage students in showing what they know about any topic for school.

Check out this presentation from slide share on using Glogster EDU

Glogster EDU Education 2.0

View more presentations from glogster.

Why Blog?

Why Blog?
This is a post for my JHU Technology and the New Science of Educators course. I was trying to decide how to present information about what a blog is and I decided that what better way than to do it than within a blog post! Plus I can encourage folks to respond to my blog, since they are getting graded on their class participation. (of course anyone out there in the blogosphere is welcome to comment as well) Wow, I love the power of being in education ;)

1) For anyone out there in the blogosphere who happens upon this, take a look at this video from Commoncraft on what a blog is (my class should have already viewed this from my ppt.


2) Take a look at the blogs I have tagged on www.delicious.com (we will talk about Social Bookmarking in a couple of weeks)
Make some observations about some of the blogs you look at:

* What do you see as common components of all/most of these blogs?
* What are some things that may be very different from one blog to another?
* What are some of the audiences for these blogs?
* What are the tone of the blogs?
* Are all blogs equal? Why or why not?
* What other comments do you have about these blogs? (Remember you will be choosing a blog to follow for 2 weeks--it can be any of these or any other blog related to your educational interests)
* How are these education related blogs similar or different from any blogs you may have looked at on a more personal interest level (ie, politics, news, sports, etc)

I look forward to your comments!

Information Literacy

Have you heard the comment, just because it is on the Internet doesn't mean it is so ? It is important that we know how to validate our sources on the internet and that we teach our students, who have grown up knowing that the internet is the place to find the answers to questions,how to evaluate the reliability of what they find.

List 3 things that you learned during your exploration of Information Literacy from November Learning. After taking the Information Literacy Quiz, were you Somewhat Saavy, Moderately Saavy, or Downright Nerdy?

What was your reaction to the Martin Luther King website? Did you try finding the publisher of any other websites?

Will the information from the exploration impact how you use the internet personally? With your students?

Inaugural Activities

On this great day in history, where we are celebrating the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States, we need to be sure to give all of our students the means to communicate about and reflect on the excitement that we are all feeling today.
Eric Sailors, has created a video about the inauguration on his blog http://speechlanguagepathologysharing.blogspot.com/ and accompanying activities, including ones to go along with this weeks News 2 You edition.
Here is an adaptation of a social script that an SLP I work with created before the inauguration:

I would like to talk to you--come closer!

Let's talk about the Presidential Inauguration?

What is an inauguration?

Did you go to the inauguration?

Did watch the inauguration on tv?

This inuaguration is so important for American History!

Yes, he is the first African American president of the United States!

Do you know anything else about President elect Obama?

The American people are ready for a change and he is willing to listen.

Do you want to be president one day?

Wouldn't it be cool to live in the White House?

I hope President Obama is going to be a great American President!

Talk to you later!

AdaptedLearning.com (a place to post materials made in Boardmaker and SDPro) has a number of activities on the Inauguration, including Put the Inauguration in Order and an interactive book on the Inauguration.

Intellitools Activitiy Exchange has an activity by Cindy Kerr, called A New President. Cindy always makes great things to share on the activity exchange.

So, enjoy watching the pomp and circumstance today, celebrate a milestone for our country, and help the kids to get involved in it back at school this week.

Help Me...Social Media is Sucking My Will To Live

I am a member of the QIAT listserv, a group of a few hundred (maybe more!) professionals and others who are interested in Assistive Technology. I post if not frequently, at least more than occasionally, and I follow threads that catch my interest. The following thread was started by Samuel Sennott, a frequent contributor to the list (who has a great blog, http://alltogether.wordpress.com) under the title, Help Me...Social Media is Sucking My Will To Live
I have posted the original email, the responses of a few others, and finally my response, as I feel it is so relevent in this day and age of technology.

Hi,

Okay seriously...myspace, facebook, twitter, ning, the endless onslought of GMAIL, google reader, aim, wiki changes, skype, and on and on.

So unlike that haircutting vacuum thing <http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymq1ETtXPtc> from Wayne's World, social media is not sucking my will to live. Actually, it is quite enriching. Yet, I am trying to think in a positive and critical way towards these tools. How do we manage them, so they don't manage us? What tools are there to manage the tools to manage the tools to manage the tools and so on? What are some tips that have helped you manage this the tools of this new age?

Thanks a bunch! :)

From,

Sam

--
http://alltogether.wordpress.com
________________________________

From: Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology on behalf of Kate A
Sent: Thu 1/8/2009 11:06 PM
To: QIAT@LSV.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: [QIAT] Help Me...Social Media is Sucking My Will To Live


For me, like anything else in life, I have had to turn to moderation and priorities. I hardly ever twitter and no longer plurk. I don't do any kind of social bookmarking. I have put my wiki on the back burner and it may never get updated again and I accept that. About half of my e/g-mail never gets read. I only open list serv stuff is it pertains to something I know or need to know. (I also use filters for this.)

I prioritze my use of social media based on what either makes me a better, more fulfilled person or a better teacher. So my rss reader is cut back to blogs that either teach me or make me feel good. My blog I count as a service to myself as a teacher (as well as anyone else who reads it). I learn and grow as a teacher and a writer by creating it, so it is the top of my priority list for online time.

At times I feel driven to "do more, be more" online and when I do I shut off the computer and go outside. Now that gas prices are dropping (knock wood) I may even start camping again... well once some snow melts.


Kate

www.teachinglearnerswithmultipleneeds.blogspot.com <http://www.teachinglearnerswithmultipleneeds.blogspot.com/>

"Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can."

John Wesley



On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Christi F. wrote:


Sam,
I so understand what you are saying. One little thing that I have done is to filter my email and set it to run in my google task bar. Now, I do not read many of the emails unless I feel they apply to me and my area of interest. So, yes, all of the QIAT mails go into their own file and I sort through them just once a week unless something like this catches my eye. I also filter the filtered mail by reading only certain persons postings.
D'ya think they could create an AI (artificial intelligence) that could get to know me (maybe over a cup of tea or coffee) so that it could filter it down for me even further?
Chris

(and finally my response):
Sam,
I agree wholeheartedly with Kate. Give your self permission to not do it all. Pick what you like best and is the most personally and professionally fulfilling within social media and focus on that. I am constantly telling myself not to feel guilty for not updating my blog more often, and that it still serves its purpose even if I only post 1x a month. (it is mostly an outlet for me and a place to post resources for classes I teach). I try really hard to take a technology free day at least once every couple of weeks, and spend time at the barn, the movies, or whatever my family is up. I still feel overloaded and would love to find the perfect technology to help me better organize my life (so far I vote for iGoogle, as I can see my calendar, my email--I forward my work email to my gmail, so I can glance at it quickly--a to do list, links to my online courses, and my RSS feeds in only 1 or 2 screens), but there is more to life than social media. My husband just read the book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv , which stressed the importance of getting outdoors for today's children, but I think it is vital for us as adults as well, and it is on my list of books to read (on Shelfari.com, of course!)
Beth
Beth Poss, M.A., CCC/SLP
Speech/Language Pathologist
InterACT
Montgomery County Public Schools
PBwiki Certified Educator

-------------------------------------------------

Just for Fun!

Here are two great websites that are so much fun, and also encourage reading and writing.
Shelfari is a tool to create your very own virtual bookshelf and show off the books you have read, want to read, and are planning on reading. Teachers can create a bookshelf for parents and students to visit; and teachers, students, and parents can discuss books online. You can also post your bookshelf on a blog (see mine to the right), wiki, or other website that you can insert code into. I love Shelfari for the following reasons:

1. I can find a new book to read by checking out What's Hot under the Books tab
2. I can recommend books to my friends on Shelfari and find out what they are reading
3. I can create a private group for a book discussion
4. I can look for reviews on books I am considering reading

Wordle is the other fun website I suggest you go and play on. In Wordle you can take any text and have it turned into a great piece of word art. Take a look at this Wordle:

Using RSS Feeds to Organize Your Input

As I find more and more blogs, podcasts and wikis that I want to read regularly, or at least try to remember to read regularly, I find that RSS feeds become the only way to organize and keep track of the many sources of information that I rely on for both personal and professional development. To learn more about RSS and how to sign up for an RSS Feed, such as Google Reader take a look at this slideshow from Slideshare.net

Using Rss

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: rss google)

Another good slide show on this topic is also posted

RSS in Education

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: rss education)

WriteOnline Provides Accessible Writing Supports Across Settings

I am at Closing the Gap this week and am scouting out what's new and exciting in Assistive Technology. While, uncharacteristically, there are not a lot of new products being lauded and launched at CTG, there are a few that really deserve a mention. My favorite AT tool for students is a new writing tool, WriteOnline from Crick Software. The best of it's many features include:

1. Completely online, this tool will be a boon to educators who have to worry about whether installed software will conflict with their network.


2. Additionally, students will easily be able to login at home to finish up writing begun at school.


3. The program features a very MS Word like toolbar (with standard features, like spell check and mispelling cues), text to speech, word prediction, WordBar banks, and writing frames.


4. Students can even access their work without an internet connection, if they have been logged in within 3 days.


5. Teachers will love the available analysis of document statistics and history, including whether students have pasted text in and a record of spelling errors and corrections.


6. The program is completely switch accessible!!

Take a tour of all the features at http://www.learninggrids.com/us/WriteOnlinePage.aspx Free 30 day trials are also available at the website.

What is a Blog?

This is a post for my JHU Technology and the New Science of Educators course. I was trying to decide how to present information about what a blog is and I decided that what better way than to do it than within a blog post! Plus I can encourage folks to respond to my blog, since they are getting graded on their class participation. (of course anyone out there in the blogosphere is welcome to comment as well) Wow, I love the power of being in education ;)

1)Take a look at this great description of what a blog is from Commoncraft


2) Take a look at the blogs I have tagged on del.icio.us (we will talk about Social Bookmarking in a couple of weeks) http://delicious.com/possbeth/blogs
Make some observations about some of the blogs you look at:

• What do you see as common components of all/most of these blogs?
• What are some things that may be very different from one blog to another?
• What are some of the audiences for these blogs?
• What are the tone of the blogs?
  
• Are all blogs equal? Why or why not?
• What other comments do you have about these blogs? (Remember you will be choosing a blog to follow for 2 weeks--it can be any of these or any other blog related to your educational interests)
• How are these education related blogs similar or different from any blogs you may have looked at on a more personal interest level (ie, politics, news, sports, etc)
  

I look forward to your comments!

Easy As Making a Peanut Butter Sandwich

Wow! It has been 2 months since my last post. Summer just consumed me and I never got a chance to get into a rhythm of blogging. With the new school year, comes new school year resolutions and mine is to blog at least twice a week. It is not that I sat around the pool eating bon bons this summer. I was busy teaching my Web 2.0 graduate course for Johns Hopkins University School of Education and I was working hard to become a PBwiki Certified Educator. I became a PBWiki Certified Educator by completing the PBwiki Summer Camp, a six week online, wiki based Professional Development course on using wikis in education. What a great learning experience! While I have used wikis in my graduate course and as a vehicle for collaboration through the Maryland Assistive Technology Association (check out this awesome wiki for extensive info and resources on AT), participating in this online course gave me an opportunity to learn about many great features available on PBwiki. Did you know that you can add sortable tables to your pbwiki? You can also add footnotes, great Google Gadgets, videos and lots more. The summer camp also went into great detail about security and privacy features available on the different levels of pbwikis. As a bonus, everyone who completed the summer camp (including all the assignments!) got a free Platinum PBwiki for a year, which has lots of great security features (including totally private pages available to only selected members of the wiki--great for staff on a school based wiki). If you want to sign up for the next PBwiki Summer Camp, check out this blog entry from The Daily Peanut, the official blog of PBwiki--the link to sign up is at the bottom of the entry.
Ta, ta for now--I promise to post soon--really.
P.S. Let me know if anyone is actually reading this blog by clicking on the Followers tab at the top of the page!

Washington Post.com Article: Technology Reshapes America's Classrooms

Jason Szep's Washingtonpost.com (originally from Reuters) article, Technology Reshapes America's Classrooms starts off with exciting examples from a charter school in Boston that is using technology in revolutionary ways not seen in many public schools.

It has no textbooks. Students receive laptops at the start of
each day, returning them at the end. Teachers and students maintain blogs. Staff
and parents chat on instant messaging software. Assignments are submitted
through electronic "drop boxes" on the school's Web site.
"The dog ate my homework" is no excuse here.

The experiment ... began two years ago at cost of about $2 million, but last year was the first in which all 7th and 8th grade students received laptops. Classwork is done in Google Inc's free applications like Google Docs, or Apple's iMovie
and specialized educational software like FASTT Math.

Unlike traditional schools, Frederick's students work at vastly
different levels in the same classroom. Children with special needs rub
shoulders with high performers. Computers track a range of aptitude levels,
allowing teachers to tailor their teaching to their students' weakest areas,
Socia said.

The potential implications of this are exciting for an inclusion advocate, like myself, although I imagine the students with special needs are probably students with high incidence disabilities, as opposed to the students with low incidence disabilities that I typically support in general ed settings. It is nice to see mainstream media acknowledging the impact technology and a Universally Designed for Learning classroom (even though it does not use this term) can have on teaching.

The article goes on to discuss the impact of the internet on education and the prediction that 50% of high school courses will be taught online by 2019. It makes me think Karl Fisch's 20/20 Vision may run ahead of schedule, beyond even his foretelling of President Obama!

New Online Book Collection

The Center for Literacy and Disabilities Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill has a wonderful new project, The Tar Hill Reader, which is both a collection of accessible online books for early readers of all ages and an online, open source software program for creating books to add to the library.

The books run the gamut from the quirky Socks Having Fun, to the more educational/curriculum related Polar Bears. This great resource, while only up since early June, is already filled with a variety of texts, mostly with pictures from Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons. All books are switch accessible and and have text to speech capabilities. They can be run directly in Firefox or can be downloaded to PowerPoint, Impress, or Flash. The books are generally low reading level/high interest, and would be especially great for teens and young adults who are at a beginning reading level, and need age appropriate materials to be engaged in. There are plenty of appropriate books for young readers, as well.

It is very easy to navigate the site and to build books in it. To begin writing a book, go to the Write a Book page, and get started. To get a registration code, to building a book email Gary, the site administrator /brains behind the program.

Thanks to Samuel Sennott, for alerting me to this great website! Check out his blog post for detailed directions on how to use Tar Heel Reader, including a complete set of screen shots.

A Picture Can Create a Thousand Words

In my previous post, I shared a handout from a workshop on Web 2.0 tools to support student achievement. Blogs and photos from photo sharing sites such as Flickr and Picasa are a great way to encourage students to write. Providing a word bank can allow students support with challenging vocabulary and it allows them to either copy by typing or cut and paste the text into their respones. Here is a example.

What do you see in this picture? What stage of the life cycle of a butterfly does this show? Use the word bank below to help you write your response.

adult larvae egg

butterfly chrysalis caterpillar

For more photos of the life cycle of the butterfly check out my Butterfly Album on Picasa

Here is the handout from my presentation at the IU 13 Conference in Lancaster, PA on June 17th.

Web 2.0 to Improve Student Achievement

Beth Poss

possbeth@gmail.com

handout available at

http://matnonline.pbwiki.com

Universal Design for Learning = Front loading for Flexibility = Digital Media = Access for All Students = Improved Student Achievement

What is a Blog?

As defined by Wikipedia, "A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog." ( Wikipedia) Essentially, a blog is an online journal that allows readers of the journal to offer comments and feedback.

Blogging allows you to easily create a simple webpage that generally is a place to post your unique ideas and information that you think is of value to others. Other characteristics of weblogs include archives, a unique URL for each post (called a permalink), an RSS feed to syndicate the blog’s content, dated and time-stamped entries, the capability of the software to allow readers’ comments, and use of templates to assist in page design and layout. (See Parts of a Blog.)

Blogs have become very popular because they can be used in so many ways, from personal diaries to online portfolios to announcements to commentaries on politics and world events. They can be written, edited, and updated from any computer with Internet access at any time of the day or night. Through the ability to comment, readers of blogs can interact with the author, and with hot links, they can point to related sites and ideas. Blogs have become an accepted form of communication and a way to express and explore ideas. They give writers a public voice. In education, blogs have become a forum to encourage students to write and express their ideas while receiving feedback from teachers, their peers, and even the larger world, when a blog is made public.

One who blogs is a "blogger."

Blogs to check out:

Students Blogging

http://students2oh.org/

http://web.mac.com/g4husky/Husky_Howler_Network/Howler_Blog/Howler_Blog.html

http://vcs.21classes.com/

http://fhsblogs.21classes.com/

Teachers/Educators Blogging

http://www.teachingeverystudent.blogspot.com/

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

http://perkone.edublogs.org/

http://snobles.blogspot.com/

What is a Wiki?

"A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. These wiki websites are often also referred to as wikis." (Wikipedia) Wikis allow anyone to create or edit a website or webpages with little or no knowledge of hypertext markup language (html). Wikis and wiki pages can be password protected, however, to control who can edit. Wikis allow for collaboration on projects and promote ideas.

A wiki is like a blank webpage you can write on with simple tools--text, photos, graphics, videos, links and more. Wikis store the history of page changes so you can see how a page has changed over time, and can revert to an older version if you'd like.

For students, wikis are an opportunity to engage in a collaborative writing process. Wikis are also a great way to engage in and organize group research projects, as each individuals contributions can easily be seen in the history and revisions.

Wikis to check out:

www.wikipedia.org

http://simple.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.matnonline.com

http://weblogged.wikispaces.com

http://schools.wikia.com/wiki/High_School_Online_Collaborative_Writing

Want to create a wiki?

www.wikispaces.com

www.pbwiki.com

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine. (Wikipedia)

It is tagging or marking a website, like you would a favorite. However, instead of saving them to your web browser, you are saving them to the web. Never again have trouble remembering the URL of a website you want to go back to. Since the bookmarks are online, you can easily share them with friends, students, colleagues, etc.

Bookmarking sites to check out:

http://www.diigo.com

http://del.icio.us

What is Photo Sharing?

"Photo sharing is the publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share them with others (whether publicly or privately). This functionality is provided through both websites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of images." ( Wikipedia)

Once the photos are online, different photo sharing sites offer a variety of tools to organize, print, display, edit, annotate, tag, manipulate, and use them.

You can add "tags" or keywords to your photos. That will help you organize, sort and find information.

Photo sharing sites to check out:

http://www.flickr.com/

http://picasa.google.com

What is Podcasting?

A podcast is a series of digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

The term is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast",^[1] the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed (see history of podcasting). Such scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred to a mobile device after they are downloaded. (Wikipedia).

http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/100-ways-to-use-your-ipod-to-learn-and-study-better

Podcasts to check out:

http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/Radio/

http://www.princetonreview.com/vocabminute

:

Beth Poss 2008 possbeth@gmail.com