Stafford’s Science Blog

One thing I know for sure is that kids are using SN.  Another thing I know for sure is they aren’t going to stop using SN.  So, we can either sit by as educators judging the use of them, and how the kids make unwise decisions when they’re on them, etc. Or, we can figure out as an educational community what we’re going to do to keep kids safe and teach them to be responsible members of a growing community of Social Networkers.

I’m a member of LinkedIn, but I definitely don’t use any of the features.  I don’t know why I don’t… maybe it’s because I haven’t taken the time to see how those features could actually serve me well. 

I really enjoyed browsing through the Classroom 2.0 Network.  I looked through the “Success Stories” and found some neat comments and ideas about using SmartBoards in the classroom, creating podcasts for finals reviews, etc.   It’s a great area to have other like-minded people to bounce ideas off of, and collaborate on different ideas.

So, with that being said, how can we successfully bring a similar environment into the classroom?  For me, it’s especially tricky since I teach 6th grade and the kids aren’t yet 13 (the age which allows them to register for such sites).  That means the parents have to agree and vouch that they’ll be responsible in monitoring what’s going on… but what about the teachers?  Does that become my responsibility as well to monitor 46 students in a SN site?  How does one do that without spending 24 hours a day “babysitting”?

Additionally, I struggle a little bit with how my students would be able to use this just within the confines of my classroom (to make monitoring a bit easier).  If we didn’t go “public”, then what uses are there for a SN?  If anyone has any ideas they’d like to share here, I’d be very happy to engage in the conversation.  If only I had done this assignment sooner…

I know Will Richardson always has a lot to say about these types of things, so I’ll be reading up on his thoughts soon. 

Thankfully, I’d already been using iGoogle (which I love) so I was pretty familiar with what basic stuff pageflakes can do.  However, I was so glad to see all the educational implications and features that pageflakes gives us, that iGoogle doesn’t (at least as far as I’ve seen!).

I love the fact that you could make this a shared “homepage” for your classroom, allowing students to see notes from you, homework, documents needed, research areas, built in dictionary, podcasts or pictures relevant to what we’ve been working on, etc.!  It does seem like the possibilities are endless.

I wonder… are lots of other classes already using pageflakes in this way?  Another question, could all teachers share “one” pageflakes accounts thus creating new “pages” for each class (math, science, LA, SS, etc.)?

I feel like this might be the first time I have absolutely NOTHING bad to say about a tech piece that we’ve reviewed!  I completely love Google Docs…every aspect!  My only negative I could possibly say is, “Where on Earth have you been??”

I think there are lots of possibilities for use in the classroom with Google Docs:

• the checklist that we’ve been using for assignments is the most obvious and I think an incredibly useful tool for students (and a great help for teachers during big assignments that require lots of “check-points”.
• I also like the idea of the “Peek’s Page” document.  I can see it being a great “challenge” page for kids to use when they finish their work early. 
• It’s a place where teachers could upload homework or reading assignments.  I almost see it as a much simpler version of something like Moodle.

One of my favorite You Tube videos (educational) is “The Inner Life of the Cell” which was put out by Biovisions (part of Harvard University).  I’ve embedded it below.  For those of you who are really nerdy like me, there is a narated version that shows what is happening as you’re watching the video.  The one I’m embedding is just amazing to watch with the cool music in the background.

Another video I like (for fun) OK GO video for “Here It Goes Again”

Recording a podcast with Evoca was so easy!  When I used Audacity with my students, it was slightly trickier because we had to use another service to get an embedding code so we could embed them all onto one wiki page.

This year, our school did a “Tablet PC” pilot program with our sixth graders.  Each core subject teacher was asked to create a specific unit that incorporated a new type of technology.  I chose podcasting.

Though my 6th graders didn’t produce a “technical” podcast (a series of audio files that get released/produced over time), there are 23 episodes that were all launched and posted at the same time.  The unit was a culmination to our two year (really two trimester over the course of 5th and 6th grade) study of the human body.  Students were asked to choose a disease or disorder that interested them and their partner.  They had to conduct research, write the script, and many of them sought an interview with someone who had experience with the disease/disorder.  If any of you are interested, check it out:

http://projectsource.wikispaces.com/TrinityMD

I’ve heard a statistic that less than 3% of people actually write their goals down.  And I’ve also heard that of all the people who make goals, typically people who write them down have a MUCH higher success rate at achieving those goals.

So, in that regard, this site is awesome!  When you’ve set a specific goal for yourself, having cheerleaders and others who help to “hold you accountable” since they’re doing the same thing is incredibly helpful.

Library Thing is an amazing tool!  I love that it’s got reviews and book recommendations based on what YOU currently like to read and have in your library!  Furthermore, I am so glad to have a website to visit where it’s not someone trying to sell me a book, but truly just the opinions and reviews from other readers like me!

I think students would really get a kick out of this too.  Although I couldn’t find a place that looked like it was a place to review chapter books or children’s books, that would be a cool thing for kids.   I’m especially thinking of my 6th graders who would probably love to have a forum for their personal book reviews.  As long as that portion of the site didn’t have “chat” capabilities, to protect the kid reviewers, I think it’d be an amazing addition to the site!

http://del.icio.us/trinityatlscience

I do like del.icio.us very much.  I’ve been using it for a while and have to use it in Firefox… IE doesn’t seem to enjoy del.icio.us as much as Firefox does.  But, I think it’s a great tool.  I love the fact that you can see what others tag and do a search for “tag-worthy” sites rather than a google search that brings up gazillions of sites that you have no idea if they’re good or not.  One way I’ve used it professionally is if I find a site that would be good for, say, our math teacher…  I can tag it with a math word and she could add my del.icio.us account to look for stuff I’ve found.

I decided to choose 30Boxes to explore.  Besides being a teacher, I also have my own business.  Each month, I try to create a calendar for other people in my business who are on my team. 

What I loved about this is that I can create our training calendar and share it with everyone.  Then, they can use the same calendar to plan their month, track their activity (using the color-coded “tagging” system), etc. 

Also, as a teacher, I think this would be a great tool for kids.  I like how they can color code items (like each subject could have its own color), and they could share their calendars if  necessary.  They could also share websites that they may find that would be helpful for other students, or share calendars if working on a group project that had lots of mini-due-dates, etc.

Check it out!  http://30boxes.com/