Greg Kulowiec addresses many teacher-concerns about using cell phones in the classroom to implement tools like Polleverywhere (violating school cell phone policy, students without cell phones, and questioning strategies). If you have considered using Polleverywhere in your classroom, give this post a read.

24 May 2 Permalink

Richard Byrne discusses this new feature and includes screenshots of how to use it. This is a great development if you’re planning on having your students make wikis.

6 May 4 Permalink

Click through to read the rest of the post, which appeals to me because it includes real-life application examples. I think one of the biggest hurdles teachers face when introduced with new technology is- Well, how will this work in my classroom? This article provides great ideas that you can use or that may spark a new idea for using technology to teach writing.

The nature of writing has shifted in recent years. There are very few—if any—jobs these days for which employees produce lengthy handwritten reports. News stories are an integration of words, images, audio, and website links. College applications are all online, and some schools are beginning to accept videos in place of essays. A friendly letter is more likely composed on a smartphone than on stationary.

So why does writing in school still so often involve a pen, paper, and a hardbound print dictionary?

“Schools are in catch-up mode,” says Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, the director of national programs and site development for the National Writing Project, a federally funded program that provides professional development in writing instruction. Outside of their classes, students most often encounter digital writing—that is, writing created or read on a computer or other Internet-connected device, as defined in Because Digital Writing Matters, the book Eidman-Aadahl co-authored. While digital writing melds visual, audio, and text, “so much of school writing is consciously in the other direction,” says Eidman-Aadahl. “As of 2nd and 3rd grade, students don’t draw anymore. We wean people away from everything except the written word.”

Thanks @stevekatz (Twitter) for sharing.

20 April 15 Permalink

Tony Borash shares, with lots of detail, how he used Wordle as a pre/post class assessment (as if you did not get that from the title)! Why I love this blog post: I post a lot of technological resources on here, but sometimes it’s tough to come up with ways to effectively implement them in your classroom. Sometimes you have to see it before it hits you.

This blog post provides you with an in-depth explanation of how this teacher implemented Wordle in a chemistry lesson, and he even includes the Wordle images his class generated- so you can see the results in a matter of seconds. The lesson at hand could be easily developed for any subject, and I love the idea. I hope I am able to use it in the future.

Thanks The Tech Saavy Educator for sharing this blog post.

8 April 42 Permalink

With step by step instructions and screenshots!

7 April 29 Permalink

Kimiya Haghighi, 17, had a prose problem. As much as her teachers preached concise writing, her sentences remained long and overwrought — the words poured out, unpunctuated, one after another.

Then Aubrey Ludwig, her 11th-grade English teacher at Langley High School, introduced her class to Twitter, requiring that students tweet their responses to a Hemingway assignment in 140 characters or less. Suddenly, Haghighi’s writing was efficient, declarative, even staccato. “It was a total breakthrough,” she said.

Such assignments are coming under new scrutiny as Virginia and other states consider restricting how teachers and students interact on social-networking platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Officials want to preserve the educational opportunity offered by Ludwig and other teachers but also want to prevent sexual predators from exploiting the casual tone of such sites to build rapport with potential victims.

Source: ladyinspain

31 March 11 ladyinspain Permalink

This collection is a great source to find the web 2.0 tool that fits your needs. They are neatly categorized into sections like Cloud Storage, iPads, Digital Storytelling, Video Tools, etc.  It also links to some tutorials/how to videos. This is a great resource if you have an idea of what you want to do, but you can’t think of the correct web 2.0 tool to do so.

Source: freetech4teachers.com

29 March 3 Permalink

Free Tech for Teachers discusses a source that helps you sort things like to-do lists. It’s similar to a web-based Sticky Notes or a more basic Evernote.

28 March 6 Permalink

teachingliteracy:

More educators are using online tools to improve classroom management, enhance and reinforce lessons and provide students with multiple ways to express what they are learning. Web-based tools such as Weebly, Edmodo and Wikispaces allow teachers to create classroom websites for posting announcements, assignments and student work. Other tools such as Chatzy allow students to communicate in real time, while applications such as Vocaroo allow students to record voice messages and post them online.

Source: teachingliteracy

25 March 37 teachingliteracy Permalink