Guide for Teachers who want to start blogging #9 Current Event

I feel this is an important blogging site to share with others. As this course comes to a close soon, many of us have began a journey into the blogging world that we wouldn't have expected to take. This blog will help with such a journey.

I have been following Langwitches Blog for over a year and I just love what she shares and how she explains her learning and that of her students. Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano has an amazing ability to make you want to become a better teacher of technology. She makes it look so easy. If you need an example of a good blog to follow, I would recommend this one. This blog clearly explains and provides examples of how technology can be successfully integrated into your classroom. 
Several weeks ago, she posted this How to guide for teachers called Stepping It Up - Learning about blogs FOR your students. This guide will help you and your students become better bloggers. It is in the beginning stages of construction and I know more great posts will be coming. She has already written a post on her first guideline, Reading. I would highly recommend subscribing to this blog and reading more about the other six parts to being a successful blogger not just for yourself but your students as well.
Thank you Silvia for all of your hard work and dedication to blogging and helping others become better as well.

First Member to My Wiki

The email arrived this morning. I had posted on my classroom Facebook page last night about the Words Their Way games I'd added. I was asking people (friends) to join if they wanted to have the games. If I'd just asked they wouldn't have come but if I built a reason for them to join they would.

Well it happened this morning. This email arrived in my inbox. By clicking on the "approve their membership request" it sends you right to your wiki.

This last photo is what I saw when I clicked on the approve button. She must not realize you need to verify the account. Or I was just too quick.

This now gives me another chance to collaborate or share some of what I do in the classroom with other teachers. It's simple word games but to a teacher, this is a huge time saver. Hopefully, others will post their own games to this wiki as well.

Discovering Diigo... And Why It Rocks!

As I was sipping on a hot cup of coffee catching up on some Google Reader blogs I've neglected for the past couple of days I came across a post on Diigo by Steve Anderson aka Web20classroom Blog but it was posted by Teacher Hub. This caught my eye,

Sharing with Groups

And the groups are great too. Have a special interest or area that you want to find resources for and share with? Maybe you have an Interactive Whiteboard or you are interested in Pre-K education. Or perhaps you are in a 1:1 school. There are groups for all these where members can share their saves to not only their inventory but to the group as well. Diigo will email you once a week with all the new content. Pretty neat, huh?

The more I read the more I realized I'd forgotten to look into the Group and List functions of Diigo. So off I went to explore.

What did I discover?
1. Joining a group. 
Once I joined the group, I could then add a link and a brief description. Here is a picture of what it looks like. I can't believe how easy it is. You search for groups you are interested in joining through the search window and depending on your search or the words you use, several suggestions come up. I joined the Daily 5 Chat group and added some bookmarks to test it out. 

You'll notice Mitch Hughes has already tweeted out the link I posted and forgot to tweet.

 2. Adding a bookmark. Here's what it looked like:

So much easier to now tweet out a link.

It was so easy to add the link to my Diigo site, my list and my shared group. Wahoo! I've finally figured out how people share their bookmarks on Twitter through Diigo. I knew I would figure it out eventually. I like how Diigo shows you the last tags you used. This helps with not duplicating tags and especially when you're searching and bookmarking for similar like ideas or topics.

3. Subscribing to RSS feeds. 

I've subscribed to this group through the RSS feed. I think because I'm focusing on RSS feeds I'm starting to see them everywhere. I had noticed them in the past but didn't pay much attention. The more I see it the more I'm curious to know what will appear in Google Reader when I click on it. A major goal of mine was to discover what RSS did and how it linked to sharing and collaborating with others. RSS feeds are becoming a way to stay up to date with activity on blogs, Flickr, Wikis, and now Diigo. Who would have thought?

4. Personal Learning Network and followers of the Group
I also discovered others from my PLN who have joined this group. I am now following a lot of them and I'm looking forward to seeing what following someone does.

How will this impact my students in a primary classroom? 

Diigo in Education

View more presentations from Jennifer Dorman

Anderson (2011) also confirms what Dorman (2008) suggests about creating a classroom account. Anderson wrote,

First thing to do is get a regular Diigo account. Then visit the Educator Area and apply for the Educator upgrade. Once you get upgraded you can access all the new features in the Teacher Console. You can create class groups and student accounts.

I have done what both of them suggested and I am currently waiting to find out whether or not I will be given an educators account. I get the feeling Diigo takes educators accounts very seriously because I needed to use a school email address when applying but when I signed up for my original Diigo account I used my gmail address. They also ask you to fill out how you will have your students use Diigo. Here's what I said,

Diigo has the potential to start my students on the journey to social bookmarking. We work on a Penguin unit in January. The students will be doing research on Penguins and I would like them to be able to share the sites they find. They will also enjoy the highlighting feature and the sticky note feature to give a brief understanding of what they have read about or why they choose the particular site. What a fabulous discussion we could have as a class, as to why someone chose a particular site? They could also highlight key words, strong verbs and such to help develop their knowledge of making their writing sound more interesting.

I am excited to see if they approve my request. The more I use this tool the more I am enjoying it.

References

Anderson, S. (2011). Why diigo rocks for educators!. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.teachhub.com/why-diigo-rocks-educators

Dorman, J. (2008). Diigo in education. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/cliotech/diigo-in-education-presentation

A Media Rediscovered

I have discovered a love for CBC radio again. I was travelling down to a conference in Kananaskis and I thought about listening to CBC radio. I had the privileged of listening to Q with Jian Ghomeshi's
interview the William Shatner. It was a pleasure to just listen while I was driving down the road. If you have been a fan of Shatner's I would recommend listening to the interview.
Jian's voice is mesmerizing and such a pleasure to listen to. I think that's why he's on the radio and not myself. I know my podcast's won't sound anything like his voice but it's not a competition.
I also got a chance to listen to Spark, thank you to Joanne for recommending this program as a podcast to follow.
It's nice to disconnect from the computer and TV to just listen.

Anything but Audacity!

I knew when I decided to try a podcast and first looked into trying Audacity I thought it was going to be difficult. I don't think I realized how difficult. I am not against podcasting but more so with this particular Web 2.0 tool. Here are my first initial thoughts on the tool:

1. The home screen is not appealing to look at. 
2. There is a lot of small text, the kind that reminds me of a site that isn't really trustworthy. 
3. Sometimes when I see (Beta) it doesn't always give me the warm fuzzies, the exact opposite. I'm very leery to be honest. Beta is the work in progress and sometimes this work in progress can cause some headaches. I do not need anymore than I might already have. 
4. It's a download and not web based which means that you've got to have it on each of your computers you use, personally or at school.
5. Did I mention a lot of text? I do not find it user friendly at all. Too be really honest, I don't want to have to read all of this text. 
6. When you go to the wiki for help, it is filled with text. I clicked on Tutorials thinking I would come to some video but it was more text.

 

I clicked on Audacity for Teachers to then be taken to this screen.  Yet again, more text. So I'm not all that impressed so far. I don't want to have to read all of this.

I was able to do a small test from following what instructions I did read. But to save it was really confusing to me. Maybe I have a bad attitude towards Audacity or I just REALLY don't get it.  Sometimes when something is too difficult, we just need to find an easier way to do it. From what I've experienced so far, I think this it too difficult and it takes too many steps to record a podcast and then to save it. Berger and Trexler (2010) suggest Audacity as a tool to create a podcast on and then you need to download "LAME, which is an encoder for converting the file to MP3 format." Right now I'm not sure I want to continue with this Web 2.0 tool. LAME is another download and I am not keen on doing another download. In Deitz's article (2011) he states,

most people want to concentrate on their content and worry less about the technical aspects

 I would agree with him completely. I feel I'm working too hard on trying to figure out the tool and not on dealing with the content. Young children could record their own voice on here but to get them to save it, I think is too much work for them and for myself who would then have to convert them into MP3 files.

When I tried AudioBoo with my students, I created an account, pressed "Make a recording/Upload a File. It loaded quickly, I hit record and talked (did a short test), listened to the recording, decided to keep it or not (or rerecord) and uploaded it. Simple, straight forward and no fussing around.

I never intended for this to be a comparison between the two podcasting Web 2.0 tools but after learning about AudioBoo from @kathycassidy 3 weeks ago, and trying it out with my students, I feel it's a much better tool to use with your children. As a busy teacher and very active students, I do not have time to be completing extra steps. AudioBoo also gives you an embed code, which you can then embed into a blog post or website. It allows you to tag and use RSS feeds, which I'm finding to be very useful. This Web 2.0 tool is so much easier to use.

Therefore, I am going to use AudioBoo to complete my podcast assignment and still use the Voice Recorder. I've got to find my two voice recorders and put batteries into them. Yikes, another problem to solve. Maybe this is a sign that I going to prefer AudioBoo much better.

References

Berger, P., & Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing web 2.0 tools for learning and teaching in a digital world. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Deitz, C. (2011). How to create your own postcast-a-step-by-step tutorial. Retrieved from http://radio.about.com/od/createyourownpodcast/ss/How-to-Create-Your-Own-Podcast-Make-Your-Own-Talk-Show-Music-Program-or-Audio-Stream.htm 

Subscribing to your own RSS Feeds

I took my professors advice and started subscribing to my own RSS feeds, blogs, wiki and Flickr feeds. It's interesting to see what others see when they subscribe to your feeds. 

After doing some editing on the AprilBrown wiki I received an email from Wikispaces. I decided to have every notification turned on so I could see what was happening. I've never added to a wiki or edited one before. To turn on these notifications go to Manage Wiki<Tools<Notifications. Click which email notifications you want to receive. As you can see I wanted them all clicked so that I could see every change that happened.

I am also subscribing to the RSS feeds so I'm getting any updates to my Google Reader. Wanting to see what others are seeing is one way to help me utilize this tool.

Here is the email notification I received when I edited it as a guest. 

The red highlighted areas are deletions I made and the green highlighted areas is content which is staying on the wiki. This is pretty neat to see what changes have been made. It gives a completely different perspective on my thinking about a wiki. It doesn't just have to be you adding content but others as well. For educational purposes, I can see how these email notifications can help students. Your edited work is visible for you to see. Therefore, it gives you an opportunity to improve your writing skills. The person who edited your writing may have added ideas or more insight that you hadn't thought about.

How could this be used in a primary classroom? I think it would be perfect for developing writing skills. A narrative piece of writing could be started by the whole class and student could go in and add content to the story but they could also go in and add details, strong verbs, adjectives or any thing that may be needed to make the piece of writing stronger. Guth (2007) states,

When editing a public wiki, students must critically read what has already been written by people they do not know, paying close attention to content, structure and style in order to see what needs to be modified or added and how to write contributions. 

Teachers are wanting their students to read and think critically. Contributing content to a wiki allows for this important skill to develop. This is an area where I am also working towards.

Being able to see the changes as the administrator allow you insight into where students made changes, you could then go back and ask them why those particular decisions were made.

The more I play with this tool, the more I am beginning to see how it could be used for collaboration. I think my grade two's will be learning to add to a wiki very soon.

Guth, S. (2007). Wikis in education: is public better?. WikiSym ’07. doi: 10.1145/1296951.1296958

Technology plays a big role in today's libraries #8 Current Event

Flickr photo courtesy of

Digital ID: 1153320. Juley, Peter A. -- Photographer. Date depicted: 1911

 This week's current event comes from my local newspaper. I still enjoy having a cup of coffee and reading the paper. I found this article in Friday, November 4th Daily Herald Tribune paper.

Technology plays a big role in today's libraries

The article talks about how libraries are changing by using technology to allow people more access to the types of programs being offered and speed at accessing materials all over the province of Alberta. Yet again, the library is wanting to connect with the community and the families in it. To do so, means they are creating Facebook pages, Twittering (@GPPublicLibrary) , and they've created a webpage to advertise many of their programs.

Also along this same topic of technology in libraries, I went to go see J. Edgar this weekend and there was a great scene where he talks about categorizing and cataloguing the Library of Congress's books and files and how easy and fast it was for him to search a topic. I had to chuckle because he was able to locate a topic within 1.5 minutes. Speedy at that time. I didn't realize J. Edgar Hoover was responsible for organizing and cataloging the Library of Congress. Interesting piece of history for all of you library history buffs out there.

I chose this article because it hightlights how the Grande Prairie Library is trying to move along with technology. They are wanting to serve their community members in new and inventive ways. Not only are they advertising on-line but they are willing to help train you to search for items, use their services and help you understand how to use the OverDrive ebook service. Way to go GP Library! Way to be on the cutting edge! I appauld you for your work.