While reading about Martin Luther King, Jr, students chose a quote from his work. Students wrote the quote on an index card and explained why they chose the quote or what they thought about the quote. Then we passed the card to the student on the left, and that student read the card and added a sticky note comment. The note needed to be at least three sentences, refer or quote something from the original text, and be “overly positive.” We handed the card and comment to the left again, and that student read the comment and the card. We continued passing to the left and adding sticky note comments, which could comment on the original text or any of the comments.
As we passed the work along, student comments became longer and better as they read other comments that were better than some who had not followed our protocol and simply wrote, “I agree.” By the time every one had commented on every one else’s card, all students had written at least one good comment.
When the original writer received the card, they chose and shared the comments that helped them think more or caused them to want to add to their original ideas.
new site called Tween Tribune (http://tweentribune.com/), a site for students and teachers with kid-friendly news feeds on which to comment or add their own stories. We read comments and critiqued them, noticing some grammatical errors and mostly that some comments did not add to the conversation.
Great Toby, After we roll out the next major release, Phase II of Diigo Education Network will be next - ie. a dedicated education network only for educators and students! So, stay tun...
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
Lara Kessler on 08 Aug 09How energy works.
