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Pam Jeffrey

Digitally Speaking / Blogging - 169 views

  • Using Feed Readers

     

    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.

     

    Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?

     

    It's not!  Here's a Commoncraft tutorial explaining RSS Feeds in Plain English:

     

    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:

     

    Student Blogs

    http://www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/20982438

     

     

    This feed list includes several elementary, middle and high school blogs that students can explore during silent reading or while online at home.

     

     

    Current Events 

    http://www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/16714925

     

    This feed list includes links to several news websites that cover topics that are a part of one teacher's required social studies curriculum. 

     

    Global Warming

    http://www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/22534539

    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 and Google 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 developing a teacher version of their tool just 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:

     

    http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2008/02/pageflakes-for.html

     

     

    For more information on using feed readers to organize and manage information, check out this handout: 

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    Checklist to use before embarking on a blogging project with students
Carol Ansel

The Daring Librarian: Wikipedia is not wicked! - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post - 70 views

  • Teaching Wikipedia in 5 Easy Steps: *Use it as background information *Use it for technology terms *Use it for current pop cultural literacy *Use it for the Keywords *Use it for the REFERENCES at the bottom of the page!
  • 4 ways to use Wikipedia (hint: never cite it) Teachers: Please stop prohibiting the use of Wikipedia 20 Little Known Ways to Use Wikipedia Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica Schiff, Stacy. “Know it all: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?” The New Yorker, February 26, 2006 And: Yes students, there’s a world beyond Wikipedia **Several years ago, Nature magazine did a comparison of material available on Wikipedia and Brittanica and concluded that Brittanica was somewhat, but not overwhelmingly, more accurate than Wikipedia. Brittanica lodged a complaint, and here, you can see what it complained about as well as Nature’s response. Nature compared articles from both organizations on various topics and sent them to experts to review. Per article, the averages were: 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia. -0- Follow The Answer Sheet every day by bookmarking http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet. And for admissions advice, college news and links to campus papers, please check out our Higher Education page. Bookmark it! var entrycat = ' ' By Valerie Strauss  |  05:00 AM ET, 09/07/2011 .connect_widget .connect_widget_text .connect_widget_connected_text a {display:block;} #center {overflow:visible;} /*.override-width iframe {width:274px !important;}*/ Tumblr Reddit Stumbleupon Digg Delicious LinkedIn http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.html#_=1315504289567&count=horizontal&counturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fblogs%2Fanswer-sheet%2Fpost%2F
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    Excellent perspective on "The 'W' Word" - use it wisely for what it is - high school and college kids shouldn't be citing any general knowledge encyclopedias for serious research - but that doesn't mean there aren't some excellent uses for it.
Amy Roediger

Reading Strategies for 'Informational Text' - NYTimes.com - 172 views

  • Four Corners and Anticipation Guides:Both of these techniques “activate schema” by asking students to react in some way to a series of controversial statements about a topic they are about to study. In Four Corners, students move around the room to show their degree of agreement or disagreement with various statements — about, for instance, the health risks of tanning, or the purpose of college, or dystopian teen literature. An anticipation guide does the same thing, though generally students simply react in writing to a list of statements on a handout. In this warm-up to a lesson on some of the controversies currently raging over school reform, students can use the statements we provide in either of these ways.
  • Gallery Walks:A rich way to build background on a topic at the beginning of a unit (or showcase learning at the end), Gallery Walks for this purpose are usually teacher-created collections of images, articles, maps, quotations, graphs and other written and visual texts that can immerse students in information about a broad subject. Students circulate through the gallery, reading, writing and talking about what they see.
  • Graphic Organizers:
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  • Making Text-to-Text/Text-to-Self/Text-to-World connectionsCharting Debatable IssuesListing Facts/Questions/ResponsesIdentifying Cause and EffectSupporting Opinions With FactsTracking The Five W’s and an HIdentifying Multiple Points of ViewIdentifying a Problem and SolutionComparing With a Venn Diagram
  • The One-Pager:Almost any student can find a “way in” with this strategy, which involves reacting to a text by creating one page that shows an illustration, question and quote that sum up some key aspect of what a student learned.
  • “Popcorn Reads”:Invite students to choose significant words, phrases or whole sentences from a text or texts to read aloud in random fashion, without explanation. Though this may sound pointless until you try it, it is an excellent way for students to “hear” some of the high points or themes of a text emerge, and has the added benefit of being an activity any reader can participate in easily.
  • Illustrations:Have students create illustrations for texts they’re reading, either in the margins as they go along, or after they’ve finished. The point of the exercise is not, of course, to create beautiful drawings, but to help them understand and retain the information they learn.
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    Update | Feb. 2012: We'll be exploring the new Common Core State Standards, and how teaching with The Times can address them, through a series of blog posts. You can find them all here, tagged "the NYT and the CCSS."
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    A good list of reading strategies for informational text from the New York Times.
Chad Evans

Response: Advice From The "Book Whisperer," Ed Week Readers & Me About Teaching Reading... - 1 views

    • Chad Evans
       
      Highlighting text is really easy with Diigo. And adding a sticky note is very simple is well. It can be made private or shared with groups of people who are working with the same document
  • Other ways I encourage these kinds of discussions includes having students choose their own groupings and books for independent book "clubs" and using the Web as a vehicle to create audio and/or video "book trailers."
    • Chad Evans
       
      From a technology end, our kids are beginning to do more and more with tools like voicethread, animoto, imovie, etc. Digital storytelling is a great way for students to be creative, share insights and show what they know and can do. 
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  • One facet of our reading instruction that cannot be overlooked is the importance of teacher readers in building a classroom reading community. According to Morrison, Jacobs, and Swinyard (1999), "perhaps the most influential teacher behavior to influence students' literacy development is personal reading, both in and out of school."
    • Chad Evans
       
      I wonder how open ALL teachers are about what they are reading? How much conversation do teachers as a whole have about what they are reading? 
  • If we don't read, why should our students?
  • Share your reading life with your students. Show your students what reading adds to your life. If you are reading a nonfiction book at the moment, tell them what you are learning. Pass the children's books you are reading to them when you are done. Describe the funny, sad, or interesting moments in the books you read. When you read something challenging, talk with your students about how you work through difficult text. It will surprise them that you find reading hard at times, too, but choose to read, anyway.
  • Many students in today's world do not read books outside of school. When they do read, it is text-messages, web pages or homework assignments. For students who did not grow up in homes with books, with adults who read and who read to them, this time to read in school is both necessary and pleasurable. Many of my students need catch-up time when it comes to "hours-in" reading. The 10 minutes at the beginning of each period that I allow my juniors each day equals hours of reading across the months of the school year. My most dedicated readers begin books in the classroom, finish them at home, and return to the classroom/school library to check out new books.
    • Chad Evans
       
      This is an important distinction in that I believe (and research indicates) that our kids ARE reading more than ever before. But it comes in non-traditional forms. We must acknowledge that web based reading is still reading, but it differs. Research also indicates that when kids read digitally, they read in a different pattern. In traditional reading, they read in a z pattern down a page. Digital reading is more of an F pattern,indicating skim and scan. 
cwozniak Wozniak

Educational Leadership:How Teachers Learn:Learning with Blogs and Wikis - 2 views

  • What makes professional development even more frustrating to practitioners is that most of the programs we are exposed to are drawn directly from the latest craze sweeping the business world. In the past 10 years, countless schools have read Who Moved My Cheese?, studied The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, learned to have "Crucial Conversations," and tried to move "from Good to Great."
  • With the investment of a bit of time and effort, I've found a group of writers to follow who expose me to more interesting ideas in one day than I've been exposed to in the past 10 years of costly professional development. Professional growth for me starts with 20 minutes of blog browsing each morning, sifting through the thoughts of practitioners whom I might never have been able to learn from otherwise and considering how their work translates into what I do with students.
  • This learning has been uniquely authentic, driven by personal interests and connected to classroom realities. Blogs have introduced a measure of differentiation and challenge to my professional learning plan that had long been missing. I wrestle over the characteristics of effective professional development with Patrick Higgins (http://chalkdust101.wordpress.com) and the elements of high-quality instruction for middle grades students with Dina Strasser (http://theline.edublogs.org). Scott McLeod (www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org) forces me to think about driving school change from the system level; and Nancy Flanagan (http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/teacher_in_a_strange_land) helps me understand the connections between education policy and classroom practice. John Holland (http://circle-time.blogspot.com) and Larry Ferlazzo, Brian Crosby, and Alice Mercer (http://inpractice.edublogs.org) open my eyes to the challenges of working in high-needs communities.
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  • That's when I introduce them to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed readers.
  • If you're not sure where to begin, explore the blogs that I've organized in my professional Pageflake at www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/16618841. I read these blogs all the time. Some leave me challenged. Some leave me angry. Some leave me jazzed. All leave me energized and ready to learn more. School leaders may be interested in the collection of blogs at www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/23697456.
  • A power shift is underway and a tough new business rule is emerging: Harness the new collaboration or perish. Those who fail to grasp this will find themselves ever more isolated—cut off from the networks that are sharing, adapting, and updating knowledge to create value. (Kindle location 268–271)
  • The few moments
  • Technology has made it easy for educators to embrace continual professional development.
  • knowledge is readily available for free
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    Learning with blogs and wikis.
Katt Blackwell-Starnes

using diigo with students - 568 views

I'm interested to see where this conversation goes next. There's some great information and pointers here. Thanks for the blog link, Andy. I'll be keeping up with what you're writing. In just ove...

diigo students bookmarking

Philip Pulley

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: A New Workflow for Me: Ipad, Keyboard, iPhone - 1 views

    • Philip Pulley
       
      Using Splashtop streamer at school, it both computer (laptop) and iPad are on the same wireless network you can control the computer from your iPad. If a hard wired internet connection on a desktop you can access it though your Google account.
  • I finished this post on my PC in the office because the Zemanta plug in
    • Philip Pulley
       
      A blogging tag tool, I need to check it out down the road when I am blogging more.
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  • and used the PowerTeacher
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    Blog with resource information for iPad, iPhone and iPad keyboard.
anonymous

The English Teacher's Companion - 0 views

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    New blog from Jim Burke, author of many books, englishcompanion.com, englishcompanion.ning.com
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    "Please turn on your textbooks and upload your homework..." In five years (three? two?!) I will not ask my high school students to open the 6.5 pound textbooks that currently sit on the floor under the desks. Nor will I bemoan their reluctance to look up words or mark up the text as they read. I will not wonder how to meet the needs of the 35% of my class who have learning disorders, most of which are language processing disorders of one form or another. Instead, I will ask them to get out their digital textbooks (what will we call them: DBooks? DBs? ETexts? Readers?) and "read the assigned story." Here is what will be different:
Jennie Snyder

Our Last Day Of 2012 | 4KM and 4KJ @ Leopold Primary School - 13 views

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    Great example of a classroom blog
tlkirsten

Educational Leadership:How Teachers Learn:Learning with Blogs and Wikis - 57 views

  • Bloggers spend significant time pushing their own thinking—and having their thinking pushed by others. They respond to comments and link to other writers, connecting to and creating interesting ideas. Some develop curriculum and instructional materials together. Others review resources and debate the merits of the individual tools of teaching. Philosophical conversations about what works in schools are common as teachers talk about everything from homework and grading practices to school and district policies that affect teaching and learning. Blogs become a forum for public articulation—and public articulation is essential for educators interested in refining and revising their thinking about teaching and learning.
  • That's when I introduce them to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed readers.
summitlibrary

What's So Hard about Research? | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network - 77 views

    • anonymous
       
      So many of my middle school students would come and ask, "Is this what you want?"  Then, they would get frustrated when I responded, "Well, what do you think?  Is that the best answer you can come up with for the question?"  
  • Many students were very uncomfortable with the idea that they would be making the decision about what form their project will take, and continually tried to get a stamp of approval.
  • Students today are accustomed to instant gratification, and therefore can be overwhelmed by tasks that require time-consuming research.
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    • anonymous
       
      I'm finding that I am becoming more like the students and wanting that instant gratification as well!  We are becoming scanners more than readers.
  • They do not stop researching and begin another activity because they got distracted;  in our experience, they are more likely to spin themselves in circles making no progress for an entire class period because they do not want to go through a cognitive process that will take “forever.”
  • · When students are given a research prompt by their teacher, students often do not care enough about the topic to really persevere.
    • anonymous
       
      Use this strategy to help students become more invested: STRATEGY: I'm going to show you 30 seconds of this video and I want you to write down 3-4 questions you think this video is going to answer. Turn and talk to a neighbor to share your questions. After looking at the video clip, have students determine if their questions were answered and what questions they still need to answer. THEN, students are invested and have things they WANT to know about the topic.
  • There are very few things in life that our students have to wait for today
    • anonymous
       
      I am sad to say that I am just as bad as the students in that I want to know things immediately and not have to wait.
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    NetTrekker PD article for discussion
Roland Gesthuizen

How to Write Dialogue that Matters: Lessons from Aaron Sorkin | Edutopia - 1 views

  • High school writers often fail to include dialogue in their stories. Perhaps this is because they over-rely on telling (1) narratives. Or perhaps skipping dialogue is a strategy that allows students to elude the punctuation rules that accompany quotations
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    "students should be taught that the payoffs for learning a few dialogue-writing skills are ample: dialogue can help develop plot, reveal characters' motivation, create a visceral experience for the reader, and make average stories extraordinary"
Steve Ransom

Is Video Game School Training a Generation of Professional Princess Rescuers? | Design ... - 17 views

  • Is this really necessary? And how promising is it?
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    A very well-intentioned, but ignorant piece on the role of video games in the classroom. Non-educators should stay out of the education arena and write what they know about!! "On the other hand, does it really take a videogame to make learning fun? Surely, there are better ways, which are less likely to be dated the second they're finished."
Jennie Snyder

The Myth About Computer-Based Reading Software? - Finding Common Ground - Education Week - 30 views

  • Dr. Allington made the comment that he would ban computers from an instructional role and that they didn't have a significant effect on teaching students to read.
  • The second-year study included four reading software products for first grade, Destination Reading (Riverdeep 2008), the Waterford Early Reading Program (Pearson School 2008), Headsprout (Headsprout 2008), and Plato Focus (Plato Learning Corporation 2008).
  • students need a more balanced program
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  • There is nothing more important to the reading process than a teacher who can provide high quality reading instruction to students.
  • llow students to choose books that they like AND can read.
  • Every child reads something he or she chooses
  • hat reading instruction needs to be 90-120 minutes which includes a large percentage of time being engaged in reading.
  • must be engaged in reading every day, and it must be authentic and meaningful.
  • Students need to spend time reading texts that are not too challenging.
  • But too often, struggling readers get interventions that focus on basic skills in isolation, rather than on reading connected text for meaning."
Matt Renwick

Common Sense for the Common Core - edu Pulse - 27 views

  • literacy achievement gains tend to be fleeting
  • Without administrators who have a solid knowledge of effective literacy instruction
  • two huge obstacles may eventually cause the downfall
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  • became necessary when it was blatantly apparent that not all students in U.S schools had equal opportunity to learn
  • standards are necessary but insufficient
  • isolated skills and/or standards
  • depends on teachers and leaders knowing how to expertly implement them
  • proliferating “Common Core-aligned” materials
  • We are a “quick fix” society, and we often reject a commitment to long-term goals and outcomes. 
  • What’s on the test is what gets taught
  • high-stakes testing that accompanies the standards
  • Administrators need to take the lead
  • Become discerning readers and writers.
  • Do more read-alouds of excellent literature.
  • Standards do not transform teaching and learning
  • Organize curriculum through emphasizing big ideas and important concepts.
  • Embed shared experiences in your teaching.
  • a culture of trust, inquiry, coaching, collaboration, celebration of strengths, and, yes, even joy
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