Group items tagged

She introduces the students, who start off quietly, a little wary of this newfangled sort of author visit. But soon they’re taking turns sharing their favorite characters and we forget the computers that connect us. It feels like we’re all in the same room, and the questions fly across the miles.

The video connection allows for some show and tell. I hold up the leaf collection from my school that sparked the idea for the book. The students also get a sneak peak at the outline I’m working on for my new project, a middle-grade mystery. I love the way they talk not just to me but to one another, building on ideas like readers do in any book club discussion.

Almost all authors have an online presence with Web sites and email links, so it’s often possible to send a quick note to inquire.

The following tips will help you efficiently use twitter in your classroom to enhance your professional learning

If you have a bit more time and you would like to see a targeted list of educators put together in a Google doc go HERE.

Classes could use Diigo to review content in a type of fact-checking activity. The internet could be used to research important points of study and see if that information can be confirmed with bookmarks.

Teaching students to research is a common standard across all grade levels, elementary, middle school, high school, and beyond. Diigo excels as a research tool: Students can save relevant websites to lists in their Diigo student accounts. Each saved bookmark captures the URL and a screenshot, and can be searched later. Students can highlight important information right on the website, using Diigo. Later, when students return to the website, they find the reason they saved the bookmark in the first place. Students can use virtual sticky notes to summarize the important points of information from the website. This activity will mimic the time-tested procedure of using note cards to summarize and organize research projects. Students working on similar topics can create and join groups in order to collaborate. Later, when students need to document their sources, Diigo can be used to recall website URLs for citing sources.