Ruth’s Ruckus2

I am forever getting great stuff from folks in my PLN.  Two websites that I was introduced to recently are interesting:  This first one – Kidblog looks promising and will need to be sanctioned by OITMS before anyone uses it.  The premise is the same as classblogmeister – simple safe blogging for students. Instructional blogging – like writing prompts, journal entries and literature circles.  The interface of the Kidblog platform is clean, slick and updated.  I haven’t played with it at all to see if it has the same features as the blogmeister.  We’ll have to see…

The other site is  Carrotsticks.com – it’s a math game.  It’s very cute and just for practice in basic math facts.  The only part that is free is the addition part, but I played and had fun.  “competed with two other kids” and even had a progress report and achievement certificate sent to “my parents” email address.  I think there may be some real use for this in a classroom setting.

Social Bookmarking would benefit a number of teachers in my school.  I am thinking specifically of working together to build a list of bookmarks that would be somewhat like a Portaportal.  I have created a portaportal for both  schools, but I am the only one building them.  This limits the viability and growth potential of the list.  I did not really think of introducing “web based” bookmarking to many teachers.  I have mentioned it to one of the math specialists and a reading specialist.  I think a better tactic might be to hold an inservice for the staff – one of my schools is ready for it -  and introduce the concept.  I know several would embrace the idea for their own personal productivity, but all would embrace the idea of creating a communal group of bookmarks of teaching resources.

I actually think a workshop on social bookmarking might make a great Tech Tuesday session.  It’s quick and the application to personal productivity is immediately visible.  It would also work well as part of a Web 2.0 for personal productivity exploration workshop.

This item is about RSS in education.  I read the article :  https://randysresources.wikispaces.com/file/view/RSS.pdf   I think all teachers might be able to use RSS for a variety of ways to save time.  Thinking of specific teachers that I have worked with…

• Debbie Daniels back when her kids had individual blogs  might have been interested in using RSS to keep up with what they were writing if the tool she was using didn’t make it easy for her.  Fortunately, she was using classblogmeister at the time and that service makes it easy to check your kids blog posts.
• Another one of my teachers – Vikki Parrish – is very interested in in technology applications.  I don’t know if she is currently using Web 2.0 for professional development…I’ll need to check.  She would intuitively understand the use of RSS.
• One other teacher Victoria Mapp uses technology personally – she is a newshound.  I’ll need to check and see if she is using RSS.

I was thinking about doing a series of posts about Christmas.  You know technology integrated sites or something.  I had almost given up on the idea, when I saw this…

I actually got the link for this from my supervisor, Karen Streeter.  It’s a fun exercise…I could think of several ways to use it in a classroom:

• Writing prompt
• animal adaptations
• voicethread prompt

Anyway, here’s my wild self…you can give it a try at http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

Sharon Elin has a great Educational Technology focused blog. I subsribe using my iGoogle reader, but will add it to my blogroll here…

This challeng is to find two blogs to follow and share a bit about them.  The first blog I will share is Alice Mercer’s blog.  Reflections on Teaching is just that…her reflections on what she sees in the world of education, what she does in her computer lab, anything that she feels tells a story about where education is or is going.  I’ve been using a widget in my iGoogle page to follow her… I’ll be adding her blog to my blogroll shortly.

I subscribe to It’s Elementary… http://edtechtalk.com/ItsElementary – it’s a podcast on the EdTechTalk website. Alice Mercer a fellow Den Star who is a great Computer Lab Teacher is one of the moderators…I follow Alice – her blogs, tweets, plurks, slideshare – so this seemed to be a natural fit for me. They used to publish twice a month, but they seem to be publishing once a month now.

I usually try to be more positive about division wide projects even if I don’t agree with the way they are carried off.  Unfortunately there is no way to put a positive spin on the what the teachers in my schools have had to endure with the gradebook this first nine weeks.  It’s been so bad, that I have been scheduled to do additional inservicing in BOTH buildings.  In preparations for next week’s inservices, I have been creating a timeline of events, things that both the teachers and I have had to make adjustments for over the last 6 weeks.  I felt the need to document this transitional period  for them to validate what I know has been a really bad experience for most.

I’m using TimeRime for this timeline.  It’s a free web2.0 aplication that I have known about for a while, but have never gotten around to exploring…seemed to be the right tool this time.

I have added a few folks to my twitter account:

1. technologynutt – Deloris Eure-Nutt (iTRT in Portsmouth, VA)
2. 2manysquestions – Melissa Warren (ITRT in Bristol, VA)
3. K4sons  a.k.a Thunder Insippo (ITRT in Virginia Beach, VA)
4. jbaedke – Jill Baedke (ITRT in Henrico, VA)
5. BronSt – Bron Stuckey (technologist in Sydney Australia)