Ruth’s Ruckus2

The first conference session that I went to was The Teacher Research Grant Award session.  If you know me, you know I love research – so this should be no surprise…the session was by a reading specialist in Montgomery County.  She had won the grant with her proposal on using podcasting to increase student reading fluency.  Her work was very interesting. She chose some 5th grade students who had issues with fluency and assigned them poems to read and practice.  She sow them twice a week after that once to listen to monitor their practice and once to record their podcasts. Podcasts were made available to others in the school using  iTunes.  At the end of 9 weeks she took some reading assessments to compare to the students’ reading prior to this intervention strategy.  She found that students had gained 20 wpm in fluency.  In addition the students had begun self correction which meant that the increased fluency had begun to effect their comprehension.  We had a very interesting discussion (there were only 7 of us in the session) about how this intervention might effect students if it were carried out for an entire year. 

The session led me to think about how we might adapt the process to work in my schools – or for that matter replicate it across several schools.  If one of the reading specialists would work with me, I think we could devise an intervention for both upper grade students as well as lower grade students.  If we chose maybe 5 students in the intermediate grades who needed fluency intervention, the reading specialist could assign them a poem (the following authors were recommended in the session: Paul Fleischman; Hoberman; Jack Prelutsky; and Bruce Lansky) and  work with them once a week to check that they were practicing.  Then I could work with the reading specialist and the students once a week to record the podcasts.  We can upload the podcaststo a blog (iTunes wouldn’t work for us) and then teachers in the lower grades could use the podcasts for a center ime activity along with the text that the students used for the podcast. We already have the microphone and software and probably some of the books…we just need some willing participants.  I guess I first thought of  Blount and Carey, but now that I am writing about this, I could see this working for some special ed teachers – namely Armstrong, Goolsby and Morris and even some speech applications , so I guess I’ll tag Moses as well…

The Virgina State Reading Association conference began today.  I’ve been burning the midnight oil getting ready given everything else that seemed to get dropped on my plate in the last month…As the VSRA Technology & Reading chairperson, I have been charged with getting additional technology based sessions added to the conference lineup.  My co-chair, Melissa Warren, along with Deloris Eure-Nutt and I have provided hands-on sessions for the last 3 years.  Set-up and break down have always been a little problematic because of scheduling. This year the conference committee allowed us to present all three of our sessions on the same day and in the same room, so that we did not have to break down the lab and then set it up again in another area. 

We presented three sessions today: web 2.0 playground, Build your own PLN, and Technology Integration Made Easy with MSWORD.  Session info and handouts can be found at http://vsra.pbworks.com/ We divided the labor equally with each of us leading one of the sessions.  Melissa was first, which of course meant that we had to work out the tech difficulties durign her session.  Despite the fact that the conference center couldn’t get the wireless up and running until her session was half over, Melissa did a great job.  She  introduced blogging with Edublogs, podcasting via Vocaroo, and was even able to touch on Voki.  I did a the PLN session, and Deloris led the MSWord session. 

It’s been a long day, and we are exhausted.  But our sessions were full (20+ people each) so we’re hoping that the work we’ve done will help change what’s going on in a few classrooms across the state.

I’m testing

We went to the Promethean ActivVA conference today.  WOW what an experience.  There were lots of ideas and flipcharts to share with everyone.  I had four teachers (Davis, Bass, Hamill, and Pitts) from Victory as well athe principal, Mrs. Horne, attend.  From Brighton I had 6 teachers (Taxson, Perty, Sheppard, Gibson, V. Williams and F. Williams) attend.  KUDOS to Kristy Taxson who presented a session on using the Whiteboard in the primary classroom.  Her session was well received.  Other highlights of the day included learning the “Calibration” song and learning about the e video contest.

Here is a video that was entered into the contest by one of the teachers in attendance at the ActivVirginia conference

One of the things on the list is to create a VoiceThread to be used as an educational resource.  I worked with the Spanish teacher, Mrs. LaPiana and a small group of students to create this Vociethread.  She wanted to use the voicethread to introduce the topic “Seasons” to her class.  I think the kids did great considering that they had no idea what they were saying.  She wrote the scripts out for them phonetically…

On February 10th the secondary TRTs and I held a work session for the Foreign Language teachers.  I was very happy about the work we were able to do assisting most teachers individually or on small groups.  I was able to work with April McKee from Churchland High School who was a really hard sell.  Mrs. McKee has fully participated in every session that we have done with  the foreign language folks, but she finds no use for technology in her classroom…I finally got her insterested in creating a review site for her students.  We put together a wiki very quickly, and then used a digital voice recorder to create two podcasts for her Spanish 1 students.

What does this have to do with my 21Things??  Using a digital voice recorder with a teacher is number 21 on the list.  Don’t get happy yet, I’m not done…I’ve skipped around a bit and still have 5 items to go…

Isn’t this great?  It’s a sample of the work that Mrs. Mitchell and Ms. Hammil’s students were working on.  It also happens to include Wordle which is on my list of 21things…

I am just so excited!!  For the better part of two years I have been talking to my teachers about using the DE Streaming teacher tools.  I have explained - they are easy to set up, students will really be engaged, I promise you’ll like it – to no avail…until this week!

KUDOS to Mrs. Mitchell, Ms. Hammil, and Dr. Hunter-Lowe who all jumped in the deep end this week.  Mrs. Mitchell and Ms. Hammil have worked with me to create a DE Streaming assignment that requires research, note taking and videos to crete a Wordle on civil war leaders.  Dr. Hunter-Lowe used a DE Streaming writing prompt to help her students prepare for the writing test. 

The kids are all excited.  The teachers are pleased.  The level of technology implementation in  the building continues to rise.

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.