Lo and Behold » Internet tools

Working with rubrics

franblo — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:30:50 +0000

Here are some good sources for working with rubrics:

Rubistar You can create a rubric by selecting a subject, then the specific criteria you want to use.

Simple rubric template Template can just be filled in with your own criteria and performance guidelines.

Rubrics in a nutshell The basics of creating a rubric.

Rubric collection 1 Collection from a graduate school that works with educators

Rubric collection 2 Another collection for educators

Rubric collection 3 Another collection for educators

New ideas delivered to your emailbox

franblo — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:38:51 +0000

Part of teaching is sharing ideas with other teachers, and the Internet has made sharing with teachers around the world easier than ever. All it takes it subscribing to an email newsletter. Some of these come daily, some weekly. Here are some you may wish to explore:

Some weekly compendiums of teaching ideas that use Internet resources:

TeachersFirst is one of the best. Tells you topic area, age group, how tech-savvy you need to be to use a resource, and any concerns (such as potential access to inappropriate content). http://www.teachersfirst.com (scroll to the bottom to signup for weekly enewsletter. )

National Council of Teachers of English (but you don’t have to be a member) http://ncte.org/newsletter

Secondary educators http://712educators.about.com/

If you like getting lots of idea every day, here are some daily reviews of teaching resources:

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/. Larry works with high school ESL (English as a second language) students, particularly in English and Social Studies. His groupings of resources are among the finest on the Internet, and his ideas are worth hearing. Strong on ideas, but leaves evaluation of appropriateness up to you. (Scroll down – email subscription tucked into right hand side.)

Free Technology for Teachers http://www.freetech4teachers.com/. Strong on ideas, and a very strong proponent of technology use, but leaves evaluation up to you.

On a more variable publication schedule:

Pro-Con provides in depth information about many controversial issues. http://www.procon.org/ Very rich resources here. (Email signup is on lower left-hand side.)

Will every idea work for you? No. But you will find new ideas that freshen your approach in the classroom and give you links you may want to add to your class Edline pages to enrich your students’ learning.

How to subscribe. Click on the blue link above. If you decide you want to subscribe, look for the place to subscribe to emails somewhere on the webpage (if it’s hard to find I’ve described its location above). You give your email address, and sometimes will have to verify that you’ve actually requested to receive these emails. Then, every time the publisher writes a new entry, you’ll receive an email. (And each email will tell you how to stop the emails if you decide you don’t want them any more.)

Have you found a good resource like this that you can share with the rest of us?

On-line discussion with middle schoolers

franblo — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:12:22 +0000

Lessons learned with online discussions with middle school students on Edublogs

I wanted to give my English students an experience similar to the online threaded discussions I had participated in as part of online classes. These discussions were engaging, rewarding and enriching. And since my students love all things online, I knew they would enjoy the experiment. And since I also teach their daily technology class, we had the time.

I set up a blog on Edublogs (www.mrslo.edublogs.org ) so that my 8^th grade Language Arts students could have online discussions about To Kill a Mockingbird. I wanted to give the quieter kids a chance to participate in ways they can’t during face-to-face discussions; I also wanted to give students a chance to think about what they wrote, not just shout out ideas during class. And of course, I wanted to give them another reading and writing experience. At the same time, I wanted to keep them safe from strangers online, and from each other (since middle school kids can be ruthlessly mean).

Since students don’t have school emails in my school, and not all have personal emails, I used the gmail workaround to create dummy email addresses. The whole business of setting them up was very time-consuming. (James, are you listening?) If you are an elementary school teacher with 20 kids, that’s fine, but secondary teachers like me have 80-150 students, making this just too impractical. I had to limit this to my two 8^th grade classes, much as I would like to expand it to all my students. I’m an Edublog supporter, so I was able to bulk-add students to my blog. But first, I had to set each student up with an individual userid (which I created, using first 3 letters of first name + first 3 letters of last name) and password (which Edublogs created) and then a dummy gmail email account. One at a time. (If you think I could have given them careful directions that they listened to patiently and followed precisely, you have not done much work with 13 year olds.)

I did not want to have to monitor students’ personal blogs, only to have an online discussion. As middle school kids are less than mature, I needed a platform where I could moderate all student work before it was published; the moderating comments function works efficiently and effectively on Edublogs (thank you, James!)

I told students to change their passwords to something they would remember on first log in, since the initial assigned password is not memorable. Problem number two came when students forgot their passwords. I couldn’t get at the passwords, though some students were able to get an email sent (to my gmail) resetting the password. It’s easy to say the teacher should keep track of the passwords, but that’s not practical – they tell you the wrong information, they forget on the way to telling you, they decide to be stinkers and “forget.”). The forgetful students ended up having to be like the students who didn’t have parental permission to participate in the online discussions: reading the discussions, but giving their entries to me on paper.

The logistics were mostly transparent to my students, though, and they loved it. Loved it. Intently made their first post and waited for it to be moderated. Once I returned a few punctuation- and spelling-challenged entries, everybody got more focused on getting mechanics more correct. Then they wanted to see what others had written. They LOVED referring to each other’s comments (and of course being referred to).

The first question I posted taught me a lot about what works and doesn’t work; don’t give a choice of two questions to answer – you can’t get a conversation going. With the second question we discussed, I added a “landscape post” midway through; this helped them focus their followup comments. By that time, they were asking in our “real” class when we would have another online discussion and referring to parts of their online discussion. They also wished we had done it earlier in the year during other projects, which prompted a discussion of wikis and how we could use them for our mock trial teams.

Afterwards, I asked students to tell me what they liked and what they would change. They enjoyed the deeper discussions, the chance for everybody to participate, the chance to think. They wanted more questions, but without an arbitrary word count. They felt they “just wrote” to get to the 200 words needed for an A, and pointed out that if they have something effective to say in 100 words, why should they write more? They also found having to post twice about each question artificial; I had enjoyed that in my adult discussions, but this didn’t always work so well with these younger students. They – and I – felt that having two classes work together was too much, also – there were just too many posts to read. So next time I’ll have each class do its own discussion (though they’ll be able to peek at the other class’ work). And they can write shorter posts and will only have to post once for each discussion (but can post more often if they choose).

Yes, moderating and then grading the discussions was extra work. But quieter thoughtful students did get to take part, students did think more deeply, and everybody got to participate, not just the most energetic hand-wavers. This was also the perfect teachable moment: when the only way to get your message across is writing – and that is so much of the online world – then writing well matters.

Will I do it again? Yes, and earlier in the year, so we can include these discussions throughout the year.

Special thanks to Sue Waters (www.theedublogger.edublogs.org ) and others at Edublogs for their ideas, technical assistance, and encouragement.

Has anybody pretended to be you?

franblo — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:06:01 +0000

Recently, I discovered that a student thought it would be funny to create a Facebook page, using my name; he pretended to be me. He doesn’t think it’s so funny anymore. But anybody can impersonate you online, so I thought it would be useful to tell how to identify if this has happened to you.

Every couple of months, Google yourself. Go to Google and in the Search field, enter the name you normally use, and put it in quotes, like this: ”Fran Lo” This way Google searches on your name, not on just your first name and just your last name; you’ll you have fewer entries to look at. You might also want to do a search like: facebook “my name” or myspace “my name” You can do this in just a few minutes.

You will be amazed at how many people around the world have your exact name. And you may discover something a student has posted about you without your consent. Because if kids can do stupid things, kids will do stupid things.

Why no Wikipedia example

franblo — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:00:45 +0000

If your students want to know why they shouldn’t use Wikipedia, here’s a perfect example. A college student deliberately inserted a fake quote into the Wikipedia page about a public figure who had just died – and the fake quote was included in many newspaper obituaries as if it was something said by the public figure.

Kind of amazing when the quote was listed in Wikipedia without a link showing where it came from (usually a clue that the information may be bogus). Only a few of the newspapers have apologized…

Student’s Wikipedia Hoax Fools Newspapers – Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News – FOXNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,519283,00.html

More ways to communicate

franblo — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:08:10 +0000

Still more ways of communicating with prospective and current students and parents

Because so many of our prospective students use Facebook, St. Bernard has a Facebook page at

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Uncasville-CT/Saint-Bernard-School/60005107447.

A Facebook page is a great place for photos and videos that help prospective – and current – students and parents learn more about our school. People who wouldn’t search out our school website might be more likely to look us up on Facebook.

If you have such materials that could be added, please forward these to Molly Murkett at mmurkett@saint-bernard.com. You don’t need a Facebook account to do this.

(By the way, you’ll need to look at the school’s Facebook page at home, as Facebook is blocked at school.)

Since our students are so often on Facebook, if you are a faculty advisor for a club, activity, or event, you might want to consider using Facebook to promote participation. According to Molly, “As of 4/26/09 there are 160 fans of the Saint Bernard School page. Fans receive updates and messages that are an additional reminder for upcoming events and activities.”

Even if Facebook is outside your comfort zone, if you email the materials to Molly, she can add your information to the St. Bernard page. Molly is available at x131.

There is also a Saints blog you can follow or contribute to (again at home) at http://sbsambassadors.blogspot.com/ Again, contact Molly for more information.

Low cost and free professional development

franblo — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:31:30 +0000

Professional Development Online (inexpensive and free)

With professional development budgets being what they are, it always helps to have low cost and free sources of professional development. Many of our professional organizations offer low cost and some free PD, so see what they have to offer below:

Math

NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics)

E-workshops ($149/course)

http://www.nctm.org/profdev/content.aspx?id=11804

History/Social Studies

NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies)

http://www.socialstudies.org/professionaldevelopment summer workshops, etc.

http://communities.ncss.org/ – communities – must be a member of the organization to participate

Science

NSTA (National Science Teachers Association)

http://learningcenter.nsta.org/ – general professional development. Includes FREE web seminars

Art

NAEA (National Art Education Association)

http://www.arteducators.org/olc/pub/NAEA/learning/learning_page_4.html Monthly mentor

http://www.arteducators.org/olc/pub/NAEA/learning/learning_page_3.html professional development links

Religion

NCEA (National Catholic Educators Association)

http://www.ncea.org/programs/index.asp Professional Development

English

NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English)

http://ncte.org/seminars web seminars ($80-100)

http://www.ncte.org/pathways – Pathways – year-long online classes which include access to all archived NCTE web seminars ($120-160)

http://www.ncte.org/newsletter Free weekly e-newsletter with news, ideas, lesson idea links

Foreign Language

CCLT (Connecticut Council of Language Teachers )

http://www.ctcolt.org/ has three conferences each year.

The next conference is http://www.ctcolt.org/fall_conference.htm $100-130.

All subject areas

PBS Teacherline

http://www.pbs.org/teacherline/ Online classes (generally $199)

You can use their resources for free by looking at the Syllabus of interesting classes, Googling the articles mentioned (you can find many this way), and getting yourself to do the exercises. You miss the collegiality of the classes (which can be rewarding and enriching), but there is no cost.

ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

http://shop.ascd.org/search_results.cfm?mycategory=PD_Online ($99/course)

(Also web seminars periodically, cost a bit higher)

CEC (Council for Exceptional Children, children with disabilities, gifted)

http://www.cec.sped.org/Content/NavigationMenu/AboutCEC/Communities/Blog/default.htm?from=tlcHome – blogs with current information of interest (free)

http://www.cec.sped.org/Source/Meetings/webinars.cfm?section=Professional_Development# – web seminars ($150-200)

http://www.cec.sped.org/Content/NavigationMenu/ProfessionalDevelopment/Audio_Files.htm audiofiles ($100-150)

Annenberg Media
http://www.learner.org
Free online classes across the curriculum. Choose discipline and age group.

For similar information www.franblo.edublogs.org

Not just Wikipedia

franblo — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:47:13 +0000

You may have noticed your students using still more websites with Wiki somewhere in the title as sources in their research. Like Wikipedia, these Wiki websites can be modified by anybody – in fact that’s the whole point – so I suspect we’re going to have to tell our students that any website with Wiki in the title cannot be used as a legitimate source for research.

Wikis are intended to be modified by many people collaborating, and can be wonderful resources since many people are sharing ideas, but since anybody can change a Wiki, a Wiki really cannot be considered a valid research source.

What’s a webinar?

franblo — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:41:57 +0000

You’ve heard of seminars, and you’ve heard of the World Wide Web. A webinar puts them together.

Webinars have become a very popular way of providing professional development because:

all you need is a computer with high speed internet access (we all have high speed access at school, and many have this at home)
the format provides a way to provide sound, so you can hear the speakers, and visuals, so you can see short videos, see PowerPoint slides, see a white board as people write on it.
the format often provides a way to interact with both the speakers and the others in the audience, called chat (more about this below). This provides a way to ask questions, make comments, share information, and can be the most valuable part of the experience.
written materials can be shared by the speakers to all the participants.
you can participate in the webinar as it happens, or watch it later at a more convenient time (called an archived webinar)

To participate in a webinar, often you’ll receive an email inviting you to participate, say, from your professional organization. (You may have to pay, and they’ll tell you how to do that.) Then you’ll be sent an email that includes a link to click on that will take you to the start of the webinar. If you’ve never attended a webinar before, it’s good to click on any “test your computer” link to make sure you already have installed on your computer any extra software that might be needed (usually so you can view videos the presenters might want to show); if you don’t have the needed (free) software, they’ll provide you with a way to download it.

On the day of the webinar, you click on the given link to enter the webinar. Since it takes a few minutes for all the software to load, it’s a good idea to do this at least 10 minutes before the webinar starts. The presenters are usually already there, and as you’ll see below, you can send them questions if you are having “technical difficulties.”

Eventually, you’ll see a screen that looks something like the one above. It has tools up at the top left (which the presenters will explain to you, if you need to use them). It has a list of attendees below that, on the left.

Below is a sample of the chat window, which we’ll come back to in a minute.

The main presentation is in the big rectangle to the right. This is where you’ll see PowerPoint slides, polls of participants, a whiteboard, and so on. Sometimes there will also be a video, which usually plays in a separate window. This main presentation window is entirely controlled by the presenters.

Back to the chat window (sample below, right). This is where you can read written conversations among the presenters and participants during the webinar. (If you watch an archived webinar, you can read and scroll through all the comments, but you can’t particpate in them) Within the chat window are the top window, which shows the conversation as it happens, and the bottom window, where you can add your words to the conversation. To participate in the conversation or ask questions, just click on the blank bottom window, type your message, and press Send. Your message (which automatically includes the name you gave when you signed into the webinar) will then show as part of the “conversation” in the chat window.

Two great things here: 1) you can scroll up and down through the chat window, which is helpful when the conversation gets animated, and 2) you can save the entire chat for later, which can be very helpful if people were sharing ideas and resources. In Elluminate (the usual forum for Webinars in education), click on File, Save, Chat conversation, then navigate to where you to to save the chat document to and click Enter Save it someplace you can find it. I usually save to my desktop because I can see it there, and won’t forget it.

A few webinars provide for you to ask questions via audio. They’ll let you know during the webinar if this is an option. You’ll need a microphone on your computer in order to do this. I prefer the chat window just because there are fewer “technical difficulties.”

Some caveats. Webinars use up a lot of computer resources, so it’s best to have recently restarted your computer, so your computer’s memory is clear. Close out of any programs you won’t need while you’re watching, so your computer resources are available to the webinar. Don’t close any windows that are opened once you click on the link to the webinar – you might not think they are important, but some are vital, and their loss will kick you out of the webinar and you’ll have to start over again.

Are webinars all free? No, mostly they cost money, but PBS offers some free (see earlier email), as does Education Week. Your professional organization may already provide webinars. I’ll be sending out a separate email just about sources for professional development, which should point you in the right direction.

As always, if you have questions, all you have to do is ask.

Fran Lo, room 224, available for extra help after school on Mondays and most other days

Webinars, professional development, for all teachers

franblo — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:12:10 +0000

The following are upcoming Webinars (web + seminar) provided to teachers free through PBS. (And if you can’t attend the webinar, which you can do in your bunny slippers at home, you can view the archived webinar at a later date.)

Two recent webinars have been about changing views of history and race, and about using Folger Shakespeare Library resouces to enrich the teaching of Shakespeare.

Upcoming webinars include the following. If you becoming a member of PBS Teachers at http://www.pbs.org/teachers/connect/create-profile/ you will receive emails about all forthcoming webinars. There are many other resources at www.pbs.org/teachers as well.

Lo and Behold » Internet tools

Working with rubrics

New ideas delivered to your emailbox

On-line discussion with middle schoolers

Has anybody pretended to be you?

Why no Wikipedia example

More ways to communicate

Low cost and free professional development

Not just Wikipedia

What’s a webinar?

Webinars, professional development, for all teachers

April 7

Using 21st Century Resources to Enhance Math Teaching & Learning

Cyberchase

May 4

Diving into the Digital World of Marine Science

Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures

June

Summertime and My Personal Learning Network

Bob Sprankle, Cheryl Oakes, and Alice Barr