Privacy in Social Media

Have you posted to Facebook lately? I've become a FB window shopper these days. I don't post much but I continue to be surprised by what other people post. It makes me wonder what my nieces and nephews will post when they have their own account. Just one ill-thought out picture can ruin a person's life. What steps do you take to inform your students about the dangers of social media? How do you keep yourself safe? Do you rely heavily on privacy settings or limit your friends?

What is your favorite subject?

Do you remember your favorite subject in 2nd grade? I would guess that mine was music. My teacher loved to play the piano and his class was more than willing to sing about the headless horseman or one of the many Christmas songs we knew. I know that math was NOT my favorite, by far. Math was boring page after page of math facts. With this in mind, I was surprised when I overheard my class discussing their favorite subject. The majority of the 2nd graders favored math. At first, I attributed this to the class correcting their papers together in small groups. That may be part of it, but I think the game Sumdog has had an effect on their motivation, too. This class has learned their math facts quite quick. Lately, the new material presented is greeted with comments of "oh, yeah I've done this on Sumdog" Have you tried out the free version? Our class is using the subscription version this year. If you have it, how do you use the teacher dashboard?

Thoughts on my Digital Community

Last week I flew to Omaha to meet with my cohorts. During the full day of keynotes I looked around at the other teachers cheering "Good job! Good job! Good Job Good Job! G double o. D, J-O-B, Good Job, Good Job!" and thought, yep these are my people. I prefer the term cohorts to 'tribe.' I remember conjugating the word during Latin 9 in high school. It really resonates with me because we had a group of four of us who supported each other. We worked in a group and each person had their job. We were a latin cohort. My cohorts are the people who get me and together we encourage each other to learn. After reading the articles written by Goins I immediately related to the person who cut their tribe way down. I prefer a few quality contributors to my blog comments or Instagram feed as opposed to a legion of followers. I think the best way to grow your following is to lead by example. If I am an active contributor of meaningful comments I am adding to my community. What about you, do you want a big tribe or a few quality followers?

Twitter PD

Last week I was in Omaha for a teachers' conference. Working in a small school, I miss out on collaboration and I always look forward to hobnobbing with my kindred spirits. But, we only get together once a year. Twitter is a great way to quickly connect. I am most likely to crowd-source ideas with twitter. How would you use twitter?

Kahoot!

Last week I stumbled upon Kahoot! If you haven't heard of it, Kahoot is an web based program for every student response and is device universal. My class tested it with a Social Studies review. I split the class into multi-age groups. I set the timer for two minutes to encourage scholarly peer discussions. Each student participated. Each student discussed with their peers. The class had a great chance to review when they talked to each other. Twitter reminded me of other great uses for Kahoot including flashcards and vocabulary review. Kahoot is a great classroom tool that I hope will stick around.

Audible in Elementary

Do you remember listening to books on tape when you were younger? My classrooms never had listening centers but I found an old listening center complete with gigantic blue headphones for my first classroom. The center was well loved but being tethered to the center made it tough for all the listeners to read along with the book.

Now, that my students are older I've found Audible.com to be a great resource. One of the best parts of Audible is the availability of chapter books. The class has read along to Junie B., Jack and Annie, and many other famous titles. They improve fluency and can move about the room with their own headphones and an ipod or mp3 player. Audible is a great 21st century update to the cassette tape listening centers. 

Adapter:A media conversion review

One warm Colorado day this past summer, I recorded over two hours worth of audio for my classroom. I was so proud. It would save precious instructional time by allowing my 3's to listen to their assignment freeing me up for small group instruction with the 1's or 2's. My dreams were crushed when multiple audio hosting sites didn't work out. I eventually ended up burning the audio to a cd. It worked but the skipping ahead and going back options were less than optimal. And then I met Adapter.

Adapter converts audio files quickly. All I had to do was drag and drop my files. I converted my wma files into mp3 and then dropped the files into my class iPods. Now the 3's are all set to complete their dictation assignments independently. 

What Ramona Quimby can teach us about VoiceThread

Our class has been reading about Henry Huggins and his pesky neighbor Ramona Quimby. In the latest chapter, Ramona's tv idol, Sheriff Bud, said her name on air and told her to stop pestering Henry. The class was as shocked as Ramona. Sheriff Bud said her name! So what does that have to do with VoiceThread? VoiceThread is a site that allows users to post a file and comment on it. Comments can be audio or video. The file can then be shared and those users can also comment on it. While sharing this site with my PLC someone made the recommendation for book reports to be done this way. When kids need to find a new book, they can look and listen through the Voice Threads and hear recommendations, plus add their own comments. Sheriff Bud endorsed products every day on his program and Ramona told her mom to purchase those products. Voice Thread book reports would make great recommendations too.

Podcasting Readers Theatre