Our fifth grade students will be running a new recycling program at Hidenwood Elementary this spring. Their teacher, Brian Lieberman, received a grant from the Kids In Need Foundation, an organization dedicated to funding creative, innovative learning projects. The students will distribute recycling bins around the school and will take responsibility for the collection of these materials. This will be the start of an exciting project-based authentic learning experience, during which students will not only study science and social studies, but also develop personal, social, and civil responsibility.
The project has already begun to bring students together. To get the project underway, students visited classrooms throughout the school to distribute recycling bins. After outlining the program, they fielded questions from their fellow students. I was so impressed with how confident and competent they sounded! Of course, our students could not contain their enthusiasm to join the project, and began collecting materials as soon as the bins were delivered. Thanks to the hard work of Mr. Lieberman and his students, Hidenwood Elementary will soon be a cleaner, greener place!
I'm not thrilled about the fact that everything is a cached version of the website. I am having trouble adding any Google applications to the slideshow -- they all show some message about the website timing out.
I wish there were an easier way to rearrange the slides than going back into your Diigo list and clicking "move to top" or "move up." Drag and drop, please!
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I feel confident that the capability exists to create the tool I want, but I have yet to find it! I tried Flowgram and loved the set-up and options, but found it slow and unreliable. I also tried creating a stack in SearchMe, but could not find a way to drag and drop to rearrange slides had trouble finding the itty bitty button that lets you change the slide number order. I still think drag-and-drop functionality would be useful, too!
My principal sent me this awesome video YouTube video posted by metroamv. It placed second in the AARP U@50 video contest. It is a very powerful message, but also opens up all kinds of ideas for writing!
When kids at the Suffern Middle School were asked to talk about education and their future, they gave Peggy Sheehy, the SMS media specialist, an earful. Listen and learn the bits of wisdom that can be gleaned from the students, if we only dare to ask them."
"Welcome to ARKive, a unique collection of thousands of videos, images and fact-files illustrating the world's species." The pictures and videos on this site are amazing.
ABCya! is a new and exciting way for elementary students to learn on the web. All educational games and activities were created by teachers for kids! Activites are modeled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way to learn. Below you will find links to interactive games separated by grade level. The lessons incorporate content areas such as math and reading while introducing basic computer skills.
AWESOME new web presentation tool -- "Create interactive guided presentations by combining web pages, photos, PowerPoint and more with your voice, notes, and highlights. Viewers can control the pages, scroll, click on links, view videos and more."
Check out this article about the role of library media specialists in the 21st century. For those people who ask "Do you just stamp books all day and shush people?" or "So you know the Dewey Decimal System, right?" this is a pretty accurate description of what my job really is!
When I found out that Glogster had come out with a kid-friendly edu version, I jumped all over it, and so did our entire school district! We were VERY excited about the privacy and restrictions put in place, and students really got into creating glogs to showcase their learning. However, we ran into a few snags when we found out that their privacy claims are not all they're cracked up to be. So as a forewarning to others, I'm sharing what we've learned.
It IS possible to friend people outside of your classroom network. There are a number of ways to do this, but it's easier to show than tell, so here's a screen capture. Note that I am logging in to the edu site as a student. The one friend this student currently has is the teacher who created the account (me).
I'm still not sure why it is so easy for students to get to that page full of glogs in the first place -- I thought all glog content on the edu version was private, but I never got that lame warning telling me I was leaving the edu site, so where am I?
Not only that, but I was unimpressed with the response I got from Glogster when I expressed my worries:
"Dear teacher,
students cannot add any friends, not on EDU nor on Glogster. When they try to go to Glogster main site they are alerted about possible non school-safe elements. If they still decide to go to Glogster main page, for example to chat room, and regular Glogster user adds them as a friend they can accept it. You can advice your students not to go to Glogster main site or you can arrange Glosgter main site to be blocked."
Typos aside, it bothers me that the people at Glogster believe that their alert when leaving Glogster actually informs students that they might encounter "possible non school-safe elements." When I click on that big pink Beta button that sends me back to the main site, yes, the green warning pops up, but it doesn't say anything about "non school-safe elements"! The image quality stinks, but the warning below says
"Hey, do you know that you are leaving the EDU zone and returning to Glogster.com? If you return to Glogster.com then you will be automatically signed out of the EDU zone. If you want to use the full version of Glogster then you will have to register a new account. Do you really want to return to Glogster.com?"
That doesn't sound like much of a warning to me! In addition, it is not possible to block glogster.com without also blocking glogster.com/edu. We tried. I'm of the opinion that the people at Glogster should know that, too, and not send me a bunch of garbage answers! So those are my issues. Awaiting Glogster reply. If nothing else, they DO get back to you...
Make gmail work for you. This list details 10 of the best gmail labs features -- like offline gmail, multiple inboxes, and even a feature to remind you when you forgot to attach your attachment!
I have started using Glogster's edu site to create library websites. It is SO easy and fun to use! I am using my library glog as a gateway to student projects, links, and research tools for students and teachers.
Our students can't get enough of Glogster, either. However, we recently learned that the edu version is not everything we imagined it was! I somehow got it in my head that within the edu sphere, a teacher created a classroom, gave her students usernames, and they could not communicate with anyone outside of that classroom. We learned the hard way this week that this is not the case! Students can accept friend requests from users on the general glogster site and can view glogs from that site as well. I'm not sure what the point of having the edu site is if there is no separation from the two! At any rate, we now have a great opportunity to start dialoging with students about how to use the Internet responsibly...
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