Category Archives: Technology

Blogging, Technology, Wikis

Blogs and Wikis

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I waited until the site went live before announcing it, but I am proud to annouce the debut of my senior Short Story seminar class’s wiki for Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. It is almost complete at this point, and I am very proud of the job the students have done. I created the “portal” or start page, and they did all of the rest, including finding appropriate video and pictures and even creating an animated GIF for the title. They were enthusiastic about the project, and they were excited to share it with others in the blogging/wiki/educational community. Please go check it out! I will share any comments you make about the wiki with them, as I have password protected comments on the wiki so that only students of mine who know the password can comment. I could probably fix it so guests could comment at a future date.

In other news, a student of mine decided to do his “Moral Perfection” project on a blog, and he has now entered the blogosphere, having enjoyed the project so much that he plans to keep it up. I think it is OK to point you toward his blog, which is all about soccer (or, as he would tell you it is more properly known, football). Be sure to check out his explanation of the project. He’s already thinking about podcasting, and I haven’t even gone there yet!

Richard Beach, professor at the University of Minnesota, plans to use a screenshot of my Awakening discussion wiki (which my students did last year) in his upcoming book Engaging Students in Digital Writing, which will be published in 2007. I will give you more information about ordering if you like once it is published.

I made a decision this week. When I go back to get my Master’s, I will be majoring in Instructional Technology. As my department head reminded me, this — figuring out how to integration technology into education — is my passion. I had planned to get an advanced English degree, but I have to admit that as much as I enjoy reading literature and writing, grad school English didn’t much appeal to me. I thought about becoming a Media Specialist some years back, but I really still want to teach. I don’t want to go into administration. I’m ill-suited for it. However, I think teaching students about technology would be stimulating, satisfying, and interesting.

Blogging, Professional Development, Technology

Blogs as Teaching Documents

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I recently presented a session on using blogs and wikis in the classroom at the annual GISA conference. I focused on teacher and student-created and maintained blogs and wikis and didn’t touch very much on how we can learn from these tools. When I share my presentation with my own faculty in January, I would like to include this information. I probably won’t have to teach teachers how to figure out whether a blog poster has reliable credentials, but that would be necessary if I were sharing blogs with students. After all, I have a blog, and I can declare a recipe for cold fusion that really works, but no one should believe me if I do that — after all, my credentials as an English teacher are not exactly reliable compared to those of a nuclear physicist or even a science teacher.

Blogging history, literary and otherwise, seems to have developed into a major trend. I am very excited about this trend, as I think it makes history alive for students and makes the people they study seem like flesh and blood. I found several examples of such blogs.

Boston 1775 purports to be “a miscellany of information about New England just before, during, and after the Revolutionary War, and about how that history has been studied, taught, preserved, politicized, mythologized, lost, recovered, discussed, described, distorted, and now digitized.” It is maintained by J.L. Bell, a Massachusetts writer who specializes in Revolutionary War-era Boston and has written scholarly papers for children and adults and consulted in the show History Detectives.

The Blog of Henry David Thoreau makes Thoreau’s journals accessible to everyone with Internet access. It is maintained by Greg Perry, a poet who posts Thoreau’s journals on the corresponding date today. For example, on November 18, 2006, Greg Posted Thoreau’s journal entry from November 18, 1857.

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog is not so much a digitized version of a document produced by Chaucer as a vision of what a “blogge” by Chaucer might really look like; more than anything else, it’s just good satire. Reading this blog, one can get a feel for Middle English, a sense of the politics of the time, and most importantly, an appreciation for Chaucer. The site is maintained by an anonymous medievalist.

Pepys Diary is digitized presentation of the diary of Samuel Pepys, whose Restoration-era diary is an excellent primary source document of the period. It is maintainted by Phil Gyford, a UK website designer who bases his site on the 1893 edition of Pepys diary, which was edited by Henry B. Wheatley.

These are just a few that I know about. Please share your own discoveries in the comments section.

Teaching Grammar, Technology

Phrases Jeopardy

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Some time ago, I gave detailed instructions for creating a Jeopardy game with MS Power Point.  I was excited about a new software program that purports to do the same thing, but is much less cumbersome; however, I haven’t been able to get it to work.  When I try to save the game, the program crashes.

Oh, well — back to the tried and true.  For those of you grammar teachers who want a handy review for phrases (adjectival and adverbial prepositional phrases, verbals, and appositives), feel free to steal download my Phrases Jeopardy Power Point.  I’ll tell you, this was great on the SMART Board!  Instead of Double Jeopardy, I created three lighting round questions.

Blogging, Technical/Site Issues, Technology

Updates and Organization

I have re-organized links in the sidebar so you don’t have to hunt for my other sites. In a box entitled “Links,” you’ll find links to my classroom wiki, classroom blog, GISA Educators’ Wiki (set up for participants in my upcoming GISA presentation in November), lesson plan wiki, and student blog.

I encourage you to check out my students’ work at their wiki and blog.  We are doing so exciting things right now (or, I should say I am excited, at least).  I have added some material to my lesson plan wiki.  I have found that I don’t have as much time to add material to that wiki as I would like — oddly enough, I’m too busy planning and teaching to actually find time to share, too, but I’m trying to be better.  I now have my Colonial and Revolutionary American literature pages restored over there.  Every time I look at it, though, I’m aware of how much I still want to do and I suddenly feel very tired.

Teaching Writing, Technology

Wiki Update

I mentioned some time ago that my 9th graders were going to create hypertext writing assignments based on The Bean Trees. They have revised and edited essays about an important place. You can read their work if you visit our Bean Trees Wiki and click on their pages. You will find they have chosen four quotes that illustrate place, characters, metaphor/theme, and the essence of the novel. If you click their links to place, you can read their descriptions. If you would like to leave comments on their work, you can address them to the students here. For security reasons, I prefer not to have our password available to folks outside our school community. I will share any comments you make with the students.

By the way, my five-year-old daughter Maggie is blogging.  Check her out!

Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing, Technology

Watch the Wiki

I wanted to invite my e-colleagues to watch my classroom wiki over the next couple of weeks as I implement this ReadWriteThink lesson plan in conjunction with a study of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees.  The page to watch is the Bean Trees wiki.  The students seemed excited about it, and I know that I am.

Technology

Build Your Own Jeopardy

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Last November, I shared a method for creating a Jeopardy game using MS Power Point.  Since I doubt folks go back and re-read my old posts to see if I have new comments, I need to share with you Doug’s comment:

An easier way to create jeopardy boards is to use this software called Build Your Own Jeopardy. This software is available at http://www.wolfescience.com/byojeopardy BYOJeopardy helps you make custom boards that you can use in the classroom or play with friends. Enjoy!

I checked out the site, and the software is free.  I haven’t tried it out, but it looks like it is indeed easier than creating your own board with Power Point.  Caution: it is Windows software.

Thanks, Doug!

Teaching Writing, Technology

Microsoft Word Alternatives

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I posted this at my classroom blog, but I thought it might be useful to fellow educators, so I am cross-posting it here.

Some of you don’t have Microsoft Office or Microsoft Word at home. That doesn’t mean you have no option aside from Word Pad if you want to write papers. All of you have MS Word at school, but it isn’t always possible to type all of your work at school. What are you supposed to do, then?

There are some good online word processing programs that allow you to write and save your work online so you can edit it from anywhere — school, home, grandma’s house, the library, wherever!

Writely allows you to decide who can see your work. For instance, you can allow friends to see your documents so they can help you edit. You can edit your documents from anywhere — all you need is an Internet connection and a browser. You can store your documents online. No more hunting for documents only to remember you saved them on your home computer when you’re at school or vice versa. It is also compatible with Word. You can post Writely documents to your blog — thus, if it’s your turn to write for the student blog, you can write your post in Writely first to make it easier to proofread. Writely also allows you to save documents to your own computer. Writely is owned by Google, who purchased it in March.

Like Writely, Zoho Writer also allows you to edit from anywhere. It also boasts collaborative editing of documents, which allows friends to write and edit with you at the same time. You can import and edit Word documents, Open Office documents, and many other types of files. Also, Zoho Writer allows you to save your documents in many different formats, including MS Word .doc files and PDF’s. Like Writely, you can use Zoho to post to your blog. It also allows you to save different versions of the same document, which should be really valuable for editing. Zoho Show allows you to create presentations, including uploading and editing Power Point presentations. It is also integrated with Flickr, so if you have an account, it will be easy to move your photographs into your Zoho Show presentation. Zoho Sheet is a spreadsheet program, like MS Excel.

Finally, there is gOFFICE, which is an entire office suite, including a word processor, desktop publishing (cards, newsletters, etc.), and spreadsheets (like Excel). Soon, gOFFICE plans to add presentations (like Power Point).

As all of these online word processors are web-based, they should work on Macs, but you may not be able to use the Safari browser to work with them. Try Firefox.

Finally, if you are looking for a free program to download to your computer instead of an online word processor, try Open Office. Open Office is open source software, which allows users to study, change, and improve the software. This is different from MS Office, for example, which does not allow users access to source code — users must wait for updates and purchase them. Open Office includes the following applications:

  • Writer — a word processor
  • Calc — a spreadsheet program
  • Impress — presentation software
  • Draw — illustration software

I do not believe that Open Office will work with Macs unless you port it, but that additional step should get you started.

Update: Robert reminds us that it is a good idea not to send folks MS Word documents as attachments.  Here’s why.

Issues, Technology

What Would You Do With $300K?

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In his recent editorial on the book banning lawsuit currently brewing in Miami-Dade schools, Leonard Pitts bemoans the school system’s waste of $300,000 on a lawsuit that the school board’s own lawyer said, according to Pitts, “violated the board’s own rules, not to mention multiple legal precedents.”  In order to make his point, he asked two teachers what they would purchase for their classrooms if they were given $300K.

It made me think, though.  What would I get for my classroom if I was given $300K?  Here’s a list of things I could think of:

  • A laptop for my use
  • Laptops for all of my students
  • SMART technology, including a SMART board
  • Funds for guest speakers, including published authors
  • Professional development that will enable me to be a more effective teacher
  • My own copy machine and a ton of paper
  • Consumable books, including paperback novels, so my school could save some money

I’m sure given time to do more research on products, I could think of more, but this is what I came up with off the top of my head.  What would you do with $300K for your classroom?

Technology

Technology and Teacher Ed

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I stumbled upon a new blog by JJ called Teachable Moments. She mentioned in a recent post that she felt her own preparation for teaching was lacking the technology department and advocated the following requirements:

  • A BLOG — We certainly did our share of reflections. We posted information that we obtained from various sources on tools like blackboard, yet we never shared them. (Why? I don’t think my professors realized the possibility, plus encouraging honest reflection through confidentiality seemed more important than learning from each other) In the short time that I have been lurking around the blogosphere, I have learned more than I did in any of those required journal letters to my professors. This in mind, I will most definitely be blogging with my students from now on.
  • A DIGITAL PRESENTATION — Although I did take the initiative to do this myself, during my four years in the School of Ed I was never required to do much of anything with technology. I suppose that part of this was due to the fact that our placements in the city schools were, for the most part, tech-less. However, when our school decided that all exit portfolios needed to be in digital format (i.e. powerpoint or html) we actually had to have an emergency computer lab refresher course so that we could all (re)learn how to properly insert information into powerpoint.
  • A WEB-BASED ASSIGNMENT OR LESSON — Again, although I was able to create my own webquests during my preservice teaching, this was not a requirement. Many of my colleagues have graduated without any knowledge or first hand experience with any kind of internet tool.

I think all of these have a lot of potential. Imagine how much we all might have learned from each other if we had a blogosphere when we were student teaching (or perhaps I should speak for myself — I student taught in 1996-97). I am pretty much self-taught with regards to using technology.

What do you think of these requirements? What would you add or change?