Ning (Thing # 22)

Ning and Classroom 2.0 are really neat. I would be more apt to go back to classroom 2.0 as I found more relevant information there. There’s an infinite amount regarding cool teaching strategies. It’s great to know there’s an easily accessible community of educators out there willing to collaborate. There are times when my creativity has hit the wall and I need fresh ideas or help with a particular problem.

I teach IB classes and often collaborate with IB teachers around the world. It’s so darn difficult to get onto their Online Curriculum Centre (OCC) that I’ve all but given up. It requires these particular passcodes that are gobbly gook and can’t be changed to something I’d remember. Maybe I’ll start a Ning group with the people from the OCC. Reason being, I need more content specific help. Most of these sites are geared towards teaching strategies. I need to discuss content and resources as I’m taking on a new course (economics) starting in January. Nevertheless, it’s great to know all of my options for help. Now that I’ve taken this course I can say I know where to start!

Reflections on Google Reader (Thing #7c)

Today a U.S. History blog sent me to a great site with interactive historical maps. I definitely could incorporate these into my teaching. My pitiful drawing of the U.S. might be funny but not too instructive!

I also read an interesting article on Infinite Thinking about a new service called Brightstorm. It’s a paid service but it basically enhances high school curriculum for students in video format. They’ve found good teachers and provided video of their lectures. The lectures aren’t too long because they’re designed for the short attention span of this generation. This would be very useful for remediation. It would also be great for curious students who want to learn about something that’s not offered at their school.  

Pageflakes (Thing #21)

Pageflakes is just one of those sites. It could become a terrible time swallower if you’re not careful! There’s just too much to choose from.

I already use iGoogle (and waste a lot of time there) but really liked the K12 Learning 2.0 template. It gave me some great ideas to customize my own page. I may change up my iGoogle based on what I learned today  but make my pageflakes more student centered.  I like the idea of using stickies to communicate with your class etc. but isn’t that the purpose of a blog too? It took me some time to drill the idea ofchecking the blog into my students’ heads. Student ”I didn’t know the assignment”  Me “Did you check my blog”? student “oh yeah”. So, I would hate to ask them to switch over to a new site for communicating. Maybe next year.

The advantage to pageflakes could be to entice your students to read articles you’ve chosen etc. You could make a cool history or economics centered pageflakes where they could go for their assignments and just a click away would be great resources for them. It’d be like one stop shopping! The Walmart of history class so to speak.

Google Docs (Thing #20)

My first reaction to Google docs was-why?

Why would I bother when I’m so comfortable with Microsoft Office? I can e-mail myself a document so it’s available anywhere I have an Internet connection. Well, once I started playing around with it I realized its utility.

First, students will have a much easier time collaborating on projects/presentations with Google docs. They can share the finished work online and I can look at the revision history to see who did most of the work.

Peer edits can now be assigned for homework. Previously, I had to do this in class so they could mark-up each other’s paper.

I also like the idea of assigning a particular topic for the students to research. The students can report their findings to a single doc which I could save and use as a resource folder later.

For example, let’s say I’m teaching comparative advantage in economics. I can have students go out and find a real-world article demonstrating the concept, a video clip, a political cartoon, an explanation of the concept and so forth. If they all save it to the same document we’ll all have a great resource. The best thing is that it’ll be there when it comes time to study for the test!

I like it.

Google Reader Reflection (#the one I’m missing!)

I recently read an article by David Warlick  about a teacher selling advertising space on his quizzes and tests. He uses the profits to buy school supplies for his class. My first reaction was what a cool concept! He’s teaching students a valuable lesson in economics as well. Then I started thinking about how pathetic it is that teachers have to resort to such measures to buy what’s necessary to educate our youth. Wow, it never ceases to amaze me how out of whack our society’s values are. Have we seen the bottom yet?

I also read an article on campus health. I’m interested in this because we (even in the high school level) seem to pass germs around daily. The article is pushing for college students to get vaccinated against the flu. Instead of advertising about the misery of the flu, health advocates are advertising in terms of cost-benefit. How many classes will you miss while sick? Those missed classes equal tutition down the drain and at worst, a failed class. The # of vaccinations went up after the strategy changed.

Speaking of vaccinations, make sure your children have the whooping cough vaccination. The bacteria is on the rise again in the U.S. and can be quite serious.  I had a friend spend all of Saturday afternoon in the ER getting breathing treatments. Yuck.