Getting Connected!

Have you ever wondered what life was like outside of your hometown?  None of my multimedia students have traveled outside of the US and most have travel experience limited to the southern states.

How can you travel the world in a US high school?  One class at a time:)

During December, Sue Water's wrote a post on connecting classrooms through Skype. I eagerly signed up even though I wasn't sure if we could connect via Skype due to current blocking by smartfilter.  I even purchased an iphone over the holidays to be used as an alternative. You can imagine my surprise after the holidays when I discovered that Twitter had been unblocked.  I quickly contact one teacher I had corresponded with about the alternative to Skype.  The celebration was short lived as Twitter only remained unblocked for about a week:)

Thank goodness I signed up for comment responses to be email to me!  Ann Michaelsen contacted me January 21st through Sue's original skype post. She had difficulty using Skype due to time differences.  We both corresponded on various ideas.  Ann's students in Norway are working on English in Social Studies.  They were ahead of us with blogging which served as great examples for my students.

All my multimedia students now have blogs and wrote their first post,  welcome message, Monday. We are working on a photography unit, and the students are excited about adding some of their own photos to their hometown post.  Ann's students are also writing a hometown post this week.

Due to internet filtering, we are having difficulty correctly seeing Ann's blog as well as her students.  Our parish unblocked the site, but their is a hang-up with the theme or something.  They are working on it, but it won't slow us down.  Starting today, my iphone will be used for students to post comments on the Norway students' blogs.  Many of my students have already stopped by this morning to show me the pictures they took to add to their own hometown post.

It is so exciting seeing the students really light up about this opportunity.  I hope you will stop by to visit their newly created blogs.  You can access them by following the tab, student blogs.  Their hometown posts will vary according to their likes and hobbies.  My students are showing our hometown "Through Their Eyes."  If it is someone that enjoys the outdoors, then you will probably learn about out trees, hunting, etc.

I am so excited to the world being opened to us through web 2.0:)

Techie Tuesday: 31 Day Challenge Days 6 - 11

Oh, the irony I found in day seven's challenge.  Have you ever been lackadaisical about something only to have it bite you back?

While completing day seven's challenge to plan the next week's posting, I thought to myself, "This won't take long 'cause I already have it figured out."  Maybe I should have stopped right then and gotten started on actually writing because an entire week flew by while the plan remained just that a plan.

I really enjoyed the day 8 challenge to comment on a blog that I haven't commented on before.  I visited everyones blog or emailed them.  I tried to do this again last week, but seem to have too much on my plate.  On a good note, I did get my daughter wedding invitations created and mailed on time:)

Declutter?  I can't get my house decluttered much less my sidebar.  I did switch around a few things on my sidebar for day 10.  Honestly I need others to comment on likes and dislikes to know where to go from here.  I do have two category links, but wasn't able to get one to delete.  Maybe someone reading will have a solution to this!

I LOVE Google statistics!!!  It is so great to be able to see where your visitors are arriving from and what they look at while visiting.  The students are amazed at all the locations that are popping up on our cluster maps!

As far as the actual statistics that I went through, my bounce rate was lower for twitter visitors and the about page statistics have gone up tremendously since the start of this challenge - thanks challenge participants;)

My favorite two challenges so far have been the about page and the google statistics.  What is your favorite challenge activity?

All Aboard?

You are standing in a room full of teachers.  What can you say about PLN or Web 2.0 to make them see it's power?  

Think about it.  Before you even begin, five are already lost in the latest gossip.  You begin talking and three more are lost asking, "hey do we have to do this stuff?"  You start talking about a "tweet" and the nature club sponsor begins to be lost in a fog of bird calls.  


I value my PLN's opinion.  I would like to have your feedback on ways to open other's eyes to the world of web 2.0. Please complete the below survey.  I will post on the results next week.  

 




 Thank you so much for your help! If you would like to share even more, we would love to hear your comments below.

Techie Tuesday: 31 Day Challenge Days 1 - 5

A few week's back I was catching up with my google reader feeds and spotted Sue Water's post, Life is One Big Top Ten In it she mentioned

One of my Top personal blogging I want To-Do’s is to revisit the 31 Day Project by working through Steve Dembo’s 30 Days to Being A Better Blogger!

Oh cool, there are directions to being better at blogging without all this trial and error (oh, and error). I started the 31 Day Challenge by myself while out for Christmas break.  I was actually also working the Steve Dembo challenge to Be a Better Blogger.  I thought hey these are quick little tasks, I can do two at once:)  



Reality check!  I first of all spent more time than I originally thought completing the challenges.  Not that they are hard.  I just have a very active brain and one challenge leads to another idea, and another, and you get the picture!  So I decided to only complete the 31 Day Challenge and then skim Steve's.

Via Sue's Suggestion, I tweeted that I was starting the challenge to see if anyone else wanted to join in.  That is when I met Bill and then we met Ana and Pam.  Basically one thing led to another and then Sue posted about the challenge and we are currently up to 15 participants.  Of course, that could change any minute.  

So how has the first 5 days gone?  GREAT!

I feel that day one is a vital part of building your PLN.  Each email, comment, or twitter response acts as building blocks to build your Personal(professional) Learning Network.  Day two I will probably visit several times during this challenge.  The audit of a blog by people outside of you local support system (or family) is GREAT! I loved Jenny Wood's idea to post a poll and then send out a tweet.  I need to change a few things from my latest audit via Sue Water's.  Then I want to tweet and poll:)

Joining a forum (day 3) is a great resource.  I found it helpful to search for various topics as well as expanding my PLN members.  The interlink activity for day 4 is a great idea I had never thought about. I will do more of this as I add posts to my blog.  Of course there had to be another challenge I would want to visit more than once, about page audit (day 5). I completed this challenge and am already ready to revamp again.  I think I might be visiting day 2 and 5 every week:)

Worldly Wednesday: Go Green!

How many pieces of paper per year does the average teacher use?  How many sticky notes are sold per year?  The average tree produces 80,500 sheets of paper.  That seems like quite a bit until you compare that to the annual use of paper.  It requires 786 million trees to produce the worlds annual paper supply.



Is your classroom Green?  I really hadn't given this much thought, because I am not worksheet teacher. Ok, now that I think about it, I am quite a sticky note fanatic.  Oh and when writing grants I tend to print numerous copies to write all over. Maybe I am being pretty wasteful.

Can our class really make a difference?   YES! If you recycle 2 sheets per day for a year, you would save approximately 42 trees.

Our Class Challenge
We are going to go green for the first nine weeks of this semester to see how close to paperless we can get.  How are we going to do this?

•  Notebooks kept on computer


•  Student Jumpdrives


•  Parents communicate by phone and email


•  Class handouts using Box Widget


•  Online quizzes

How much paper do you think we will use?  Please give us your feedback by participating in this poll:



 

 

 

What other steps could we take to conserve paper?

Techie Tuesday: 2.0 Red Tape

Do you ever feel like you are wrapped in red tape so tight you are unable to move?  In order to implement an innovative classroom technique/project, we sometimes get so caught up in trying to "straighten out" the red tape that we end up with eyes focused on the tape instead of our original  innovative idea.

I have been fortunate to work with excellent principals who are "all about the students" and allow the freedom to dream big.  When I began teaching at Minden High, I had a one computer classroom. Implementation of technology to broaden skills was key to reaching student learning styles.  My first purchase was an Averkey in order for all students to participate in tech rich lessons by connecting our channel one tv to the class computer.  By the time I took over the computer education courses, my math classroom had grown into a model room which included a class set of Palms, Smartboard, projector, mini lab, and CPS.

Why then did I get so focused on the red tape of web 2.0 implementation?  While I searched for a blog, wiki, etc that would be ok'd by the "internet filter committee," I totally revamped the class website four times in three years.  Each time making it just alittle more interactive with approved components and each time falling way short of what I was imagining.  Granted the students didn't mind; they were perfectly happy with a class website and the ability to journal and message the teacher.  My eyes were focused on the compliance within smartfilter.

November 2008 marked the first time that a blog was allowed to be added to the website approval list and thus not blocked.  You guessed it...Edublogs!  To say I was ecstatic would probably be an understatement:) I quickly started building the blog and learning about all the new widgets and such I could add to this now interactive site. Of course it would have taken much longer to learn the ends and outs if it wouldn't have been for Sue Waters, James, and Dr. Mike at Edublogs.  To finally have these great tools to use with my students was like a dream come true, but I also quickly realized that there was a lot I had missed out on waiting to cut the red tape.

So what would I do differently?  First of all I wouldnt have focused on smartfilter compliance and instead would have had my eyes on the world of web 2.0.  To do this I would have read more, researched more, and reach out more.  Secondly I would have focused on my own PLN instead of only focusing on student's use of web 2.0.

What components do I think would have been my first stop?  That one is pretty easy.  I would have created my igoogle page  (for organization) including the google feed, and joined Twitter(for socialization).

More on these first stops on next week's Techie Tuesday.

What first steps would you recommend for a web 2.0 newbee?