#Twitter #Addme@LauraBennaka

This week in PLH 5015 we learned about developing Professional Learning Communities (PLNs). PLNs are a collection of resources that you can go to when you want to learn something. For teachers, this means a place you can go to share resources with other educators. There are many different types of PLNs for educators. This week I learned about one major PLN that has become very popular among educators: Twitter. 

The following video describes PLNs, and Twitter, in a very simple way:

This week I signed up for a twitter. You can follow me @LauraBennaka. I haven't really gotten into Twitter as much as many of my friends and family. Recently, I had the privilege of demonstrating a lesson with my kindergarteners regarding 3-D shapes. I taught my lesson in front of 10 fellow teachers, and our district curriculum coordinator. Later in the afternoon my phone made the infamous "tweet" sound. When I looked, I realized someone had tweeted me. I was so excited that I didn't even care what it was about! Fortunately, our curriculum coordinator had tweeted a great compliment about my lesson, and included a photo of my kids doing their math work. 

Here is the tweet:

Getting started on Twitter may be overwhelming for teachers. I read a document with some tips and tricks on using Twitter that I found to be very helpful. You can read that here at Powerful Learning Practice, another educator PLN. The most important tip that I took from this article was not to use too many hashtags. There is nothing more obnoxious than seeing 15 hashtags on one post. Every time I think of this, I think of the skit Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake did about hashtags. If you need a good laugh, you can watch that here. 

I also learned this week that there are hashtag chats that occur frequently on Twitter. Cybrary Man has a list of Twitter chat schedules posted to his site which you can find at: http://cybraryman.com/chats.html. 

I observed two educational chats on Twitter. The first chat I observed was #kinderchat. I found this chat to be so interesting. I found so many new ideas that were strictly geared for kindergarten. I learned about one app on the App Store that I’m so excited to try. It is called DoInk and it allows kids to produce digital stories using animation. They can even be in the movies using a green screen! Someone tweeted a video their kindergarteners produced using this app, and used the hashtag #kinderchat. After reading this educational chat, I realized I really enjoy learning about new technology that I can use in my classroom. 

I also observed the chat #iPadchat. I found some really good articles that people had tweeted about. Some of these gave me good iPad apps that are very appropriate for students. You can find that article at http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/12/20-ipad-apps-to-showcase-students.html.   I am excited to participate in some of these chats later on when I find great tools to add to the conversation. I found the experience of educational chats to be simple and easy to follow. I enjoyed that you can type in the hashtag and easily see previous posts regarding that chat.

Do you recommend any apps for your students to use in the classroom?

Have a great week!

Word Clouds, Prezi, and Glogster…Oh My!

This week I learned about some Web 2.0 Tools to use in my classroom.

Word Clouds 

The first thing I learned this week was about word clouds. Word clouds are visual representations for text data, typically used to depict keyword tags on websites and to visualize free form text. I had heard of wordle.com before. However, I hadn't had much experience with Tagxedo or ABCya. For my assignment this week I was asked to make a mini lesson using one of these programs. The more I used the sites, the more I enjoyed them. I liked the simplicity of the sites, as well as the variety of layouts and colors you can choose from. The lesson I came up with was a simple lesson that any teacher could use at the beginning of the year. The lesson involves having students come up with a list of adjectives that describe a friend. This list can be turned into a word cloud, and hung up for the class to see and refer to throughout the year. Here is a sample word cloud that I made for this activity using Tagxedo.

I enjoyed using Tagxedo the most because I liked that you could make your word cloud into a variety of shapes. For those of you that have not used Tagxedo before, here is a slideshow that gives you a tutorial on how to use it, and a few ideas on how to use it: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IvQMR9LpT9sSOEOTIpsCLxYpfuPrKZrL3_JZ651HTho/edit#slide=id.i0. . 

Prezi 

Prezi is an tool for web-based presentations, similar to Powerpoint. Prezi take a little bit of time to get used to, as it can be a little harder to use if you are used to Powerpoint. This video gives a tutorial on how to use Prezi. 

Here is a link to the Prezi that I made this week for a kindergarten unit on 3-D shapes:

http://prezi.com/df0ujt0lokr3/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share 

In my opinion, Prezi is a much more engaging way to present information, rather than Powerpoint. I liked that when you create a Prezi it is all on one canvas, rather than individual slides. I think this gives the reader a good visual of what they will be learning about upfront, rather than individual slides. 

Glogster 

Glogster is a tool that I had not heard of before.  Glogs are online, multimedia posters. Students and teachers can make online posters that include text, photos, videos, graphics, sounds , drawings, etc. Since I am the Elementary Technology Specialist at my school, I was pleasantly surprised to experiment with a site that I haven't heard of before. I had high hopes for Glogster when I watched a tutorial video on it. You can watch the tutorial here:

The first thing that turned me off about Glogster was the pricing. I was able to try it out using a 30 day trial. However, after the 30 days is up you have to sign up for a $39 subscription (elementary) or a $95 subscription (secondary). Now, if my school district purchased this, I think I would be more apt to do it. I just didn't see myself using this site very often enough to pay for a subscription on my own. I also think I would be more apt to use the site if I taught in an older grade that my students could create glogs on their own. The site was fairly easy use, and I saw some pretty neat ideas on how to use it here. 

Out of all of these tools, I can see myself using word clouds the most. I found this tool to be the most simple for the grade level I teach, while still being visually appealing. 

Have you tried out these tools before? What ways have you used it with your students? 

Issues and Ethics in Technology--Week 1

This is my first blog post for the class PHL 5015, Issues and Ethics in Technology. It is week one and I have already learned something new. I learned that there are standards for learning, teaching, and leading in the digital age for technology. These standards are known as the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS). These standards were developed by the International Society for Technology in Education. There are two different categories of standards: Standards for Teachers and Standards for Students. 

The NETS for teachers can be found at this link:
http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets-t-standards.pdf?sfvrsn=2

The NETS for students can be found at this link: 
http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets-s-standards.pdf?sfvrsn=2

After looking into the standards, my task was to choose five areas that I could improve on and write a goal for improving them. Part of my blog each week will be to update on the progress of my goals and write about things I have tried in my classroom that relate to my goals. Here are 5 goals, relating to technology, that I want to achieve before the end of the school year: 

1.My goal is to use Skype to engage with researchers, authors, community workers, etc. Reading is a very important skill that we focus on in kindergarten. My goal is to have someone from the community (or someone from around the country) read to my students via Skype each month, and explain the importance of reading in their job. Currently, I have been having guest readers from the community (firefighter, superintendent, dentist, etc.) come to my classroom and read to my students. I would love to use Skype to expand my possibilities of guest readers to my students. I want to show them the importance of reading, and give them an idea of how they may use reading in the future. 

2. My goal is to get more technology in my classroom for students to use in various ways. Currently, I have three student computers, a Smartboard, and a teacher computer. Recently, I wrote a grant to get two iPod Nanos for my classroom for student's to use to listen to books. I transferred all of my books on CD to digital form. My next goal is to write a grant to get an iPad in my classroom for students to use academically. I think my students would be more engaged in the learning if I had more technology in the classroom. I am hoping to write another Donor's Choose grant to help aid me with getting technology in my classroom. If you haven't heard of Donor's Choose before, I highly recommend looking into it. It is a great site for teachers to get supplies for their classrooms. 

Here is an introduction video about Donor's Choose to get you started:

3. Currently I have a classroom website that I use for my students' families to be more involved in their child's classroom. I post photos, links to websites we use, and documents that may be helpful to families. However, I have not yet ventured into the world of blogging with other teachers via the Internet.I have gotten a lot of other ideas from teachers by reading blogs, and I think I could contribute a lot to others. My co-worker recently began blogging to share teaching ideas, and has received a lot of positive feedback. My goal is to create a teacher blog, and write a post at least once a week. I also think I could promote a lot of my products on TeachersPayTeachers using a blog. For reference, my TeachersPayTeachers page can be located here. 4. My goal is to do a research project once a year with another classroom in the country via Skype.  I have had some training on Skype, and seen some videos on "Skype in the Classroom." Due to the press for Common Core Standards, our science instruction has been put a little on the back burner. Therefore, I think doing a research project with another classroom somewhere in the country would be very engaging for my students and would increase their excitement for science. Here is a great video about Skype Education that inspired me to get started in using this technology:

5. My goal is to begin using techonology to help assess my students, both formative and summative assessments. Currently, we assess our kindergarteners on many different standards. My goal is to begin using digital forms of assessments to quickly gather data and gain information about my students. I plan to do this by using the clicker system. I haven't had the opportunity to assess my students using this technology and would like to try it. My fear is that this may be a little advanced for kindergarteners, since most of their assessments are hands-on. I am excited to begin working on these goals in order to meet the technology standards known as NETS. I look forward to blogging and keeping you updated on my progress and also demonstrating the knowledge I am gaining in my class.