Thing 18: Acceptable Use Policy

Our school has an acceptable use policy that requires parents to sign the agreement before their student is permitted to access the school's internet.  The classroom teacher and the administration maintains copies for reference.  There are situations that the student who would most benefit from accessing the internet has the most difficulty getting the parent to sign.
Employees are required to sign a similar agreement stating awareness of all related policies.  The policies are current but it doesn't include any reference to using Web 2.0 tools.
The staff is occasionally reminded to remember to stay within the agreement's parameters.
It can be found here:

Mineral Wells Acceptable Use

Thing21, webinar

  This webinar was to address the using a balance of technological innovations and traditional teaching techniques to assure that students become creative learners.  The speakers suggested that a “change in procedures” is necessary to make educating our children the highest priority among the students and the adults who support their efforts.

  Mr. Armstrong’s students are expected to do their own research in their social studies class.  He introduces a topic, guides them to a variety of sources (links), and allows each student to gather their own information in response to the prompt.   According to Mr. Armstrong, rarely do any of his students respond with the same material after doing the research.  With such varied responses, this generates terrific in-class discussion that can offer a wide variety of opinions.

  The session also stressed the importance of re-thinking how we assess what our students have learned.  Mr. Armstrong believes that it’s necessary to begin to distance our assessment techniques away from standardized testing and implement a “what can you tell me that I can’t Google” sort of response.  In other words, the students are encouraged to respond with original and informed thoughts gleaned from their own research.

  The webinar was filled with some good information and was definitely worth the listen.  I attended this session on 10/25/10.

Thing20, creativecommons

Stockholm, 1900

No known copyright restrictions

Thing19, skype

Needless to say, it seems nearly limitless the things that Skype could be used for in the classroom.  Something I would like to try would be during a study of continents to make contact with a classroom or a teacher on each of the continents that have such things as classrooms and teachers (Antartica doesn't, I'm guessing!!).  It would take a bit of prep work and luck, but I think it would be a terrific experience if successful. 
I would also like to do a book study/reading of a grade appropriate book after making arrangements for the author to do a short (or long) Skype session with the class when the reading is completed. 
I'm a bit intimidated after reading some of the blogs from Skype users who had a challenging initiation into using it.  But I AM anxious to give it a try.
My Skype name is roger.bush76

Thing17, twitter

Homework Help Sessions
Being that helping students with homework after school hours is difficult for most of us. HP teach exchange suggests using Twitter and student helpers to take care of this problem.

Start by assigning more responsible students to be homework mentors who will be willing to moderate tweet chats. Design a timetable that fits with your student mentors’ schedules. For example, Jim Bob will be the homework mentor on Mondays from 7:00 – 8:00. Create a homework help hashtag or a separate TodaysMeet room as needed.

I think this activity will place many of the students in their comfort zone of a social network doing productive "things" they would perhaps NOT be doing on a social network site.

Teacher Experience Exchange

Thing15, RSS

Really Simple Syndication in on online service that allows users (SUBSCRIBERS) to place links to web sites that offer content that is frequently updated to be placed into one place for easy reference.

Thing 13, Mid Module Reflection

I wish I would have started this module sooner! I've thoroughly enjoyed the selection of "things" to do... things I would have NEVER otherwise tried. I continue to be nearly overwhelmed, but having a nice selection of technology pre-screened and ready to try is nice. I've already introduced many of my fellow teachers to SCHOOLTUBE and some of the photo editing sites.
The challenge I've had with so many good classroom ideas is sorting out what I have time to do with so many worthy tools while at the same time tending to the students and their paperwork. I'm confident that once the workload of the course is reduced and some of the "dust" settles, many of these "23 things" will make tending to the students and their paperwork much, much easier and enjoyable.

Thing14, blogs

Free Technology for Teachers

I scanned up and down the list of the 100 Most Inspiring and Innovative Blogs for Educators, clicked on several and eventually found my way back to #1: Free Technology for Teachers. The purpose of this site is to simply share information about free resources that teachers can use in the classroom. Richard Byrne, the blog's host, is a social studies teacher in Maine.
The blog contains the obvious, but it also posts such entries as current "Top Posts," "Best Resource Sharing Blog," "Best Individual Blog," "Favorite Resources," a complete archive of posts from the last four years, tutorials for tech oriented activities, easy links to iPhone, iPad, and iPod classroom activities among many others. It has a non-congested look and is easy to navigate.
This site would be a great place to regularly visit simply for its terrific variety of ideas that would be useful to most any grade level.

Thing 11: Learning With Video

Plant Cell Photostory

This link is to a plant cell photostory that was produced by 3 creative elementary students.  It simply identifies the parts of plant cells and their functions.  The presentation is easy for anyone to identify with and has a nice, "cool," three demensional attitude that I think elementary students will find appealing.  The illustrations are easy to connect to and the music has enough energy to maintain students' attention from beginning to end.  It's use could be a quick introduction or review of simple cell structure and the functions of each of the major parts.

CSO:

SC.O.6.2.6  construct models of plant and animal cells and compare the basic parts (e.g., cytoplasm, cell wall, cell membrane, nucleus, or  chloroplasts).

Thing 8, Reflection

I read several posts and while "grinding" through some of the TIS assignments and I thought Elissa's FINAL REFLECTION made pretty good sense: it's been a terrific and challenging experience.
Although much of the TIS journey has been slightly overwhelming. It's a bit like the anticipation of jumping into a mountain stream... you're sure the entrance into the  is going to be a shock, but once you're in the water it's a terrific experience and it definitely wakes you up! It has, and continues to be, a task that I've enjoyed.

Thing 9, Podcast (American Public Media: A Prairie Home Companion's News From Lake Wobegon

     I've been relatively familiar with Prairie Home Companion for quite a while and after getting into podcasts several years ago, it seemed I had discovered an easy way to listen to quality recordings of the entire show on my Ipod... never missing an episode.  But it turned out that the only portion of the show that was available on Itunes was the News From Lake Wobegon.  As a longtime fan of the show I always thought that the real "meat" was found in the skits, sound effects, and the live music, but not really the News From Lake Wobegon.  That was until I listened to the podcasts of only that portion of the show without all of the show's other terrific distractions.  The monologue is always a wonderfully woven story that is amazing in its consistency from week to week.  The writing and humor is nearly perfect.  This, in my opinion, is HIGH DEFINITION radio... and it's free!
     My wife, who is a former teacher of AP English, often used these broadcasts when trying to teach students the subtleties and rhythms of writing humor.  She used it because the writing was great fun, even for high schoolers, and all the fun was nothing more than a few pages of nicely placed words.  It always worked!  The link for News From Lake Wobegon is located in the page linked below.

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2011/03/12/
    

Thing 7, Image

I found this one on DUMPR.  The program place a pic I took of the U.S. Capitol's rotunda last June while on a school trip.  I really like the pic and wanted to use it, but the program pushed it out of center and made it a little too small.  But I think the kitty likes it!

Thing 5: Wordle

It looked pretty cool before inserted it here.  This is definitely a "thing" that allows you to put "garbage in" and get something much better than "garbage out!"

Thing 4: Wallwisher

We talked about WALLWISHER at Bodie's December conference in Flatwoods but didn't take it for a test drive.  It DOES seem like it will be very handy in the special ed. classroom.  Feel free to visit and contribute to ours.

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/sped52

Thing #3: Twitter

For my first Twitter search I tried "home recording" as I'm throwing together a large format live recording very soon.  I was hoping to find some interesting with different perspectives about live recording on a shoestring budget.  I'm sure that it was my lack of experience, but I only had one result from a person in the Netherlands.  Interesting... I'm not so sure, but definitely a different perspective. 

I probably should have searched a technology in the classroom topic but right now I need to look at something FRESH!!!

Still Here!!

Like many of the rest of you I'm sure, it's been a wild and eventful school year (so far) and it's been easy to drift away from TIS.  I'm still not sure what the light at the end of the tunnel really is...
Looking forward to seeing everyone in May.