Love my Web2.0 World

Another connection is made! Miss M who writes the Eternal Learning of the Open Mind blog saw my VoiceThread with the math problem for the Gr. 2 class in Arizona. She took her question in a whole new direction and created this delightful math question using Animoto.

Problem Solving

On Twitter today someone pointed me to The Teacher's Life on YouTube.  This teacher of Gr. 2 students is asking people to send his class math problems to solve.  I decided to have a little fun and created the VoiceThread problem below.

For a clearer view go to VoiceThread.

Fast forward to Monday morning. When I checked my email there was a lovely reply from the Math teacher:
"Ohhhhh this is perfect.... thanks so much for taking the time to do this!
They will love it:) ". This made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

On a little ego trip I re-visited the VoiceThread I had created and lo and behold a teacher in Indonesia had already located the VoiceThread and left a comment,
"Hi grade 2 in AZ. Good luck with this problem. Maybe our gr. 2 kids can give you some problems. I'll ask them tomorrow. We live in Indonesia and go to Jakarta International School. Look that up on the map."

Now how cool is that? A small amount of playtime on my part produced a connection between two classes half a world away from each other. I love web2.0!

A Whale of a Problem

The Power of Teaching Note-Taking Skills

As adults we all take notes unconsciously every day. We read and listen, we capture the essence of the information we take in. We act upon that information by making decisions. Sometimes we jot things down but often we don't.

The Academy Awards are coming up and we will have conversations in staff rooms and with friends about the various offerings for this year. We won’t remember every word we hear, only the important bits. We'll make decisions on which movies we'd like to see because someone said movie x made them laugh or movie y was extremely violent. We take mental notes.

The ability to sift through information and identify the gist or central theme or important details is a skill worth teaching. I have some links to useful note-taking tools in my wiki which includes graphic organizers and quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing ideas. Look under Gathering Information.

Teaching students to take notes effectively is a good way to combat plagiarism. One of my favourite methods is to use the highlighting feature in Word. Ask the kids to cut and paste a passage into a Word document. Then show them how to use the highlighting tool to select only those words essential to the meaning of the passage.

The Highlighting Tool




Make sure they use a light shade if they are going to print their work.




Sample Highlighting




When some of my students used the dark highlighting colours it inspired an idea for another useful technique. Have the students use the darker colours to highlight the information they don't need. When they print out their page it's much easier for them to write in their own voice because they can no longer see everything the original author wrote.

Black Out Highlighting




Photo used under the Creative Commons Licence by
A Schwerin Moses
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aschwerinmoses/2039613715/

Web Finds

Here are a few web finds for readers/English teachers this week:

1000 novels everyone must read from The Guardian

Links from Bookninja

Time Magazines Interview with Stephenie Meyer


Photo Credit: *Your Guide
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaspi/7971252/
Used under a Creative Commons License.

Letting the Light Shine Through

Sometimes I have to talk myself into doing what's good for me. Take today. We haven't seen the sun in at least a week. Dense fog blanketed the city and seeped into my mind. I got out of the habit of walking, just as I have got out of the habit of blogging. I was in a January funk.

So I finally grabbed the camera and headed up the trail through the forest. I was rewarded with fresh clean air and the sight of the sun streaming through the tress. It was an hour well spent.

Overheard in the Library This Week:
- Oh look, here's a picture of the Pentagon. It's shaped like an octagon.
- I bet Mrs. E. listens to heavy metal when there's no one around.

Honestly, I don't make these things up! I think the math department has some work to do.

Twitter: a brief beginner’s guide

So you’ve joined the Twitter conversation and are looking for some interesting people to follow. Here are a few sources to get you started.

Liz B. Davis' Educators on Twitter spreadsheet. To add your name go to Liz's blog The Power of Educational Technology

TwitterPacks

Twitter4teachers

Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter

Just Tweet It

Other ways to build your network:
- When you follow someone you like check to see who they follow
- follow Mr. Tweet. This service will send you a list of people they recommend you follow. Their recommendations are great.

Network Weaving has some other useful suggestions.

What can you do with your Twitter account?
- ask questions
- use a poll
- tell about something that has caught your attention
- answer someone else’s question
- post a useful link telling what people will find there

Please leave a comment if you have other suggestions. Thanks!