iGoogle

I just have to give a quick shout out to one of the gadgets on my iGoogle homepage. I receive the "How to of the Day" and over the weekend it showed how to make a towel kitty (just like the towel animals they make in various hotels and cruise ships.) I was telling my students about it today during one of those random moments and they now want to learn how to make one! If only they could get that excited about everything I talk about! :)

Wordle Addict

I have to say, I stole Sarah's idea. I checked out Wordle.net after she included it in her blog, and fell instantly in love. It is the coolest website! I actually used it in class today. I had students search through some of Reagan's speeches, and plug in the full text. They could then choose to design their cloud however they wanted, and emailed it to me. Tomorrow, we'll use their clouds to look for themes in the speeches.

I was just impressed (and really proud) that my students then went to other teachers in our program to show off what they did in my class. I guess I'm just so tickled that they actually showed off what they did in my class to another teacher--wahoo!

Yeah, so wordle.net is terrific. Great suggestion!

Technology in the Classroom, today edition

So I was amazed that my students had a really difficult time accessing email addresses and things today in class. I had a session the first week of school where I had them create email addresses for school and then had them send me emails to keep track of their login information. Then today, I sent the day's assignment to their emails and had them work in the computer lab on the first day of the project.

While some students had no problem accessing the information, I had many students who had no clue as to how to get to any email information, how to send a new email, how to download an attachment, or even how to properly save a document. I had one student that spent the entire 45 minutes in the lab trying to create an email (they had forgotten to email me the first time), receiving the document from me, and attempting to find the information they needed and save it to their user folder. I guess sometimes I tend to take for granted the things they don't know.

Part of my idea for today was to make it a "green" assignment where there is no paper used for the work that they were doing. Although we used zero paper, I think the time spent trying to get things up and running would have been dramatically lessened with going the old fashioned way.

Facebook Friends

So far this weekend, I've had two students request to be my friend on Facebook. I don't have anything on it that would be considered controversial, but I'm wondering if anyone knows of any rules/laws out there preventing teachers from being friends with students.

Any ideas? (So far I've sent both requesters messages stating that I'd love to be their "friend" but needed to check into the rules first and then let them know on Monday.)

I know I'm supposed to be working . . .

I should be working on lesson plans and other technology stuff right now, but I was thinking back to some posts awhile back about yearbookyourself.com and just had to try.

It's kind of scary how well you can get them to line up right!

Maybe we can put these on our name badges--or in the yearbook. What do you think, Bri?

Otherwise, it's a very Candace Cameron Full House kind of look. Wow, technology can be fun!

Where's the Jelly?

I'm feeling a bit frustrated with PBwiki. It's not as user friendly as I had hoped it would be. Perhaps it's feeling a bit burned out at the end of the day, but I think I will definitely need a bit more time to play with it before using it. I think it might be too blank of a slate and perhaps it's scaring me (and I have writer's block because of it!)

I do like GoogleDocs, especially for the powerpoint option. (I especially like the different backgrounds--like the chalkboard!) It's such a cool idea to have this really good free software out there for students to use anywhere! It's great, especially, for the lower income students who maybe only have computer access here at school and at the library or at a friend's house. I'm hoping to show this to some students and have them give me some feedback on their thoughts.

Maybe it was just the blond hair?

As for the block, I know I was having issues with it back in August and assumed (incorrectly, I realize now) that it would be blocked throughout the year. I checked then later today and, yep, it works just fine. Maybe I'll chalk it all up to being a tad overwhelmed right now . . .

Or the blond hair!

Musings

Technology as a requirement

For this first week of school, I took all Alt. School students to a computer lab to set up email addresses to use for various projects throughout the year. I was (pleasantly) surprised that so many students had little/no trouble creating a new email address. There was plenty of grumbling about doing it ("Why can't I just use my fluffybunny@yahoo account?") but in the end the students did a fine job of setting things up and sending their first emails to me.

Using the fabulous ABtutor software in the computer lab, I then took them on a tour of the revamped Alt. School website, including my own site. I showed them how they will be using the homework dropbox and the link to the survey I have posted on who should be the next President of the United States. I must say, each student stared in wondrous amazement as I guided them around the net from the comfort of each chair in the room. Technology can be a great thing!

Questions that I am pondering--I really want my students to use blogger.com, how can students do this if it's blocked by the firewall? Is there more to GoogleEarth than just flying around visiting far off lands from the comfort of your couch at home? (And yes, a student did clue me into the flight simulator function!) How do I go about finding funding if there is a technology that I want for my classroom (clickers!)?