Pictures are worth a thousand words!

Here are a set of computers that I use in my classroom! Notice how they have changed over time. The white boxes are still running and work nicely thanks to our tech staff. Also, the two Dell computers are 5 years apart, boy have they changed in size and looks. All in all, it is great to have computers working so the students are able to use the Internet and various programs without a lot of frustration.

Spring Break!

As I was experimenting with my camera, I was able to go to settings and change my color setting to black and white fairly easy. Taking black and white pictures seems to be very popular now and very easy to do with a digital camera.

Above is a picture of my granddaughters! This picture will be beautiful as I frame it in either black or white.

Testing, Testing, Testing

This past week has been one of the testing weeks for all students living in Illinois using the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT). http://www.isbe.net/assessment/isat.htm
This test is given over a two week period.

There are many ways to prepare for the ISAT tests; however, nothing prepares a student better than getting plenty of sleep throughout their school year and being prepared for school. This means working hard on assignments in class as well as outside of class and coming to school ready for school.

Not coming to school sleepy and tired from a night of watching TV or being out late is very important if you want your child to be successful in school. Sure this happens occasionally but it should not be the rule.

The best thing that parents can do for their child is to prepare them for the school day throughout the school year.
• Eat breakfast (even if it is something small)
• Get plenty of sleep the night before school
• Help your child do their homework
• Ask your child what they are doing in school.
• Reading builds vocabulary so have your child read every night before TV time.

Activities for improving vocabulary and reading comprehension:

1. Have your child pick a research subject to report on. Then have your child frame a question then answer it. Who, what, when, where, why, and how many? are great places to start.

2. When your child is given extended response questions, does he or she….

a. Restate the question in the first sentence.
b. Support the answer with at least two ideas from the selection and expand on those ideas.
c. Support the answer with meaningful examples from student’s own experiences.
d. Quote something directly from the selection.
e. Balance ideas from the text with own ideas.
f. Answer the question that was asked.
g. Answer all parts of the question.
h. Use complete sentences.
i. Does the response make sense?

3. Provide quiet time where your child can read for 30 minutes a night. Before TV, have your child read. It can be anything as long as they are reading. Reading improves vocabulary. Support your child’s reading habits but making reading time as valuable as TV time.



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Learning Something New!

Every day we learn something new!

I was in a meeting with our Tech personnel and found out that when something is blocked the filter will list why it is blocked. For example, it seems that the student links on Class Blogmeister are blocked at our school district because they fall under the term forums and forums cannot be unblocked without opening other links and websites into the classroom.

I have noticed that our student links, teacher links, and comment areas are all blocked; therefore, I will have to investigate and find out the reasons why? The reasons will give me a clue to whether or not the tech guys can help me unblock the links.

This is great news and bad news.

It is great that the filter will give you information on why the site is blocked.

The bad news is that the students and I cannot log in to work on our blogs at school. However, we will keep working with our wikis, writing articles, and posting them at night.

This has been an exciting learning time for the students as well as for me.





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"Meme: Passion Quilt"

"Meme: Passion Quilt" was a completely new concept to me, so I was happy and excited to be tagged by Allison Miller.

If you would like to read more about "Meme: Passion Quilt", here are some great websites!

First of all, I never do chain-letters but I found this quite easy and enjoyable. Plus I was honored by Allison's choosing to tag me. I plan to keep this social networking chain-blog letter going.

So, to follow the rules I have posted a picture from flickr and added a caption!

Presenting Class Blogmeister to My Students!

Now, to answer the question: What am I passionate in 'teaching' my students?

I am passionate in teaching my students to think and create. I have been having my students blog this year to improve writing skills as well as letting the students find their voices. They are encouraged to write their opinions, ideas, and concerns. They are just starting to realize that they can have opinions too. We spend time working on numerous short stories that had been fun to create.

Now for the fourth part of the rules, I now have officially tagged the following people.

Lauren

Kate

Josephine

Joyce

Rachel

If you choose to participate, please follow these rules:

Meme: Passion Quilt rules:

1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

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Web 2.0 Tools for the classroom!

Here is a slideshow by Vicki Davis that is excellent in showing what a school district can do to open up learning with the Web 2.0 tools, Horizon Project, or the Flat Classroom Project. A lot of good information !

| View | Upload your own

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Web 2.0

Twitter

What an interesting week reading Tweets on Twitter! I have been learning about some wonderful things that I will be sharing in the upcoming weeks. For example, add Gadgets to your homepage with Google Gadgets at http://tinyurl.com/2qrfz3

In addition, here is an excellent article on Google Docs http://www.google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html

Twitter

I attended the National Educational Computing Conference in Georgia during the summer of 2007. One of the Web 2.0 tools that I was introduced to was Twitter. Twitter is social networking and micro-blogging put together around the question "What are you doing?"

In 140 characters or less, you post answers to that question. It is instant messaging from your computer or phone.

Once joining Twitter, you build a network of people you would like to follow. I am following people that have many of the same interests as I do. I am learning as much as I can about the Web 2.0 tools, educational technology, and specifically blogging.

Advantages to Twitter:

Everyday, I have a notebook beside me so I can write down any information that I need to look up later. In this way, I am keeping a journal on educational technology and Web 2.0 tools. Most of the time, the information leads to free "stuff" just waiting for me to tap into. For example, here are a few Web 2.0 tools I have been learning about:

voicethread, where you upload pictures and add comments or audio. What is really unique is that you can have others add their comments or leave an audio recording. Voicethread can be used to teach about a specific topic to commenting on family photos. The sky is the limit with this tool.

audacity, If you are interested in making MP3 files, this is a free tool that you must check out.

Social bookmarking with del.icio.us, If you want to be able to get to those bookmarks that you have made at home on your computer from work, use del.icio.us. You can "log in" to any computer, anywhere and tap into your bookmarks.

co.mments,
Co.mments is a new tool for me. I will be able to feed my comments into a reader to keep updated on recent comments made to me. You can read more about this @dswaters

To learn more about technology, here is Sue Waters' homepage:
http://aquaculturepda.edublogs.org

Podomatic is a great place to upload your MP3 files!
podomatic,



skype
Skype has several features, but the one I am interested in is computer to computer Skype calls. I can Skype my girlfriend in Italy for free. I will write later how that turns out.

Well, this is just a few of the things that I have been learning from my Twitter friends.

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Blogging to Encourage Writing!

For years, it has been the teacher’s responsibility to motivate and encourage ALL students to write. Every year students must practice and learn to write persuasive, narrative, and expository essays. Not only do they have to learn the different types of writing, but they have to take a state test that only provides 45 minutes to do the writing successfully. The rough draft to final polished piece must be written in 45 minutes. That is a hard task for anyone to complete!

I feel this is where blogging throughout the year has been encouraging and motivating for students. My students are coming early to class so they can work on the computers and write stories. They want to publish these stories to their blogs. Practice, practice, and more practice makes better writers. How do you get good at something? You practice!

How do readers get better at reading? by reading! Then it is only logical that to get better at writing, we must write more. Practice, practice, and more practice.

I do not have to make my students write. They want to write using word processors, wikis, and blogs. Having an audience to write for is a powerful tool for the classroom. My students are very excited that they have a blog and wiki to work on.





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February 1

My students are really motivated to blog, especially, due to the fact we have been invited to Tech 2008. We will be taking an all day field trip (3 hours one-way) to Springfield, Illinois. The students will present what they have been working on this year while explaining wikis and blogs to representatives, senators, superintendents, principals, board members, etc.

As I have written in earlier posts, we are using Classblogmeister and at the Pritchardpress wiki as our web 2.0 tools so that the students can write and publish their articles.

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