Today’s site is a great one that can be used for a wide range of ages. It is a Math Dictionary which not only gives great explanations for mathematical terms but is also interactive in that it allows the users to see the term in action. I have used it in my class not only as a demonstration term but also as a way for students to explore concepts being taught in class as an intro or a fun extension.

The site is A Maths Dictionary For Kids .

The creator also has some great tools for writing linked from the site as well as a maths site for older students.

Just as a teaser, here is one of the videos on education which is very relevant to where our education system needs to go.

Today’s tool is not really that interactive and probably not really usable for my Grade 3 class. However, it is kind of a neat sight that gives a different perspective on world statistics. It basically takes the map of the world and distorts it to reflect a variety of statistics. The site is called Worldmapper and it provides users with a number of different topics on which to compare data on. Here is one in the education category:

Territory size shows the proportion of all spending on primary education worldwide that is spent there, when measured in purchasing power parity US$.

Now, though they have information on how they create the maps, I don’t know where they get their information. But it is a neat site and the goods category would be useful when discussing where our goods come from which is something I discuss with the children as part of our look at trade between communities. One of the activities I used to do was to get students to find 10 goods at home and write down where they were made. We then surveyed the class and created a graph on the countries and the numbers of goods found for each. Using worldmapper, it would be interesting to see if the data matched. This might also work well with the site, Gapminder which, “enables you to explore the changing world from your own computer. Moving graphics show how the development of all countries by the indicators you choose.” Here is a video demonstrating it’s use from TedTalks: 

This was/is exactly what I think about Twitter. Now, the author did become a fan of twitter after having used it and listed their reasons and now there is wiffiti; a sort of cross between a wiki and a twitter. However, I still do not understand what the fuss is. Who has the time to do this? I don’t get to my computer enough during the school day to keep a Twitter going effectively. I have a hard enough time keeping my personal blog and my classblog going let alone get home to my wife after planning, etc to have some quality time.  Having other educators commenting on your thoughts of the moment and sharing their thoughts is appealing. In our classrooms all day, it is sometimes hard to have conversations with other teachers that really reaches deep into the core of teaching and learning. So, having a group of educators at your fingertips you can follow and converse with is appealing. However, I believe that it is missing the meaningfulness of actual interactions that are longer than the instant, quick response twittering enables. Don’t we want to develop deeper understandings of what it means to educate and be an educator? Can we have those types of conversations in the small amount twittering allows us? Or are we moving more into what seems to be the domain of media where everything needs to be in quick soundbytes of information? Don’t we want to teach our students to reflect and develop deeper understandings? Can these be done using twitter? Me personally, I would rather spend the time trying to interact with other educators through e-mail, wiki’s or blogs.

The other thing I wonder about Twitter is how do we bring in the other educators who have just as much expertise and information to share but don’t want to be bombarded with constant messages. It’s too distracting. Sometimes I wonder if what we do as educational technologists is not so much bring ideas and learning together but increasingly seperate ourselves from those who don’t have as much skill with technology thus creating this division. I don’t think Twitter as a tool as to bring the two groups together.

Anyway, that’s my thought. I would love to be convinced otherwise. Maybe somebody out there can convince me.

This week, I thought I would highlight the site Letterpop. This is a really neat site to help with creating newsletters that are eye-appealing and fun. It is a simple tool to use with easy step by step directions. There are numerous templates to choose from and the creators are constantly adding new ones. Editing is somewhat limited but you can move text boxes around to create a better placement of images and text. It is also easy to add new pages. When you are done, you can either print it off or display it publicly on the site for everyone to see.

This is no Microsoft Publisher, Pages or other desktop application that creates newsletters. You are limited in your editing capabilities. When I have gone to create a newsletter, I have had some difficulties getting the edges of the page to align with what the printed version is supposed to look like. Also, there were some small issues with the ability to change sizes and types of text. You are also limited in the types of pictures you can use. It does have a supply of clip art like Microsoft does. You are using pictures that you have downloaded yourself or images from Flickr. I used yotophoto which worked nicely but it also means more time looking for an effective picture that fits with what you want.

This site is still in Beta so these kinks are to be expected. However, I am not sure I would use this yet for full newsletters. I have used it mostly as reminders or requests for help; a quick note to send home to parents. I visited the site today and saw that they are going to be making some improvements soon so hopefully some of these issues have been dealt with. I myself would like a little more flexibility with the text option. However, the site is easy to use and fun and I don’t mind using photos as I think itgives your newsletter a sharper presentation and more professional look to your newsletters.

Tell me what you think of it and how you have used it!!! Let’s start a conversation!

So I thought I would start a topic and see if we can build it. As they say . . . If you build it, they will come!

So here it is . . . Why I am a Educational Technologist!  I will start it off and give the ending. I would love for us to compile a list of reasons why, though technology integration is frustrating and challenging at times, we keep at it in our schools. Your thoughts can be thoughtful, provocative, inspiring, hopeful, challenging or tongue and cheek. As they come in I will keep updating the list so everyone can see it grow!

Here we go!

Why I am a Educational Technology Teacher!

I want to empower my students!!!

I can plug in a computer, projector, tv, etc!

…….

But most of all, I am a teacher working and striving to help all my students reach their potential!!

Let’s get this out there and build this list!!!!!!

The video is originally from the Digital Ethnology site which also adds the explanation of where their statistics came from.

What are your thoughts? Let’s have a conversation!

As it is Edtech Thursday, I am going to highlight a web 2.0 tool that you can use in the classroom. Now, you might be saying that most of the tools I have been highlighting might be a little light and fluffy in that they are not really heavyweight resources. In my mind, heavyweight resources include things like wikipages, moodles, eluminate, etc. We may get to those. However, there are only so many hours in a day and some of these types of web 2.0 tools can be huge and intimidating for teachers who are looking for something that they can just start using in the classroom. I want to help teachers to find a way to ease into the web 2.0 world with their students; to give them a taste of what is out there and the possibilities. My own learning curve in the use of technology in the classroom has been one of exploration; not being formally taught a tool. This is the key I think. Not waiting around for a workshop. Pick something a work with it. Become comfortable with the tool and find the myriad of ways it can enrich your students’ learning. A tool like “voicethreads” can be used in so many ways that you could just use that all year. You could start with teacher led use and gradually get to the point where students are creating their own voicethreads without help from you. Wouldn’t that be powerful? And that’s just one tool! This is how to get teachers on board with bringing in technology. Helping them to focus one trying one thing. I think though that teachers look at everything out there and get scared or turned off. “I can’t possibly catch up so why start?” If we help others to see all the possibilities, then help them focus on trying just one thing, maybe we can close that gap between where we are and where our students are.

What are your thoughts? What tool helped you become more of a user of these technology in the classroom? What helped other teachers in your school get to that Aha! moment in the integration of educational technology?

Maybe I am rambling. I know I didn’t get to an actual tool today. But we hear so much about these tools from gurus like Kevin Honeycutt and David Warlick and why we need to get them into the classroom. But teachers in the trenches are saying, “Great, wonderful, but I just have too much on my plate. I can’t fit that in. I wouldn’t know where to start. That looks great but it’s for more tech-savvy people than me.” And it goes on. No one is answering the question, “How can I fit that fit into my day to day curriculum considering what I have to do now, not what we hope the future will bring to education?”

Let’s have a conversation!

I’m a little late this week with edtech thursday. I had a busy day with a whole bunch of things going on. Anyway, I thought I would continue with looking at web2.0 graphing and survey tools.

I was originally introduced to a neat tool called Zoomerang a few years ago. Unfortunately, they have gone to a more fee based model. There are some aspects of it that are still free but it has sort of lost it’s appeal to me as a tool. One tool I have started using is Free Website Polls (www.free-web-site-polls.com). It is a nice and easy poll creator. It’s not fancy which is part of its appeal. Once the poll is created you can publish it to your blog, either on the side bar or within the blog itself. Anothernice thing is that you can only vote once. Clicking on one of the selections willtake to the results page where you can see the results.

So, how do we include this in our class?

Well, first of all, there are so many connections to math. You could set this up with students and get other schools participating. Our class will set one up on the class blog and collect data on favorite subjects. We will then use the Rich Chart Live to post the results on the blog. You could do this with any subject. For Language Arts, you could use it as a way to predict what will happen in a next part of a book you are reading. You could also have a book contest where you have students reading a selection of books and poll which book is the class favorite. Students could then do reviews of the book stating why it was their favorite, posting those answers to the blog.

How do you use online polling in your classroom?

Today’s site is one that I recently re-discovered. However, I have not been able to use it until this year. In Alberta, we do not do Space Science until Grade 6 so I never had an opportunity to use it. Now, that I teach Grade 3 in British Columbia, though, we get to do Space. I am excited to use this site as I think it is a really cool tool to really get a sense of the Solar System and see it from different perspectives as well as gaining some valuable information from it.

The site is the “Virtual Solar System” (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/solarsystem/splash.html) and is provided by National Geographic. The site works on both types of computers but if you are using a PC, you can use the “virtual” version of the site. This virtual version allows you to zoom around the solar system. You can view the actual motions of the planets and see their rotation around the sun. You can move around the planets on all planes and see the solar system from different perspectives. Along the side of the screen, you can access more information as well as more pictures on specific topics relating to that planet. For example, if you are viewing the sun, you can get close-up shots of sunspots in the sidebar. The site is well done and nicely laid out for use by teachers or students. The only drawback is that you need to install a plugin to allow the simulations to work. The plug-in, Viscape, may be a little tough to find though the link from the National geographic site seems to be working now. I actually had to go to another site to find it. The site I used was http://vrcontinuum.richlabonte.net/download.htm. The site is really bright and hard to read but you can find the plug-in there if the main one does not work.