how Tweet it is… (thing 22)

Socially, I am opposed to twitter.  I think it is silly to post updates on your life, and I think it is sillier that people are reading them.

That being said, I think it could be a powerful tool in a classroom.  Maybe not so much in a 4th grade classroom, but I can see the merit in a larger lecture class in high school or college where students may be less prone to engage in classroom discussion.  “The fear of raising your hand” can be easily subsided when there is a giant screen behind the teacher that has an ongoing real time conversation about the topic scrolling as more students participate in the “discussion”.  You also need each kid to have a laptop or cell phone for the immediate twitter conversation to work.

As far as Classroom 2.0 goes, I think that it is interesting.   It’s neat that there is a forum for teachers to share their techie knowledge.  You could really spend a lot of time surfing and reading all the posts.  Honestly, it is awesome to see and read all of the cool things other teachers are doing.  It is a good push for me to do something more with technology in my own classroom.

Thing 7C. I love Mrs. Yollis.

So I have been following Mrs. Yollis’ classroom blog on my google reader.  It was getting pretty boring over the summer, but now that school is back in– WOW.  This woman is pretty amazing.  She is using her blog as such an amazing teaching tool.  She also went to a Google teacher summit this summer (JEALOUS) and learned some ways to use Google in her classroom.  I can’t wait to steal ideas from her this school year!

Google is my Hero… (Thing 20)

Google Docs are an awesome tool for the classroom.  First, you could set up classroom writing assignments that are shared with peers and are edited completely online.  Students could work in pairs to create a really well done piece of writing due to the immediate collaboration online.  You could also create files that would essentially go with you everywhere.  I am always forgetting a thumb drive and consequently I am leaving files that I need at school at home and files that I need at home at school.  Google Docs is also operating system blind.  It doesn’t matter if you create on a Mac or a PC– you will still see the same document on your monitor.

I think the coolest thing that you could do with Google Docs is the collaboration piece.  I can create a file and share it with Jen, Kimsey, and Sara, and without ever meeting face to face, we can edit and perfect a document online without stress.  How cool.

The forms are also really neat.  I embedded a form onto my school blog (rivner.blogspot.com) about summer reading, and I am really interested to see what the responses are.  This could be a fun way to get feed back from students about lessons and field trips!

<iframe src=”https://spreadsheets.google.com/embeddedform?formkey=dEtFQVJodzE3WENSaVZjNVQ2QWUwMEE6MQ” width=”760″ height=”807″ frameborder=”0″ marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″>Loading…</iframe>

Attitude about the Latitude (a retired weatherman goes children’s song singer) Thing 19

Videos help so much with explaining hard concepts. They also do great things with motivation and investing your students into the lesson… This video I found is a really fun song about longitude and latitude (a tough concept for many people!).

Thing 18

Thing 17 (don’t laugh)

So I have been listening to podcasts since 2006.  I am slightly addicted, and it has come to the point where I have stopped listening to music on my ipod entirely.  My two favorite podcasts are the Walt Disney World Radio Show and MuggleNet’s podcast.  They automatically download and update my ipod when new episodes are published.  I really think that there is some educational value in podcasting, and it is not only good for the listener/audience, I think that podcasting can be beneficial to students who create the podcasts.  Don’t they call that mutualism in science?

I LOVE the podcasts that I listen to, and I even took a podcasting class in college (go Dawgs!  It was right after my class on underwater basket weaving).  I think that it really is a step toward the education of the future, and it creates a new media for students and teachers of all shapes and sizes and ages are communicating, sharing, and growing.

Alexander Hamilton. In a rap.

Had to post this.  I am officially obsessed.

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My Library Thing (Thing 16)

How cool!  I love being able to find other books that I will enjoy by reading reviews and checking out how the different books are connected.  This seems a lot like another widget I found called Your Next Read


Yummy and Delicious. (Thing 15)

My experience with Delicious today has been exciting and makes so much more sense than e-mailing myself and my colleges links to different websites. In the past, I have just cut and pasted a website address into an e-mail and clicked send. I usually don’t send it with a description, and if you lose the e-mail, you are just out of luck. Delicious is a great way to forget the e-mails and put those links in a more useful spot. Makes so much sense!! My delicious site is http://delicious.com/missyrivner

7b. First Year Dos and Donts.

I read this article from Gary Rubinstein’s blog. The article itself doesn’t make that much sense if you aren’t familiar with the Teach For America Institute, but his video of his sessions are pretty relevant. They are pretty long, so check out video 5, 6, and 7 if you are pressed for time.