BOSTBLOG

He was excited to see me, needed help with measurement homework, and was willing to write in his journal.  R. was eager.  We were joined from time to time by little girls needing help on this and that.

Seemed to know many beginning consonant sounds.  Some ending consonant sounds.  Didn’t recognize “want” even on his third try at writing it.  Thought sentence would have “people” even though the word was “guys”.  Is he looking at the words?  Does he get reading?  I think he did kindergarten twice, now in first.

Mixed fun and friends on the Sponge Bob worksheet.  Happily colored it.  Wrote all the letters when spelled aloud by me, mixing upper and lower case letters.

Took home a book on Rescue cars and a little Chic-Fil-A book.  His brother promised to read it with him.

Did not know what a STOP sign shape, color, letters are.

I asked him to look for STOP signs.  Does he fail to notice?  Can he see?  Does he see beyond the first letter?  Does he want to read?  Still, there is willingness and joy.

I liked the White House.  It was pretty.  The fountains were beautiful and the flowers looked so nice.  I have been reading a book about the first ladies.  Mrs. Washington was the first First Lady.  She did not live in the White House.  Mrs. Adams was the second First Lady.  She did live there.  There was a fire in the White House.  Dolley Madison was the fourth First Lady.  Dolley Madison saved the famous Washington portrait.  Sasha and Malia Obama live in the White House now.

At the Spy Museum I climbed up into the air vent.  We saw tape recorders.  They were huge, because they were the old fashion ones.  The spies had to fit them into their suitcases.  They weren’t that smart back then.  How did they get away with the big recorders in the suitcase?  You have to memorize things to be a spy.  You have to memorize your name that you are going to be, where you were born (I was born in Sweetwater, Tennessee.  I was 13 years old.  I went to Dublin, Ireland to be a spy for seven days.)

At one museum there was an old girl’s basketball uniform.  It was a white skirt with a white shirt with a red thing around the neck.  And, there was Kermit the Frog in a glass case.  There was the red ruby shoes from the Wizard of Oz.  There was a Globe Trotter jersey.  (I saw the Globe Trotters.  They play a real team and do a football hike.)  They had the Grouch from Sesame Street.  The puppets were in a glass case.

At the Air and Space Museum we saw some huge airplanes in the air.  They were hanging by ropes.  There were space rocks that you could touch.  I touched one.  It was smooth and black.  And then we saw rockets and a space chimp.  It was a dead real one from the movie, Night at the Museum.  I think it was Mable.  There was small room with colored planets that were hanging by clear strings.   There was giant toy store in the gift shop.  You went down an escalator to get to it.

I rode up in the elevator to the top of the Washington Monument, and we saw the Lincoln Memorial and the White House.  (In the Night at the Museum movie Lincoln got up and started walking.)  We rode in a taxi and then we got in a trolley and saw pretty much every memorial and at some of them we got to get out.  There was a great big wall with all the names of all the soldiers that died in the Viet Nam war.  Franklin Roosevelt was in a wheel chair.

In looking back over the tasks/activities sheet for this course, I am amazed at how many different places we have been in such a short time.  What a journey!

Gmail, Firefox, Voicethread, Edublogs, Google Reader, Wikis, Creative Commons, Flickr, Slideshow, OnLine Conference, Delicious, LibraryThing, Podcasts, YouTube, TeacherTube, GoogleDocs, Pageflakes, Ning, and many, many more.

Educational networking is exciting.  I plan to attend many more events at the Web 2.0 Online Conference to introduce myself to networking tools and uses for them in the classroom.  I plan to continue to skim and scan my Google Reader.  And, I would like to try to follow the blogs of my favorites and get to know others who have so much to offer in what they know about educational networking.  Last but not least, I plan to enjoy and have fun with YouTube, my Pageflakes, and other cool sites.

I have been looking forward to this THING.  A friend told me all about NING just a few weeks ago.  She has put her book club on NING and says it works so well for all the members.  I had joined Facebook in the fall and have enjoyed catching up with friends with whom I had lost touch.  I look forward to NING, not only for help with my teaching, but for me.  I want to explore NING more in depth and visit it often in exploring topics for me as a lifelong learner.  Jerrie – I can’t believe you were #34 – cutting edge!

SHAKESPEARE

The first place I went on NING was to Remixing Shakespeare for 21st Century Students.  The event had taken place earlier in March, but I was able to see it.  At the beginning everyone was asked to point to where they were on a map of the world and then of the United States.  It was exciting just to see where everyone was.  Participants could chat, ask questions, and vote.  I have not watched the program as I was skimming and scanning, but look forward to returning.

ESL and EFL

In my online course Teaching ESL Introduction, we are asked to go to the discussion area to give ideas on how to work with vocabulary, grammar, etc.  I searched Ning and found the EFL Classroom 2.0.  I will give this site and freerice.com and wordahead.com to the others in the discussion area as soon as I complete this THING.  These are great sites for anyone, not just ESL and EFL students.

On return to Google Reader I came across the winners of the most influential blogs of 2007.  When I have more time, I will return to the winners of the different categories.

The company I now keep... in Discourse on Discourse took me to these thoughtful blogs.  I followed the trail to the these blogs by Karl Fisch, Konrad Glowgowski, Kris Bradburn.

We must encourage our students to use the tools of web 2.0.  We must also provide them with a ripe environment to help them grow their blogs.

Pageflakes is the ultimate in organization.  By introducing Pageflakes on the first day of school, I can encourage students to become more organized and offer parents a great tool through which they can keep up with all that is going on in their child’s classroom.  No more wondering where they put the last note from the teacher, parents can find it all on Pageflakes.

Class information

Students and parents will enjoy going to Pageflakes for information about homework assignments, lunch menus, school calendar,and sticky notes reminders.

Practice skills

Also, it would be a great way to view shared links on the Class Delicious Bookmarks.

Share Photos of Class Activities

Students and parents will enjoy posted photos of class activities.

Newsletter for the class

Parents can quickly visit the homepage and be in touch with what’s happening in our classroom.

Stretch

Links can provide opportunities for students to read a particular news article or read in depth on a particular topic we are studying in class.

Fun

Links to music, weather, sports scores, and on an on will be fun for students to check out.

Information

By adding wikipedia and the dictionary, I make these easily accesible to students

There are so many possibilities for using Google Docs.

REVISION HISTORY

Students and their teachers will be able to see how far they have come from the first to final draft of a paper.  Also, a student can retrieve a thought which was deleted in an early revision.  No more “if I had only kept that idea” – it’s in the revision history.

INSTANT FORMS

Teachers and students can relax.  Permission slips can be included on Google Docs, and parents can easily print them out.  No more “the dog ate it or it must be on the floor of the bus” – Google Docs is collaborative.

SHARE LINKS

Teachers can create web pages that share links.  No more “just go to the internet to find some games to practice phonics on your computer” – Peek’s Page is at your fingertips.

Who is Peek?

Videos Discovered

The History of YouTube was a great beginning to many hours on YouTube and TeacherTube. I had never thought of YouTube as a community. It is a very diverse community, and I marvel at what some members of this community have decided to put on YouTube for all to see. I went right to Evolution of Dance since I had never seen it. I enjoyed listening to the elderly English gentleman and want to get back to him and hear more of his stories.
Ideas for a Classroom Video

I searched YouTube and TeacherTube for videos I could use to enhance a unit on gardening.  Using clips from videos to grab the interest of students is tricky.  It is difficult to find just the right video.  So, we could use the clips as examples of different aspects of planting seeds and then make the perfect video, which I never found, to tell the story of our classroom garden.  Jennifer New had a wonderful article on Edutopia which I would use to write my lesson plans.  After completing the unit, we could watch a great video from YouTube to see how farming is done on a grand scale using huge machinery instead of rakes, hoes, and shovels.  The John Deere music is great.

Subscribe Free  Add to my Page