Learning, Teaching, Technology and Summer

www.fotosearch.com.

During the school year many teachers feel frustrated hearing about new technologies. In most cases, the reason is lack of time.

What can be better than summer break as time to learn about new tools, open accounts or require the site to send you a forgotten username and password to access gadgets you've started some (or long) time ago, browse the Internet to get ideas on how this tool can be used in class and practice, plan, and add it to curriculum.

Check out these resources: they may help you give way to new teaching techniques in this school year :

Amazing tutorial by Intel for Project-Based Learning is excellent for anyone for a professional development opportunity for technology and differentiation (regards to Daine Vahab).

Ten Techniques to Use in a Laptop-based Classroom this article by Laura Turner covers the how-tos of blogs, wikis, digital ink, tablet PCs, online learning, and much more. Many helpful links included.

Wiki: Create Accounts For Your Students
If using a wiki is one of the tools in your class next year, to know how to create accounts in bulk is a must. Read the instructions in the Wikispaces blog.

Find safe videos for the classroom - NCTE suggests links to streaming videos that could be used for education. Tip: streaming takes a lot of bandwidth and slows down the Internet. Download videos to desktop and show them directly from your laptop.

Scholastic provides teachers with features and lesson plans for building a classroom community during the first days of school.

Claimation - creation of mini-movies: Consider incorporating claymation into lesson plans for any subject with this how-to guide. Claymation uses artist's clay, a digital camera, a computer, and video software to engage students in active learning. Students create clay figures and make them come to life by posing them in multiple frames and creating a mini-movie.

Blogs used as students' portfolios: To Shred, or Not To Shred... By Bob Sprankle
who shares his experience of using blogs for keeping his students' works instead of losing many of them at the end of the year as well as throughout the year if they are done on paper.

NCTE recommend blogging sites that are available to start a blog. They also provide some tips of how to find blogs of other teachers. Read NTCE Inbox Blog: In Search of Teacher Bloggers

Digital Photography Contest for students: Portraits of Learning, the 7th annual digital photography contest announced by Tech & Learning. Read more...

30 Poets in 30 Days starts today, April 1!

Children’s Poet Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman and 29 other poets will unveil one of their previously unpublished poems each day in April in celebration of National Poetry Month.

The project, 30 Poets/30 Days, is the brainchild of blogger and author Gregory K. Pincus, who’ll share one new poem each day in April via his blog, GottaBook, and on Twitter.

Read more in School Library Journal .

April is National Poetry Month

Celebrate National Poetry Month in April with new ideas and activities!

The High School celebrates the Poetry Month with the Poetry Night on April 23: students will read either their own poetry or their favorite poems.

The Library Poet Tree will be planted at the library entrance on April 1, and students can bring original poems to be hung as the tree's leaves.

The Academy of American Poets honors it with Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 30. The idea is simple: pick up a poem, carry it in your pocket, and pass it to family, friends, cooworkers. Browse this site and select poems for the day.

You will see posters around the campus and "pockets" filled with poems in the library so everyone will be able to take one and pass it on .

As Silvia Virdell wrote in Booklinks, March issue, "If you’re looking for fresh ways to approach poetry with young people, you might consider multimedia methods for experiencing the visual and aural qualities of poetry. Using popular Internet sites, CDs, and a variety of software, kids can explore the imagery, emotion, and language of poetry in ways that are creative, playful, and multisensory." I would say, this is true not only for young people.

Here are some links and ideas of how to use digital tools to that can be useful when we approach the Poetry Month:

How to Read a Poem Out Loud

Poetry for Kids - 25 most popular web sites

Poetry 180:
A poem a day for American High Schools from the Library of Congress.

Canonical Verse: 75+ links

Poetry Teachers: links featuring poetry in class, humorous poems, and poetry theater ideas.

Words and Pictures – Poems: Ten colorful poems with animation, audio and activities

April is Poetry Month
A long list of links from Education World

Scholastic Poetry writing workshops
Workshops with Jack Prelutsky, Karla Kuskin, and Jean Marzollo
Poetry engine workshop, meet poets online.

I Spy Riddle in Rhyme
Each month features an I SPY picture and asks you to write the riddle.

Silvia Virdell's blog Children's Poetry

Ideas for Digital Activities:
- Add a poem to your email footer
- Post a poem on your blog or social networking page
- Podcast or vodcast your favorite poem(s)
- Listen to audio and podcasts published by The Poetry Foundation

Peggy and Marina

Web 2.0 tools in foreign language classes

Foreign Language Faculty in the Age of Web 2.0 (EDUCAUSE Quarterly, July-September 2008) highlights the importance of using Web 2.0 tools and advantages they provide to promote communication and sharing - the two essential aspects in teaching foreign languages in class.

The Internet provides access to authentic language in print and spoken forms. Teachers can make a collection of theme-based articles, news articles, and books.
By using blogs, wikis, podcasts, VoiceThread, and social networks they can bring the target culture to the classroom without traveling to the country.

VoiceThread
is a great tool for Foreing Language and ELL classes. It is an online media album that allows a group of people to make comments on images, videos, and documents, really simply. You can participate 5 different ways - using your voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam). It's easy to control who can access and comment on a VoiceThread, which makes it a secure place to talk about almost anything: business and academic presentations, travelogues, family history, art critiques, language study, tutorials, book clubs and digital storytelling. A VoiceThread allows an entire group conversation to be collected from anywhere in the world and then shared in one simple place. Try it, you'll like it!

Wikispaces: Now in French: Wikispaces is working on translations Wikispaces into many different languages. Their first language, French, is now available! So if "vous parlez français," you can change your language preference by visiting "My Account" and choosing French in the settings section. Learn more about this new option on their blog.

See a collection of links for French, Spanish, and Hebrew classes on Schoogle

Free Online Resources for Foreign Languages:
Livemocha - Language Learning: learn, practice, and share a variety of languages.
Mango Languages - free resource of learning languages online.
Wikibooks.com - the open content textbooks collection. You can save a book on the computer or print it.
FSI Language Course
Foreign Language House (Spanish, French, & ESL) - context-based, communicative language learning materials for all ages: *Situations, Stories, Non-Fiction Readings, Culture, or Content in Each Unit;
*Reproducibles Always Included; *Everyday Conversational Activities
Free Language Pods

Supplementary Links:
Blogs
Wikis
VoiceThread
How to type French accent marks
Le Notepad
Free Language Pods: French, Spanish, and other languages.

Articles:
Social Networks in Education: French Language
The Use of Web 2.0 tools to promote learners autonomy

Examples:Syllabus as a wiki
Blogs used in Foreign Language Classes - Spanish (Diane Vahab through Blackboard),
Podcast in Hebrew class - Nicole Chernick's class of Hebrew Beginners (requires AIS login)