Motivation March 11, 2009
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Tools.Tags: Generator
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It is Wednesday. Who doesn’t need a little motivation on a Wednesday? (Especially around here, it was -2 this morning!!) Making your own customized and free motivational card or poster has never been easier. The Motivator allows you to upload the image of your choice (could be from your camera, or another great image site like the morgueFile), add in a title and quotation or saying, and then generates a poster you can put into PowerPoint, save as a .jpg, upload to flickr, or email to a friend. A neat tool, especially if you find yourself making awards for an end-of-year celebration or other special occasion.
“…some wiki-page thing…” August 28, 2008
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Friday Five, Random Thoughts, Tools.Tags: Friday Five
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How great is that?! It is exactly what I heard as I walked through the commons after school today. A student, either 9th or 10th grade, was talking with a bunch of his friends and that was the sliver of conversation I overheard. How exciting! We have not been in session five full days yet and we have many of our staff members trying new things: Krista’s students used ANIMOTO to create advertisements for Colombia (thank you Animoto for the educational access to full-length video creation!) – Paul is getting ready for his religiion students to dig in on thier wiki – Suzanne created an amazing wiki for the choir students – Mary and Ann are piloting blogging with their students – engaging with technology is happening everywhere!
Beyond taking five today to talk to our colleagues about what they are doing, I’m going to show my bias to political science and encourage a quick trip to C-SPAN as their convention coverage is impressive (if you missed a speech this week, you’ll find it here) or, as the RNC converges on the great city of St Paul this weekend, it is interesting to see how each party handles their websites (e.g. I saw a great “Convention 101″ page on the DNC’s site which I’ll use tomorrow with my students and the time lapse prep link is pretty cool on the RNC’s site). I’m hoping to go down to the “X” tonight and take some pre-convention pix – we’ll see how that goes.
How ever you take five this Friday, I hope it leads into a great long weekend -
Happy learning!
What did they do? June 3, 2008
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Educational Resources, Random Thoughts, Tools, Webbased tools.1 comment so far
You may have noticed there was no Friday Five last week – it was our school’s graduation and things were crazy around here. It was interesting to reflect on the seniors who graduated last week. The seniors I worked with (between their sophomore, junior and senior years) have done so many things – I am quite sure if someone told me to teach without computers, I couldn’t. But back to my students.
Sophomore year my students studied US History. We didn’t use the wiki (I didn’t know about it yet), but they they created music videos to show the history of the US, used Word and PowerPoint templates to create, calendars and biography boards for explorers (a take off on this idea) and many interactive history/game websites. I am sure there was more but without a wiki record, my memory is a bit shaky…
Junior year, things got serious – we studied Africa, China and the Middle East and we used technology all the time. My students created wiki pages showcasing their work and collecting data on Middle Eastern countries, used Gliffy to create time lines of African history, used Zoho Show to show what was interesting in the Middle East and Zoho Show with the CIA World Factbook to analyze the status of African Nations, created trading cards for world leaders. That and all of our resources were web-based.
Senior year, from Word templates for presidential candidate trading cards to online lectures to making a movie to support President Bush’s Saturday morning radio addresses to cartoons and music videos of Landmark Supreme Court cases to using Word templates to create a government deck of cards, students again utilized technology a lot and, if they did not create their work as a group, they shared and discussed everything they created each one was due.
I am currently reading Bob Pletka’s book, Educating the Net Generation: How to Engage Students in the 21st Century. I cannot believe (well, I can but it makes me sad) that “85% of all instructional activities entailed lectures or seatwork that precluded students from interacting with one another.” My students definitely work together, discuss their creations, and are engaged to an extent but I am going to pay close attention to my ratios next year – I know I am under 85% but I wonder if it is still too high? Oh, btw, the book is great, I highly recommend it as it is both interesting and a quick read.
mp3 player? ipod? Welcome to another tool… May 2, 2008
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Friday Five, Tools.add a comment
Before and after school you see students walking around with strings going up to their ears – is what they are listening to educational? The answer is probably not…but it could be. This installment of the Friday Five looks at the MP3 player and offers five examples of food for thought regarding the uses of them in educational settings. I hope you can take five and explore! (One more thing, you should know that even without an MP3 player, anyone with a computer can access the audio and video files too.)
PC Magazine defines an mp3 player as: “A digital music player that supports the MP3 format, which was the audio format that started a revolution in online music downloads and distribution. All portable music players, the iPod being the most popular, support MP3 along with one or more other audio formats. CD players, whether shelf units or portable, may also play back MP3 files.” Some also play video files. A common misperception held by many new to the MP3 world is that everything needs to be purchased. On the contrary – not only can you create your own content, but scores of free MP3 files are available.
The following are several ways MP3 players are being used for educational purposes:
Professional sports teams are using the video iPod to help pitchers study the swings of batters.
Would you like to learn Arabic? Brush up on your Latin? Spanish? French? Check out these free foreign language lessons!
How are iPods being used in collegiate settings? This article from the Christian Science Monitor gives a peek into some of the ways iPods contribute to academics (and addresses some of the new ethical issues as well). And here you will find Duke’s summary report on the use of iPods in their classrooms – some exciting results!
Health and fitness? How about some free workout videos?
iPods are even in elementary schools!
If you have questions about iPods, you should know most students (at least the ones with the earbud “strings” coming out of their ears) will be happy to tell you about them – many faculty members too. Off the top of my head (and I am sure there are many more in our building), I can think of at least one campus minister, a science teacher, a music teacher, an English teacher (Mary Ellen), and two Social Studies teachers, (Ann and your’s truly) who love their iPods and I am sure they would be happy to talk with you about their experiences with them.
Cost? An entry-level iPod shuffle is around $60. Some interesting food for thought as this school year is ending and over summer we can think about hopes and dreams for next year…
Happy Friday and thanks for taking “Five.”
Wendy
