Welcome To My World

My blog is my world of thoughts, pursuits, questions, and experiences. So relax, get a cup of tea or coffee and get to know me. I have taught at many schools, districts, and grade levels. So, I can say I do lead an interesting life.

Friday, August 7, 2009

#11.5

1. My favorite discoveries were how to implement many of the new facets that I learned during this session. First of all, I loved Skype. I saw Oprah use Skype to interview people for her program. I must add that Video Resources is something that I will use this coming year. Many times I am working on my lesson plans, and I just need that small video to make my delivery of the subject area more enjoyable. Lastly, I will certainly implement the digital citizenship at the beginning of this year.

2. This session of libary2play2 has given me an opportunity to keep up with the latest nuances. I use to scared to get on the internet and to try new things, but now this session/course has given me experiences that are guided but yet fun! With my busy schedule this summer, I can enjoy and take to my classroom the many things that I learned.

3. With each new topic, I knew that I was going to enjoy and learn something new. Usually in staff developments for teachers, someone is talking to us(we are sitting down for hours), or someone is telling us what we will need to do in our classrooms. Not with library2play2! I loved the fact that I could experiment, play and be able to use many of the topics that were covered this summer. Moreover, I knew that with each task I was going to learn something new, or I was going to learn more in depth about how to use certain tools.

4. I really don't think you need to change anything right now. For the future, you might give options for assignments. For example, give assignments for the savvy/expert, and an assignment for the rookie. This gives the assignment the lilt and the novelty to do the more challenging assignment.

Thing #11

As I began to read my two blogs about digital citizenship, I agree with Coolcat Teacher because our curriculum lacks the rigor or the bold thrust of digital citizenship. As a bilingual teacher, I am bombarded with keeping to the minutes that I teach each subject. Think about it--my plate is full with one way dual language, Singapore math, activ board, and so forth. My point is where is the digital citizenship that our students needs?

I hope it isn't up to me to institute and guide my students through this sector of technology. There needs to be a part in our curriculum that cover this area that coolcat teacher beautifully illustrated in her blog. I know that I will implement and cover areas of digital citizenship, but there needs to be more for our students.

In addition, the Ning on digital citizenship and Rhonddas Reflections that I read support Coolcat's blog. I think that every teacher should have a book study on digital citizenship and add to the road map this ever increasing importance of making sure our students are literate in this area. Moreover, every teacher should have a copy of this document to read.

What gets me is when I take my students on a guided website and----WHAM! There's horrible, vulgar, ugly, stuff that I have to quickly egress to another site. Our children need to be able to read and do research on the web and be savvy as to know that there are creepy and vile people out there to harm them.

I could go on and on, but digital citizenship is as important as our classroom citizenship(extension to the library). Being good stewards of our land and internet terrain must be taught and practiced. We have so much training on being good citizens, but we need to venture into the world of connectivity with our children and give them tools to use while in the digital world.

With the flexible scheduling of our school libraries, teachers need to make digital citizenship a priority!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Thing 10

Last week I attended a session about using interactive websites for a different subjects via the activ board. During that session, the instructor introduced the Second Life to us by letting us enter her house. She took us to visit one of her friends from New York, and allowed us to talk to her about what she was doing. I was fascinated with the magnitude of being able to speak to experts about certain topics.

For the classroom this would be a great adventure to take students to watch and speak to experts in any subject area. This would make science very interesting to see how a volcano looks like under the ocean! What a better way to teach or facilitate a learning experience by making it fun and real!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Thing 9

First of all, I believe that Slideshare can be utilized by students have. For one thing, I know that students are given an assignment on a particular topic, and WHAM! Students bring in posters with pictures that have been printed, cut, and pasted on posterboard. The point being is that grading all these beauties can be a chore. Why not let them design their report presentation on powerpoint and then use Slideshare to show their masterpieces!

This is a much better form of sharing with the class than carrying around a whole bunch of posters. This is not to mention the mess of glue running all over the posterboard. I think guiding students through the steps can really make projects interesting.

As a teacher, I really would love to have my powerpoint presentation on Slideshare to show my parents during Meet the Teacher Night. I think I will do this!

Thing 8

Aha! I have been stumped with this assignment;however, I will come back to this and complete it. Now, I have returned to complete this assignment. I ran into the problem of uploading Jing to my computer. Anyhow, my intent was to screencast a session of how to have my 3rd grade bilingual students to access an e-book and write a summary of it on microsoft office word and to either print a copy or email it me. In this manner, I do not have to repeat the directions over and over. Moreover, with the new One Way Dual Language program, I can create this screencast in English or Spanish depending on the "language of instruction" for the week.

I have been asked continuously what is CCP? Let me explain. CCP(Consume, Critique, Produce) is a new writing program or system that I have to implement this year with my 3rd grade bilingual students. This assignment will allow my students to select an e-book and write a summary of this book.(which, by the way, is a TAKS skill that the student must achieve). CCP is a wonderful way to introduce reading and writing in a way that is nonthreatening.