The last part of the presentation. Some more ideas for getting connected and engaging students. Today's Meet, Pinterest, Facebook, Edmodo, and a discussion of how education is changing.
23. Kids today?
• “What’s wrong with this generation of kids?”
• “Students today can’t read the way we could 20
years ago.”
• “Kids are addicted to the Internet. I think they don’t
learn proper social skills any more.”
• “All the kids I see just want to play dumb, violent
computer games.”
• “Kids today can’t concentrate the way they used to.
They don’t listen properly.”
26. Literacy has changed:
It’s “a person’s ability to perform tasks
effectively in a
digital environment…
Literacy includes the ability to read and
interpret media
, , and ,
to reproduce data and images through digital
manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new
knowledge gained from digital environments.”
http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/connecting-digital-dots-literacy-21st-century 2006
27. Post your lesson materials on Google
Docs for other teachers to share.
http://tinyurl.com/cz434a6
Hinweis der Redaktion
On Day 2 we looked at some issues related to reading skills development, using Wordle to create a word cloud in order to provide some support for students before they read and we began to look at a curation tool: Pinterest. Today on our last day together *for this time of the year) we will look at how digital technologies can help us connect with learners, get feedback on their learning, extend the classroom contact in the hours outside class and also network our teachers.
This is a pptslde created by Kathy Shrock, an educator who has helped millions of teachers learn about technology. Please look her up on Google. It will take you many years to work through her materials, the useful links she posted and try the ideas with your own students. Many educators think that a major shift is happening in the way learning happens today, because of the prevalence of the Internet and technology. I certainly experienced school like the left-hand column. Children are growing up in world where the characteristics on the right are becoming important. I wonder what you think about this? Please connect on facebook and give me feedback.
One way technology can help us find out about students’ learning is by creating a back channel, through a tool like Today’s Meet (or one of the others available.) When you create a room and share the link with your students, they can ask questions, write example sentences, share ideas about the lesson topics – and the teacher sees everything. Before starting to use such technologies with a class, DO go over some ground rules, inform the head of English and write a letter to parents, so they know what is happening. If a student doesn’t follow the rules, they have to lose marks and being excluded form the project.
There is no email address needed, which makes this tool very easy to use. Give the room a nameDecide how long you need the room for.Click on ‘Create your room’. On the next page on the website you will need to give your name and then type your question. Tell students that they MUST use their real names.
We usually tell students they can’t bring their phones to class, however there are many ways a mobile phone can be used for educational purposes. What about working with the subject teachers to develop a ‘mobile phone day’ where each student who has a phone brings it and you all show the students how to use their phones for learning better?
Again, to remind you of these learning shifts…When we use a back channel with a class or help students use mobile phone to learn with, we are making our classrooms more like the column on the right. We are also extending learning outside our classrooms in ways that traditional homework often doesn’t reach.
T2T= teachers to teachers There are many ways you can get connected with other teachers.
One popular topic these days is the idea of ‘curation’. There are so many interesting websites now. Curation tools allow us to make a collection, like an exhibition, of our favorites and share them. For teachers this means an easy way of networking with other teachers and sharing resources. Pinterest is a very new site and is becoming very popular these days. Imagine if you made one for the units of the books you teach? You could collect lots of resources and so could students. If they email you any links they find, you can add them.
Go to Pinterest, create an account and look me up: kristina.elt on Pinterest. I’m sure you will find loads of interesting ideas on my boards.Of course if you have any ideas, create your own board and share with me – I’ll repin what I find useful.
To use Pinterest you will need to add the button to your bookmarks bar. There are videos explaining how to get started with Pinterest on YouTube, if that is something you need. Many teachers prefer to watch a video. Others prefer to play around. Don’t worry – you can’t break either Pinterest or the Internet!
This is my home page on Pinterest (again). Eachone of these labelled blocks leads you to a ‘board’ where I have ‘pinned’ resources. When you click on a resource, you can see it clearly. Another click leads you to the original website. Hold the Control key down when you click on a link to open the link in a new tab, and make it easy to go back to the original Pinterest board.You can only ‘pin’ a webpage if there is a pin-able picture so not every useful site can be pinned. However, there are many people posting on Pinterest around the world. You can follow people or individual boards they have. People can follow you.It is good etiquette to look at someone’s board if the ‘re-pin’ something from your board to see if that person has something useful that you can ‘re-pin’. In this way your network grows. Repinning connects the boards across Pinterest. Enjoy!
If you click on one of my boards – here I clicked on 2. Primary school, you will see the collection of material I have pinned on that board. Click on a picture to see it more detail. And click again to go to the website the image comes from.
The popsicle sticks each have the name of a game on them. The teacher has taught each of these games to the students. When the game has been taught, she creates another popsicle stick. At the end of a lesson, if she needs a 5-minute activity, a student can randomly pull a stick out and that is the game the kids will play. I liked that idea. Simple, neat and organised. And no photocopies . Maybe the ‘best’ student in that lesson can get to choose the stick?
Here an great example of a Pinterest board created and shared by a teacher. These pictures have been chosen to teach inferencing skills. I can’t wait to use some of these in class.
So how are we all going to get connected? If we work together, we can create and share wonderful ideas. We can ask for help when we have questions. We can support each other.
Many teachers in this group don’t want to join facebook. I would argue that we have a responsibility to learn about social media so we can guide our students as well as their parents, our relatives and our own children, too. I have shared instructions about joining facebook safely. When you have an account, you can find us/me.In this slide you can see how to find our seltacademy page. When you get there, please ‘like’ us .
As you can see, we are sharing useful educational links and resources.
You can also connect with me so that I can add you to the group I created just for Grade 5 teachers.
I don’t post any personal information on facebook. Only educational resources. I only link up with teachers, so please make sure the fact that you are a teacher is clear from your profile.
Edmodo is a mixture of a social network and an online classroom created by a teacher for teachers. It has a similar look to facebook because he wanted to use the power of social media. A teacher can create a bank of test questions and create quizzes, add materials (word, pdf, ppt, GoogleDocs, etc.) A teacher can also create polls and assign homework. It’s really cool. There are SO many teachers using Edmodo. There are also loads of resources for teacher who want to use it. I have already posted links on facebook…..
What about twitter? Another useful way to connect with teachers…. Get intouch by email if you need help to get started.
I can recommend that you set up TweetDeck because it helps you separate oit the most important tweets for your purposes.
Do you ever hear these kinds of comments? Do you ever say such things yourself?
The Big Shifts (from Will Ricahrdson’s book – Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms)There are big changes taking place in education. 1. New, easily accessible content + 24 hr learning Students used to have limited access to materials outside class. The teacher and the textbook was the most important resource. Now the amount of content students can access on the Internet is incredible. (And it’s also more up-to-date.) This leads to an openness where everyone can contribute to the school curriculum. However, students have to be able to evaluate what they find. 2. Teachers have more resources, too! Teachers can access other teachers more easily. Many primary sources – authors, scientists, etc can be brought into the classroom via the web. Asynchronous tools such as email and discussion forums (like on our Moodle) add vibrancy to class activities. The teacher’s own understanding improves and grows. They also have to become better lifelong learners to keep up. 3. Social, collaborative construction of meaning Students used to produce work only for the teacher – now they too can publish. What students produce can be accessed by others. Others outside the class may add and refine their work, in the same way that we teachers are benefiting from how we learn from our peers. This means that students can actively contribute to their own teaching/learning.
4. Memory becomes less important. Knowing where to find the answer is sometimes more important than knowing what the correct answer is! In so many educational cultures there is still an emphasis on memorising but when we can access information quickly on the Internet, these skills may be less important. Instead being able to evaluate what we read becomes important. Critical reading/thinking skills need to be developed. 5. Web as notebook or sketchpad These days we often refer to the internet as the “Read/Write Web” since it’s getting easier to capture our thoughts and ideas online rather than on paper. Expressing ourselves is no longer only done in words. Our increasingly multimedia society increasingly uses and expects a variety of medium, such as video, audio, PowerPoint presentations, etc. Maintaining a virtual portfolio of a learner’s work can now be done using these different media and stored on the web.Computers are changing so any aspects of our lives, aren’t they?
What do you think about this quote?
Here are some extra notes and links from today’s sessions. Enjoy!