Post 11: New Literary

I took a look at several of the articles.  The new literacy glossary and the article from NPR stood out the most to me.  Fake news is really something that we need to teach students about.  I remember being in school and never learning about fake news.  I almost think that if we do not teach students about fake news then we are doing them a disservice for preparing for the real world.  I am looking into teaching about fake news for our upcoming writing unit where students will be doing some research.  The NPR article would be a great way to teach students some vocabulary for checking out news to begin deciding if it is accurate and from a reputable source.  I liked the lesson plan where there were some fake news stories and forcing students to decide pretty quickly if they were real or not.  However, I feel I would need to bring them down a few levels some of the material seemed more secondary and not at an elementary level.  Students at the elementary level have a hard time determining information from the news since they often just "parrot" what their parents say.  I think it would be best if I begin my research unit teaching how to actually research check news.  We might bring in newspaper clippings discussing sources about different stories.  Eventually we could build up to students doing their own research.  We would have to being with teacher modeling and working together first.

Post 10: Search Tools Ninja

I took a look at sweetsearch and yippy.  I was not familiar with either of these and I am really looking for opportunities for students to conduct a search, and I do not have to be concerned that inappropriate information is going to come up.  Sweetsearch was great because students could search and there were no ads popping up on the sides and the information was related to the search as I tested out a few search ideas.  I thought about how students sometimes get to do a research report or a biography about a person.   Many times students like to choose a singer or sports player and inappropriate pictures, social media, or news clips can come up.  However, using sweetsearch seemed to give more appropriate information and the information was coming from reputable sources.  This is also something that we are trying to teach students all the time..."Just because you see it on the internet does not mean it is true." Students many times like to include images with their projects and this search engine was doing a good job providing appropriate pictures.  I also looked at yippy it seemed to do similar to sweetsearch as I tried to search people and images.  It kept information appropriate for students.  I really liked how it had the features of narrowing down a topic on the side.  Students are sometimes unsure on how to narrow topics down and this I think would help them learn this particular skill.

Thing 09: Databases

I explored culture grams.  This year is the first year I have taught social studies in a while.  I am teaching 5th grade social studies this year.  Using culture grams there is a state edition and world edition.  In 5th grade we study the Western Hemisphere.  I thought students could use the state edition for a project maybe at the beginning of the year and just focus on learning more about the United States and geography.  So many students struggle knowing the difference between states, cities and countries.  Then later in the year we could use the world edition for projects and students could learn more about countries in the western hemisphere.  This is also a quick way for students to get facts and accurate information without doing a google search that might bring up some information that is not best for children's eyes.

Culture Grams

Thing 08 Curation Tools

I looked into Padlet.  I recently used this curation tool once.   I wanted to try and set up my own padlet page.  I found it very easy to work with which was great.  i instantly thought this would be a great place that I could post useful websites for students to have extra practice and enrichment.  I thought that I could share this padlet with parents of my students.  Many parents are always asking where they can get extra practice for their child.  This owuld be a quick and easy place for parents to access meaningful website practice for their child.  Also, parents could add educational websites that they have previously used and comment.  This would provide many resources for parents and create a classroom community of parents interacting with one another.  It is possible that the school could use the padlet all parents could interact with it and post websites that are working great for practice at home.  Here is the link to my started padelt. Useful Websites It includes websites I currently use with students.

Thing 07

New York State Presentation
I created this presentation as a sample for my students.  Students will use this presentation as a guide to create presentations on an assigned state.  Students can use google slides and create presentations.  This is a fairly simple presentation program to use and students can get the hang of it pretty quickly.  Students all have google accounts in my classroom.  Therefore, students can access easily.  Also, I can have students link their presentations to google classroom.  I also think students could benefit from using this presentation style vs a poster.  In the real world presentations are done electronically so much more often than seeing cardboard set ups.  So this makes a great real world connection for student work.

Thing 06

My Family

This is a quick video slide show showing some pictures of my family.  I think this would be a great way for students to introduce themselves to one another at the beginning of the year.  Students could even work on this project with their families at home.  I often have students do this with creating posters.  However, I know that people do not print pictures out as often as they used it.  This will be quicker because people have their photos digitally and could work on this project with easier access.  Students can take this a step further by including music.  This could also be used for students to report out on a text they read.  The pictures could be words from the text and students could include pictures and thoughts about a book they read.  I think this would be very exciting to get students more engaged and having fun while learning.

Thing 04: Twitter

I joined twitter during the Summer of the school year with the intention of using it more for my class and looking for professional resources.  However,  all I did was join.  So this was a great opportunity to begin looking for resources.  I started with tlchat and saw some very interactive and engaging ideas for student lessons in the classroom.  I am now following tlchat, edchat, and slscoolstools.  I found the teacher that my class writes pen pal letter too.  She posts all kinds of activities her students are doing, and celebrates exciting things in her classroom with tweets.  I also found teachers at my school who post great teaching ideas and fun exciting moments with their class.  I would like to start using twitter to show off great student work.  I would also like to use twitter to show great ideas that have in the classroom.  I think this would be a great way that students families can be engaged in what is happening in the classroom as well.  Since I am always looking for more ways to engage parents. A goal would be to try and tweet something at least once a month until the end of the school year.

Thing 03: Photo Fun

Photo courtesy of Photos For Class

It was actually very quick and easy to find a photo on this website.  I chose this photo for an upcoming unit on natural disasters where discuss weather and Earth.  I also chose this photo of the volcano is Sicily because I am looking into going to Sicily to see Mt. Etna.  I like that this website is better than just doing a google image search because I know that I am going to get safe images for my classroom. I always make sure when I do a google image search that students cannot see what I am searching just in case something inappropriate pops up.  Using this website I know that I am going to find safe pictures.  I might even have students search for images this way so that I know they will be finding safe images when they are working on essays where they attach images.  This would also be helpful when students are creating a blog and adding images to it.

Thing 2 Student Blogging and Writing

This was of interest to me because I am teaching ELA and Social Studies.  Students really do not like writing and as it is in many places writing is a weakness across the board for students. Student blogging really sounds like a great way to get students excited about writing.  Students always seem more excited to type than write.  I have students do critical analysis of books often in class so they are thinking deeply about text.  A fun activity might be to have students create blogs as book critics and they can review books they read during the year.  If other student read the same text they can easily respond to each other on the blogs.  I looked over the how to start students on blogging resource.  There was a section on etiquette and cyber safety.  This would be so very important to teach students so that they remain safe while blogging.  It would be bad to have to back track and try to fix some of these mistakes afterward.  I also think making sure the parents are informed about their student blogging and how it works and how it is beneficial for students would be a good idea.  Parents I think are sometimes confused with some of the technology activities for students.  Therefore, explaining the benefits to parents ahead of time would help avoid some possible push back.  I have a research project coming up for my students at the end of the year.  It might be really fun for them to create a blog.  This might be a way to get them writing more.  When students see they can respond and ask questions to each other on blogs.  I think this would be a great way for students to be able to write more.  When their peers are asking questions it will help them come up with more information to add to their research projects.  I also took a look at the cooperative critical writing blog.  This was interesting because a group of students could all be working on one google doc simultaneously.  This would be very exciting for students in class I know because they could see what each other is working on in groups.  This would also help promoting better writing in class, and a way to make it exciting.

Thing 1: Getting Started

Hello,
My name is Barbara Stack.  I am teaching 5th grade in Baldwinsville this year.  I have been teaching for almost 10 years.  I spent most of that time teaching 4th grade.  I am taking part in cool tools because I would like to learn about more technology tools that I can use in my classroom with my students.  They love using ipads and chormebooks so I am looking to give them as many opportunities to do so.