TripWow!

Recently came across TripWow.  This is a site sponsored by TripAdvisor that lets users make visually stunning slideshows with pictures including a map of the locations.  As a user, the only thing you have to do in the presentation is choose your title, find pictures, select the order you want the pictures displayed, give each photo a location and a caption.  TripWow will do the rest of the work.  What you are left with is a very professional looking product that can be helpful in Geography, History or any subject where locations across the globe are of interest.

Famous Hispanics Slideshow: Emily’s trip to 9 cities including Spain and Canary Islands (near Spain, Spain) was created with TripAdvisor TripWow!

Check out the Hispanics one I made earlier tonight (total prep time to create: 10 minutes).  http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-06ed-d134-121c?lb

Content Creators

One great advantage technology gives to students it the ability to take ownership in learning and assessment through becoming content creators.  Students have exposure to many different tools that allow them to customize and create projects for assessment.

The positive thing about this is that students will individually produce their own unique work, revealing a personal style and understanding of the material.  Gone are the days of cookie-cutter projects and strict parameters.  This can also be a struggle for teachers, however.  Teachers receive several different interpretations and projects rather than one standard.

Here is the goal in adopting Student Content Creation:  Teachers set assignment parameters and expectations and access the students meeting those standards using any method they choose.

Here are some example methods my students have used in the past when giving “generic” assignment guidelines:

Essay (Written):  Never underestimate the power of the written word.  Some students prefer to organize their thoughts in essays.  It doesn’t include a lot of visual elements, traditionally, but if content is your main focus, it will work.

Essay (Video):  One assignment I had students do last year required them to do a five part essay addressing specific questions and observations they had following a movie we watched.  I gave them the option of doing a video essay:  recording their verbal answers by recording video of themselves in PhotoBooth.  It was much more informal than the traditional written essay but gave me a very personal account of each student’s understanding.

PowerPoint:  It does it’s job as a presentation tool, allows students to add pictures and make is attractive and easy to read.  Slides cleanly present material.

Prezi:  Think of Prezi as a non-linear, spread out PowerPoint.  Instead of having “slides”, all the material is attractively arranged on a plane.  The presenter tools let you order material, creating zooming effects.  Also easy to embed photos and video content.  It’s a website and a log-in is required.

Poster:  Sometimes a nicely designed poster is the best way to go.  It allows students to be artistic and posters can also be used in your classes in the future.

Blog Entry:  Having the students add their thoughts to an online blog is like doing an essay but it’s an essay they can share with the entire world.  Blogs can be informal places to share general, personal observations related to class, or you can use it as a place to upload and share assignments and project.  Check out our ongoing Spanish 2 Blog here.

Baseball Card:  This works particularly well with personalities.  Students create a baseball card of a figure: picture on one side, stats and important information on the back.

Fake Facebook:  This also works well with personalities.  Students create a Facebook profile, friends and correspondence embodying the character.  Download the PPT Template here Fake Facebook.pptx.

IMovie:  I-Movie can be an attractive way to put together information, to narrate pictures or explain a process though demonstration.

Glogster:  Glogster is an online program that allows students to create online posters.  These posters (or Glogs) include text, animation, sound, video and hyperlinks.  You have to have a an account to create a glog.  Check out this Glog on the Human Brain:  http://tehescmarts.edu.glogster.com/parts-of-the-brain/

VoiceThread:  VoiceThread is an online program where students record narrations with pictures.  It moves like a slideshow but can be very effective for comprehension activities, definitions and demonstrations.  See our comprehension activity with a movie we watched in class: http://voicethread.com/share/2433985/

Timeline:  Create a timeline using an online timeline creator like www.timetoast.com.  Timetoast allows students to include photos and extra descriptions.

Twitter Notes:  Students create a list or a shot of recent Tweets that correspond to a class topic or trending topic.

YouTube Playlist:  Students create a playlist of videos from YouTube that are related to a class topic.

Infographics:  Students create attractive InforGraphic of information using a variety of online sources.  Infographics bring together text and pictures in a way that pleasingly and easily conveys information.  Sites that help create Inforgraphics:  http://www.easel.ly, http://venngage.com and a complete list – – http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/infographic-tools/.

Socrative

Socrative is a great online resource for teachers that want to do quick, formative assessment or informal checks on learning.  Teachers can create a teacher account that works like an online “classroom”.  Students go to that online classroom to participate in any activities the teacher makes active.  Here is a list of some of the things a teacher can do using Socrative:

Create Quizzes

This is biggest thing that Socrative can do.  Teachers create multiple choice, true false quizzes using Socrative and invite the students to their classroom to take the quiz.  You can choose between student paced quizzes, where the students cycle through the quiz questions at their own pace, or teacher paced quizzes, where the teacher controls when the next quiz question will be displayed.  I like to use these quizzes as informative formative assessments.  I check for understanding, analyze the results for patterns, and determine whether or not we are ready to move on to the next concept.

Exit Ticket

This is a great way to do a formative assessment.  Students can type in their own words, answer specific questions or give just a general reflection on the lesson of the day.  The teacher can craft these to narrow the scope, but I usually just have a couple open ended questions that I use to get information from the student.

Space Race

It isn’t a perfect game, but Space Race takes any quiz a teacher has created and makes it a game where spaceships fly across the screen with every correct answer.  The objective is to be the first spaceship across.  The thing my students have enjoyed about SpaceRace is the random grouping feature.  I will set it to randomly group the students into 6 or 7 different groups, each assigned a specific color.  Then, once the quiz begins, they know their color and always call out “Who else is Purple?”.  They are cycling through the same old quiz questions, but wrapping it up in a game makes it a lot more fun for the students.

 

Results:

Results for all activities on Socrative are stored on the website and can be automatically emailed to you.  The emailed results show each response and totals up the number correct too.

How to use it:

Students can access Socrative on the web or through the Socrative App that is available at the Apple ITunes Store.  In the past, I’ve had students download the app to their phone or Ipod and they seemed to like that.  Today, I just have my students go to www.socrative.com, enter the student portal and enter my personal Socrative classroom number.

A Teacher’s Intellectual Property

About a year ago I gave a short presentation on educational technology to my school board.  One of the board members complimented me but then addressed the board, asking how the district could retain these methods and activities.  He talked about intellectual property and how the school would be at a loss if I took these things with me if I ever left the district.  My only real thought at the time was, “I guess you’ll have to keep me”.

It’s a very businessminded approach.  If an employee for a software developer creates a program as part of his or her job and then leaves a few weeks later, does he  or she get to take that information and program with him?  I would think not.  But if a teacher creates something for a class he or she is teaching, is it his or hers to take to the next teaching assignment?

I’ve taught in three different schools now and each time I made the move, a bin of material and an external hard drive has come with me.  I created things while working at Star of the Sea School that I use now at Denver High School.  My thought was, “I created these, I get to keep these”.  (Although I left copies of almost everything behind too).

But that doesn’t seem to fit a business model.  Over and over again I read that the business sector has evolved into the 21st century and the education system has not in this country.  Should schools operate more like businesses in that regard?  My husband (a newbie teacher) says absolutely not: if everything a teacher creates is property of the school, a teacher has no incentive to create anything new.

If you follow my posts, you may know that I estimate that I create almost 85% of my classroom material.  I tweak and reinvent and personalize tests, handouts, assessments and activities.  I do this for a few reasons: my students notice the non-cookie-cutter-ness of it all, I highlight certain material based on class weakness and strengths but mostly because I love being creative and inventive!  And when I look back at my 7 year teaching career, I have amassed an impressive amount of intellectual property.

But is it protected?  I don’t think I have the right to copyright an activity or an assignment, especially if it was inspired by other information “out there”.  Teachers hate when students use the copy and paste trick.  We call it cheating, we call it plagarism, we lecture them about ethics and morals and tell them the internet is a dangerous place and that all information must be properly cited* or they can’t use it at all.

But don’t teacher’s do a fair amount of this?  Teachers have been flooding the internet in a share of ideas and a search for new methods and ways to connect with their students.  If I find a great activity online that was created by another teacher, I wouldn’t usually think twice about grabbing it an using it.  Is it intellectual property theft?  Or is everything fair game for educators – – as long as it is for an educational purpose?

I know I’ve asked a lot more questions today than I’ve attempted to answer but these are just a few thoughts that got brought to my attention in the last few weeks.  And in the meantime I’m thinking about hiring a talented graphic designer to help me with my copyright watermark.

*I’m not suggesting that material doesn’t need to be cited  – – just commenting on the repeated lectures students get about using information that belongs to someone else.

Silence vs. Hushed Buzz

Conduct an interview with any one of past or current students and you will learn that I have a few quirks.  Most of my quirks stem from my paranoia and worrisome personality.  One thing that always makes me nervous in a classroom is silence.  Silence freaks me out.  When inserted in a silent classroom, I start fidgeting, rocking, nervously giggling, etc.  I realize that most teachers go out of their way to cultivate a silent environment.  Through the years I’ve tried to be one of those teachers, suppressing my paranoia, but my nerves always win out.  However misguided, I worry that a silent student is a bored and inactive student; a student that I’ve lost on our journey of learning.  (There are 3 other reasons why silent students worry me, but if I shared them with you now, you’d probably just want to have me committed).

But something happened the other day in my classroom that I loved.  I hit a key between silent and chaotic.  I had my Spanish 1 students reading our Spanish 1 blog, written by last year’s Spanish class.  They had 20 minutes to read and comment on different stories.  As they worked, the noise level dropped to a hum.  I observed Hushed Buzz.

Characteristics of Hushed Buzz: few spoken words but vocal stimulation (little laughs, “hmmms”, grunts of all sizes) and the noise of purpose driven activity (keyboard clacking, writing on paper, meaningful paper shuffling).  It’s not silent but it’s silent’s close relative.  Twenty-three students sat in my room for 20 minutes, completely unaware of what was happening around them.  They were so engaged in what I had asked them to do that you could feel the energy in the room without hearing a sound.

As I teacher, I had a great hangover from this Hushed Buzz and immediately hoped to replicate the phenomena again.  I have started to plot and plan, dissecting that lesson to identify the key ingredient in this new academic libation.  I acknowledge the role technology plays in all of this.  While none of my students said they knew for sure what a blog was before we began, it took them .5 seconds to feel comfortable because it fits in their world.  They also seemed enthralled by the notion that what I was asking them to read was authored by older students that they knew or have heard of.  Reading words that “the girl that sits behind me in band” wrote mattered more than textbook words.*

As hard as I may try, Hushed Buzz might be like catching lightening in a bottle.  I might not feel this again for a year.  But at least I know there is a small step above silence that eases my paranoia.  I like having an alternative to my usual Manic Enthusiasm.

*Interesting Note: I don’t patrol the blog for proper grammar and spelling and my students were rapidly pointing out errors in both as they read.  I asked them to comment about the content of the articles but some asked if they could comment on the grammar and I wasn’t about to turn down a learning opportunity.  It was fascinating to see how many of them were irked or at least observant of mistakes, and in their comments, offered suggestions on how to fix the grammar problems.

Electronic Portfolio

Portfolios have become popular assessment and evaluation tools in the last decade.  The teacher education program at Clarke University prepared me for portfolios by teaching us how to make electronic portfolio.  My first teaching portfolio was electronic and I have always preferred that method.  I like the ease of clicking through related materials rather than flipping pages in a designated order.  And I like that it is easier to add media to an electronic portfolio than to a paper binder portfolio.

I first started using I-Web in 2007 and thought that it was an easy and beautiful way to create an electronic portfolio.  In the past, I was never able to upload my portfolio directly on to a website so I just burnt it to a disc.  It still works the same but it isn’t universally accessible.

This year I created my professional teaching portfolio using I-Web and was able to upload it to the server at my school.  I honestly had to rush the completion of this portfolio so I’m not 100% pleased but I still think it’s a good representation of my teaching competency.

Check it out: http://www2.denver.k12.ia.us/ehuff/Portfolio/Welcome.html

Twittering Students

My Spanish 2 classes have recently concluded a unit about the latin dances. We studied several different dances, talked about their characteristics and attempted to identify the dances. As a concluding project, I created a few different project options for my students to choose from. Since Dancing with the Stars is both a popular show that deals with this subject matter and since Twitter is becoming increasingly popular with my students, I created a project which combined the two.

Students could Live Tweet about Dancing with the Stars, commenting about the dances. It isn’t a project that involves a lot of higher order thinking or application of class concepts and skills, but it’s a project that connects our class material with “the real world”. I feel like that is rewarding enough. When teachers often complain about getting students to pay attention to class material for 50 minutes in class, it’s exciting to see them focused on the class material at home.

This is just another example of how technology can build a bridge connecting the classroom with the real world of students.

http://twitter.com/#!/KaitlynGebel/status/55094310789591040

http://twitter.com/#!/CassieVohsman/status/55311217014747136

http://twitter.com/#!/KaylaWilsonn/status/55089909559595008

http://twitter.com/#!/alex_place4/status/55060330329542656

http://twitter.com/#!/Gjdmann/status/55058627446312960

Popplet Mindmapping

I’ve had my students dabble in mindmapping before with vocabulary development.  I like them to think about how words are connected and hopefully those connections make the vocabulary more meaningful, thus they remember it.

At first glance, I thought that Popplet was going to be just another word web/mindmapping tool, similar to Inspiration or a few other word maps available online.  I discovered the following things while using this application:

The Popplet Bubble

1. Easy to use and maneuver: Each popplet, or tiny box, comes with very easy to understand options.  In each box, you can add TEXT, or draw a PICTURE or upload MEDIA.  After creating the content in one popplet box, you simply drag the grey connector dots out to where you want to make another popplet.  This grey line connects the boxes, thus building a very large web.

2. Media: When using technology, you have to ask yourself, “Why is this methodology better than paper and pen?”.  I like to justify my technology use.  I’ve had students make mindmaps before on paper and they are just fine.  But Popplet lets them add PICTURES and YOUTUBE videos to the map.  In a recent vocabulary section on adjectives, students took pictures of the words strong, beautiful and weak, and were able to incorporate those pictures into the map.  And who doesn’t love YouTube?  Students searched for funny videos that would showcase their Spanish vocabulary words.  For example, many students looked on YouTube to find pictures of clumsy people for the Spanish word “torpe”.  Or they used their favorite YouTube video (the Waffles video by Julian Smith was very popular) and tried to see how many Spanish words they could use to describe that one video.  Hands down this was the biggest plus for me and for the students.

3. Customization: Each popplet bubble can be made a different color, so students could color code the different levels or categories of their web.

4. Sharing: Popplet includes nice sharing options for a free application.  Students used the embed code to embed their projects on our classroom site at Edmodo.  They also used the links if they wanted to post it to their blogs.  You can invite others to share and comment on your Popplet and also post it directly onto Twitter or Facebook.

My students worked on these Popplets using the mobile laptops in my classroom.  Once they got started, you could have heard a pin drop.  There was a such a hushed enthusiasm to work that I haver NEVER experienced before.  They were very captivated by it all and worked so hard, so fast and with such effort.  I will definitely be revisiting this site again and I consider my use of technology well justified in this case.

Examples:

Right now, I’m unable to embed these lovely Popplet’s onto this WordPress blog for easy viewing, but I can include the links.  These are student created projects.  I gave them the bare minimum of requirements and they went with it.  Charlie Sheen was very popular in these, by the way.  Please check them out, share them and enjoy using Popplet! (I will be adding more examples in the next few days).

• http://popplet.com/app/#/13715 (by Kyle K.)
  
• http://popplet.com/app/#/13869 (by Emma F.)
  
• http://popplet.com/app/#/13833 (by Megan F. and Courtney M.)
  
• http://popplet.com/app/#/13835 (by Brianna S. and Christina D.)
  

(Thanks to José Picardo for his inspiring ideas!  Visit his site @ http://www.boxoftricks.com)

Vocabulary Podcasts

Learning vocabulary takes a certain amount of time and repeated practice.  I can repeat words with the kids over and over again in class and I can also highly suggest they go over the words themselves.  Still I haven’t ever felt the students enjoy the repeating or fully embraced that concept.

I decided to have my students make vocabulary podcasts: recording of them pronouncing the words in Spanish, defining the word in English and then spelling the words letter by letter.  I had two goals.  1) Have them review the pronunciations and definitions of the words while creating the podcast, and 2) have the students create an audio file of the vocabulary words that could be downloaded and accessed on a portable electronic listening device (i.e., Ipod).

This was the first podcasting experience for nearly all of my students.  We experienced some equipment problems and time issues, but overall the assignment was a success.  The students all submitted their groups podcasts to a class created account on Podomatic.  From here, students are able to download any of the podcasts as a file that can be added to an Ipod or mp3 player.  They can also click a button and subscribe to these podcasts through Itunes.

Podcast Spanish 1 5.3

Today I showed the students how to access the podcasts and suggested that they use these assignments to prepare for next week’s quiz.

Please visit our Spanish Podcasts through Podomatic at: http://huffspan.podomatic.com/

XtraNormal Assignment Introduction

Saturday night, November 27, I developed a project for my Spanish 2 students to do using a program called Xtranormal.  The very next day while watching football, I saw a Geico commercial that features this movie making website.  I immediately felt as if they stole my idea.

I’m excited to get started with Xtranormal and anxious to see how my students respond to it.  I think it will be very interesting and useful.  I’m so grateful that the characters in Xtranormal come with Spanish languages programs and accents.

This is a quick introductory video I made for our Spanish 2 project using Xtranormal.  I thought:  what better way to explain the project than making an Xtranormal to explain everything I needed.  I’ll be posting in about a week with updates on how the project is going.