Cool+Things

HI all. I know that all of us know that the kids can access games on the computer. One game that was brought to my attention by a student is a "shooter" game. Maybe you know it: http://www.arcadecrow.com/cat/4/shooter/p1.htm

My thoughts: if the kids can access this type of material shouldn't we be able to access other more educationally appropriate materials that will be monitored in our classrooms by us?

Interesting thing occurred the other day. One of the Chess team members sent out an email to every student in the building asking them to curb their Chess.com use to study hall and resource only. He is afraid that teachers will ask for it to be blocked because so many students are playing it during class time.

user:mcanlink below the article is regarding should be known by students after high school -- what was also interesting was that an English teacher had her students write in the blog as a response to this author's article -- a neat idea for students! http://blog.scottjelias.net/2010/02/what-you-need-to-know-when-youre-done-with-high-school/

user:mcan just found an interesting site to look at about taking 21st learning to a place we have not talked much about--an interesting read

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2009/11/21st-century-educators-dont-say-hand-it.html

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Peglow: Could/SHOULD this be us? This is a 4TH GRADE CLASS! http://www.maxclassonline.net/ping/MAXhome.html
-Very cool (the maxclass)! Hopefully their use of online collaboration continues within the curriculum as they move through middle school and into high school.

Cramer: I just copied this from the other page. Thought it fit here too....
Hey, I just found a social networking site for teachers who are interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technology in the classroom. It is clasroom20.com. So check it out. I accidentally found it looking for something almost completely unrelated for one of my grad classes. It is free. I'm going make a log in -- can't hurt. It looks like people discussing what we are hoping to do here and ideas and ways to use the technology.

===user:mcan All, I have set up a blog and asked a question for us to blog about - I think I requested all of you to join. You do not have to if you do not want to. As you are also doing, I am trying new things, thinking and comparing what we have and then thinking of what we cannot do and how it can be used in the classroom. The blog site said you all will be receiving an invitation. user:mcanIf you want your username and profile pic to show up, put three tildes (~) in front of your comment ===

Have you checked this out yet?
ePals - global communication between classrooms. A quick search found 4,830 classrooms in France that would like to collaborate with classrooms in the US. Students under age 14 need parent's permission and are connected to a parent account for monitoring Students 14 and over need an email account to create an ePals account.

epals.com


 * If they do use this and end up getting into trouble (ie: sending inappropriate pictures, arranging meeting their epals, etc.), does any of this come back on the teacher? Seems like a great idea, and since we do have and will continue to have cyber safety training for them, hopefully there would not be problems... But if there are, is the teacher going to be liable for having made the connection to begin with?

We will always have parents blaming us for things. It is definately a good concern, but should it stop us from using the technology that is available and that we, as teachers, feel best compliment our classroom? What do the rest of you think?

Edmodo -- "facebook" for education Edmodo is a good option for kids if they don't have/aren't allowed to access their email. They talked about it at the tienet conference I went to with Laura Redding and Steph Hibbs. I need to see whether kids can get to it or not because I would like to start using it. They create a username like "camilefever" and when they post it only shows up "camil." Individual messages can only be sent to or from the teacher --- ie: Joe, get back to work -- while students are working on it. It can serve as a wiki in that everyone can add their own part in a discussion. They cannot send individual messages between students. If they post something everyone will see it (only to/from the teacher is private).

Student network is not blocked from edmodo.com...I just checked. Ning -- knowledge sharing community

Diigo -- knowledge sharing community

user:mcanI would like to work on one of these for us to be able to see the benefits/pitfalls. Does anyone have one started that I could join?

I really like edublogs: http://edublogs.org/ Yes we can have a "discussion" in SW with students but this site allows students and teachers more options - pics, video, being able to see who responded to who in a more user friendly way. Very secure and teacher modified. Really not sure of the cons. My husband uses this site at Littlestown. He created "email" address for all of his students using gmail. But this gmail account is HIS. The students NEVER know about this account and therefore cannot access it. Each time a student posts a message, the accounts are set up to send the "user" of the email account a message with the text. Since he is the user, he sees all on and off of the edublogs site. Could this be used as a safety option? I too like edublogs. We have been limited with so many options because of the student email issue. It would be quite time consuming for teachers to create email accounts for every student, plus each student could have up to 7 different email accounts out there in their name... I'm not sure about the legal implications. There is an email service called "gaggle.net" for students. It is run by google and has some really great safety features included. [] Could be a good add-on. Good points. IF the teacher creates the accounts in google with the teacher's last name, then the students' names are not even mentions. Plus, edublogs (I believe) allows you to create one account and then multiple teachers (if they share the same students) can access the same account. I believe this is true. **Boolify Project- **[|www.boolify.org]** ==== This is a great websites you may want to share with your students. I learned about this at the IU 12 Collaboration Day that Cami, Steph, and I attended. It is a search tool that can be used when the students have a research project to do or another assignment that they may need to look for information on the internet. It is very visual, which I believe would be beneficial for some students. After typing in the topic that you want to research, a list of websites appear at the bottom of the page. I think my students enjoyed it because it is different than using Google every time. Plus you get to play with "puzzle pieces" in order to search for information. Check it out! ====


 * Moodle: Does anyone know anything about this site? From what I hear it is more user friendly than SW??? Students and teachers can do more??? I signed up for Moodle, but I can not seem to figure out how to create a class or even join a class. I prefer wiki over Moodle at this point.

One of the top ten viral videos - This has some interesting quotes: media type="youtube" key="sIFYPQjYhv8" height="340" width="560"**

[|mcan] ** I looked at several teachers sites that have an edublog set up. On some sities, it looked like web pages - various links with homework, assignments, their textbook, etc. Many sites had links on the side for students to continue with the assignment - I compare that to SW where I have to do multicontent activity in order to have several links and/or worksheets. Also, podcasts and videos were uploaded for all the world to see -- I have not used shared elocker in SW for podcasts, but it is rather linear for word document revision. Also, saw tons of pics of kids (some wee tiny) - I wondered about how that works with privacy? I set up an edublog - but there is definitely a learning curve to see all and read all to get it started.

because there is SOOO much out there that is good. I get wowed on what to do or where to start. The wiki alone has so much potential in every classroom (science, english, history, health, consumer science, bus ed, etc)- with students being assigned a "page" on a topic. Each student could do a "page", then all the students could read the wiiki and take it to higher level thinking project by coming up with a culmination activity using all the research that fellow students have gathered.

Yeah! Just checked out if I as a student edited someone else's work can get caught. Answer, yes. Check out student role and recent changes. I edited the student role page and then under recent changes, it says mcan did it. So we do a way of monitoring the site as a teacher.

Another feature of wiki - wikibook -- (Yes I copied and pasted below). But another facet of wiki is wiki books -- I looked at the 2 videos that were created using this concept - really book. I will paste the link if you want to check it out.

http://csofchange.sydneyinstitute.wikispaces.net/EXAMPLES **


 * **Wiki Books**


 * **A wikibook is a book that can be authored collaboratively by teacher and student groups.**


 * **In the collaborative development of a wikibook the topics or chapters for the subject are defined and allocated to members of the group/class for development. A wiki or a space within a wiki is created for the wikibook and structured to enable chapters to be embedded by the “book’s authors. Content may be added directly to the wikibook or embedded from a WWW host service e.g. Slideshare for Powerpoint, Vimeo for video.**


 * **Here are two chapters from a wikibook developed by Randwick Campus TAFE students on Occupational Health and Safety. The wikibook can be viewed at the**subject's wiki**.

peglow: The wikibook is really neat! Lots of thngs each subject could do with this. Maybe Jackie is right and we should focus our efforts on the wiki since there are so many options for each subject area. Advocating for one area that a handful may be better receipted.

Cramer: I am in love with wikis...only bad thing is that we may have to include student email since the students have to have an email address in order to login to a wiki.

mcanlis: I created a wiki for my class without the need for external student emails. I had to tell wiki I was an educator, they then sent me an email giving me permission. From there, I created a student list and the students email and passwords are generated by wiki. I just tested it on a student computer and then got into my wiki. YEAH!!!