Prezi: Introduction to American Literature

Digigogy

Interesting source on digital pedagogy.

http://www.digigogy.com/index.html

Really like his updated version of Bloom's Taxonomy and technology (image available on his blog):

http://digigogy.blogspot.com/2009/02/digital-blooms-visual.html

video from our school's spirit week

PowerPoint for EDTC 6992 - CBAM

Creative Commons

EDTC 6070 Blog by Sarah Pritchard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Social Bookmarking Reflection

I really enjoyed using the Delicious site and learning how to social bookmark. This is definitely a nice tool for somebody who uses multiple computers. I am constantly bookmarking something at school and then trying to find it again at home. With this, problem solved! I've already shared it with some of my co-workers too!

Delicious Bookmarks

Learned about a new resource tonight: social bookmarking.

Here's my site: http://www.delicious.com/snpritch

Revelation about Wikis

When I was doing my reading for EDTC 6149 last night, I learned that I didn't really know the real purpose for a wiki (even though I've been using them for my classes). I have used wikis to relay information to students and parents and I've used the discussion forum; however, I haven't used them as a collaborative tool in the classroom. I have used them for this purpose in other grad classes, but I never thought to use them in that manner in the classroom. For some reason, it never dawned on me to assign a group project and have the students work through the assignment on a collaborative wiki. I've done something similar with Google Docs, and maybe that's why I never thought to use the wiki. However, it seems that students can be more creative with collaborative wikis.

Loving Wikis

Although I am new to blogs, I started using wikis earlier this year. A teacher in my department has been using them for years and has even shown us how to set one up. Despite this, I hadn't used them. However, this year, that teacher and I were assigned to teach the same class so I finally got onboard with wikis. We use one wiki for both our classes, but we are both administrators for the wiki. During the first week of school we also set up our students with wikis. Since it's an English class, they created electronic writing folders. Some of them already had one from when they had the other teacher in ninth grade, so they just made a new page for 11th grade. The students copy/pasted the NC product list for 11th grade into their wiki, and they are uploading the products as we work through the year. We are also using the wiki discussion feature. We have done individual class discussions and joint discussions. The joint discussions are pretty cool because it's been a way for our students to collaborate without us being in the same classroom. The wikis are also great because it has a link to everything the student or parent could possibly want to know. If they miss a class they have no excuse for not staying caught up on their work. After using this wiki for a few weeks, I even developed one for another class I teach. Now that I have used them, I love them!

Changes in Education?

Yesterday was a teacher workday, and this is a video our principal showed the staff. I thought it relates to some of the topics in this class since it talks about reform needed in education.

Web 2.0 and Journalism

A short video on how Web 2.0 tools are changing journalism. It only mentions blogs, but I thought it would be interesting for my students to see and discuss.

You Tube Blogger Video

I thought this short video from Blogger might be useful when I help students set up their blogs next week.

I Want My Students to Blog

We are about to start second semester, so I thought this would be a good time to start my students on blogs. After setting mine up and seeing what fun I could have with it, I decided it would be a great tool to use in the classroom. I had a couple students stay after school yesterday, and I helped them set up their blogs.

I explained to them that I wanted to replace daily logs with blogs. Daily logs are news logs for my journalism students. Each day they come in, check the news, and write a short blurb about the top stories. Last year we started doing them in Google Docs. Students started a new document each week and shared it on Fridays. Prior to Google Docs, they did this on a handout. Going to Google Docs was great because it eliminated the paperwork; however, it meant that I was getting 20 to 30 new Documents a week (in addition to newspaper/yearbook stories and work from other classes) and it got overwhelming at times. When I was reading about and looking at blogs earlier this week, I realized that they could be the next "new" way to do logs. With the blogs, students will still come in and have time to check the news. However, they will now reflect on it in their blog and they will be required to post comments on their classmates blogs. I hope this stimulates discussion/conversation about current events among them because we don't always have time to talk about what they read in class.

After explaining my idea to these two students, they seemed interested. At first they were like "oh no, not another new way," but when I was finished they said "it looks pretty cool." I showed them how they can personalize their profile and this seemed to really appeal to them (they compared it to Facebook). They also liked that they could watch the news at home and blog too (they could watch the news at home and respond in Google Docs, but they didn't seem to think about this).

I'm looking forward to seeing how the blogging works this semester.

Student Blogs

I have never really thought about how I could incorporate blogs in to my classroom. However, after browsing through the student blogs on the Edu Blog Award link, I'd really like to try it. I was so impressed with them, especially the ones from students in elementary school. Wow!

I also found the blogs created by administrators interesting. As a classroom teacher, it's always interesting to hear their ideas. I really enjoyed the Jan. 15 post on "A Principal's Reflections." The school they are building sounds magnificent and I loved what the students had to to say about rigor and accountability during the Skype session. Too cool!

Blog Newbie

I have just created this blog for my EDTC 6070 class. This is the first blog I've ever had!