Welcome back September. And what a spectacular summer it has been – Olympics energy, warm sunny weather, family and friends laughter. Though it’s always great to get away and get recharged, I look forward to the start of each new year. A new year to test out some crazy ideas (yes I’ve read and reread…
Category: Blog as Story
Blogging – Empowering Students Through Voice
I’ve been talking a lot about creating “communities of practice” where students see themselves as writers and that their voice matters. It is not by accident that this happens. Rather, conscientious design create the conditions for freedom of ideas to flow in a risk-taking environment. Support and scaffolding occurs at each step merging both online…
First Ever iPad Party
Get a group of administrators, teachers and district staff together – add food and boxes and more boxes of brand new iPads. What do you have? Excitement, anticipation, a bit of wonder, “eyes wide open”, tons of chatter and buzz… Last week, we spent the afternoon with a set of goals: introduce the iPad,…
Giving Voice to Your Story – Use an Online Tool
Capture that story (whether at school or home) with just a mic and a simple online recorder. Vocaroo (http://vocaroo.com) is a simple online audio tool just made for that purpose! Use it for audio recordings of class news, radio shows, as student assessments for oral readings or to increase skills in reading. You may even…
Running Out of Space? Resizing Images is Magic!
Just when you get it all figured out, that dreaded message comes across warning you of your dwindling space on your blog. Most of the time this is due to posting images that are photo quality (right off the camera or ipad) but not web quality. Some of you already use IrfanView or Microsoft…
“Teach the Writer, not the Writing” ~ Calkins
Troy Hicks, “The Digital Writing Worshop” believes that our writers can achieve more, understand more, and discover more using digital tools, than in our traditional writing workshop. In examining this photo, consider what happens in a typical writing workshop. What writing processes and expectations are the same as they have always been for print texts?…
Little Tools that Do Big Things
Do you ever want to do something with your class and the whole technology thing is just too much? I get that a lot so I’m always on the hunt for tools that “take the mystery out of things” and just work. Remember that we are also in a world of constant change so…
Choice Words
Things happen when you’ve return from a conference. New ideas attach with old ones and a host of “how does this all connect” is sifted through a lens of “what if…”. At FETC, keynote speaker Michael Wesch (watch TED talk) talked about the fast rise of the new technologies (Youtube 2005; Twitter 2006) resulting in a new culture…
Blogging Tips for Communication and Organization
Sometimes a bit of practical tips are helpful to add to your toolbox of blogging ‘know-how’. So here we are… Custom Menus: Using custom menus provides another layer of organization not found in ‘categories’. For example, if you wish to have a list of your students located in a specific category, you can use the Custom…
Digging Deeper – How to Introduce Blog Commenting
How to Develop Blog Writing: Brainstorm Session Sometimes our questions may be “how do we start our classes blogging past the basics?”. Here is one way that may help to introduce the students to the idea of commenting. (We did this at our recent SCIT gathering.) This starts in the classroom with good questions. Record…
Cultivating Conversation – Spoken Ink
Moving from the last post on Reimagining Conversation, I wanted to dig deeper into the importance of oral language as foundational to literacy development. We are creatures of connection and we use language to communicate our needs, ideas, feelings and discoveries. The abilities to express ourselves grow over time and practice…lots of practice. Yes, I know…
Reimagine the Conversations
Many of you have dipped your toes into cyberspace by launching your blogs, whether they are class blogs, specialty group blogs or professional blogs. They all have something in common – a place to gather, connect and have conversation. The key factor being the conversation or communication. The flexibility of the tool is that it allows for…
Purposeful Play
“To play on purpose is to take risks. To challenge what you know. To ride the edge between what is and what might be, what never was and what should’ve been..” — Bud Hunt Over a week ago we launched this year’s SCIT (Skills and Curriculum Integration of Technology), a district program to support teachers on their journey of integrating technologies in their classrooms. All…
Apps Big and Small…
It’s nearing the end of the year and looking forward to a little warm weather and a slower pace. Over the next couple of months, there’s a bit of time to do a little play and see what’s just around the corner. In that vein, here’s a little bit for you to discover. Interactivity –…
Add a Poll to your SD41 Blog
Want to add a bit more interactivity with your Blog? Maybe get some feedback on an interesting topic. Why not add a POLL! We have added the WP-Poll plugin for all SD41 Blog users, and its very easy to use. Please email me at Lucky.Saini@sd41.bc.ca to have it activated. I have created a tutorial…
Start to Blogging Handout
We are just making available online our ‘How to’ – SD41 Blogs handout. It is a work-in-progress as we update the process of using our WordPress powered blogs. Let us know if there is something in error or missing from our handout. Click here to see it now.
Avatars
Avatar is a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games or a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other Blog communities. Here are some Kid Friendly sites that students can use to create avatars that may be displayed in your…
Blogs – "So What…?"
Faye Brownlie’s quote from “Learning For All” presentation… “Literacy is about more than reading or writing – it is about how we communicate in society. It is about social practices and relationships, about knowledge, language, and culture”. ‘Those who use literacy take it for granted – but those who cannot use it are excluded from…
Blogs – Learning Series – Challenge #2
Here is your homework for Oct 20th: Challenge Activity #2: To get a feel for how your blog will act in posts, please create a few posts and create categories (logical words meaningful to you) to organize them. (Some examples may be homework, events, news of the day, questions to ponder, questions to launch a…
Blogs – Learning Series – Challenge Activity 1
Before the next Blog workshop, please try to complete the following tasks: A) Upload 2 – 3 images to your media library. 100 pixels by 100 300 pixels by 300 original file upload and resize in editor B) Create a List of 3 Links C) Change your current theme and identify the changes observed? What…