Pinterest and Instagram

Richard MacManus posted the article "Top Trends of 2012: The Visual Web" on ReadWriteWeb.  The article discusses the popularity of Pinterest and Instagram as being big contributors to the emergence of the visual web.  I found the post interesting since Pinterest and Instagram are both some of my favorite social networking sites.  Even though Pinterest is predominantly used by females, it has still had a really great year with lots of growth!  I know I find lots of teaching and classroom ideas there.  If fact, my biggest board is definitely the "school" one.  While I don't use Instagram for school (yet), it too has really taken off, especially since Facebook acquired it.  The article talked about how people aren't calling great pictures "Kodak moments" anymore, but "Facebook moments" instead.  While I haven't started saying that yet, I do ask people if the photos they take are "gram worthy." Ha!

Do any of you use Instagram at school?

Just for fun, here is one of my recent Instagram pics. :)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

PowToon

Free Technology for Teachers recently posted about a new service called PowToon.  The site seems to be a new twist on powerpoint with more of a video aspect.  Since it's still in its startup phase, you can't really try it out yet, but the video makes it seem really simple to use.  It don't think it's designed for children, but certainly looks kid-friendly enough.  It looks like a program that could make presentations more interesting and seems like it'd be something kids would really enjoy working with as a way to show their understanding.

Should the School Year be Shorter?

I just read a thought provoking article by Elena Silva for The Quick & the Ed titled The Value of a School Day.  With all the budget issues, school districts are cutting costs where ever they can.  One cut that Silva disagrees with is shortening the school year, but many districts are going to that.  This year, my students came for 177 days.  I think that we did add 5 or 10 minutes to each day to make up for it though.  She provides a list of money saving alternatives to consider before getting rid of school days as she feels that greatly hinders student learning.  One of the suggestions was to freeze salary step increases for all employees for one year.  My county did this, but not just for one year.  No one (teachers anyway) has gotten a raise in 4 years.  In fact, because of furlough days, I now make less money than I did when I first started teaching.  I'm really nervous that I won't be paid for this master's degree I'm currently working on.
Silva did point out that reducing the days of the school year negatively effects poor children the most.  I hadn't really thought of that before, but it is true due to lack of child care and lack of summer learning opportunities.  What do y'all think of the 4-day school week? I'm sure it'd be extremely hard on parents and maybe not beneficial to students?  Are y'all still getting your salary steps?  What do your districts do to save money?

http://www.quickanded.com/2012/06/the-value-of-a-school-day.html

Organized Books

Several of the teacher bloggers I follow (including Natalie Kay from What the Teacher Wants) have recently posted about a new site called The Clever School Teacher.  It was created by a fellow teacher/blogger named DeeDee from www.mrswillskindergarten.com.  The site sells children's books, but what makes it unique is that it has all the books organized very efficiently for teachers.  You can search books for reading and writing strategies that you teach and that are specific for your grade level. It looks like the site is still in its early stages because a lot of the categories say "coming soon."  I'm excited to see what they post for the author studies category.  This seems like it could be a great time saver and even if you didn't want to buy books, you could go there to research which books might be good for your topic.  Then you can check them out from your library. :)  Do y'all think this website will be a success?  Is it something you would use?

Embracing Social Media

Betty Ray posted the article SocialEdCon: What the Heck Do We Do with Social Media? on Edutopia to discuss the benefits of using social media in the classroom and ways in which you can do so.  I found it very interesting and encouraging.  She pointed out how social media is not going anywhere and that if we, as educators, take a leadership role in modeling how to effectively and appropriately use such media, it can become an integral and beneficial asset to education.  Ray states that, "With social media, and Twitter in particular, anyone can have a voice in a global conversation." It can be very empowering and can make a difference.  The article also posted a nice list of ways to incorporate social media into the classroom including scavenger hunts created by students, promoting school events, and sharing daily class and school news.  To me, it seems like a great idea to embrace this type of technology.  You know students would love it!  And, using it in such a setting would be helpful in teaching children how to appropriately use this media.  Unfortunately, many counties (mine included) have all those social media sites blocked.  Does your county block it or embrace it?  What ways could you use social media in your classroom and what's your favorite type?  I'm really loving Instagram lately and I just realized I've been on Facebook for 8 years!


Ray, Betty. "SocialEdCon: What the Heck Do We Do with Social  
        Media". Edutopia. June 24, 2012.  http://www.edutopia.org/blog/getting-started-social-media-betty-ray?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Teaching Internet Research Skills

Welcome to the first post of this blog! 
I just finished reading (and watching) an article from the Teaching Channel.  The article was titled "3 Video Lesson Guides on Digital Literacy" and it was written by Marie White.  This website seems like it will be a very helpful one as it provides videos, discussion, and lesson plans.  This particular article had great resources for the important topic of teaching internet research skills.  I LOVED how it applied the concepts to the Common Core standards as my county has just adopted them for the upcoming school year.  I found the third video to be very interesting since I just completed the plagiarism/copy right lessons for this course.  The teacher in the video did a great job motivating her students to understand and be aware of "fair use."  As a first grade teacher, I don't deal a whole lot with this issue, but I know it is important for kids to learn early about fairly using other people's work.  I think the Creative Commons/plagiarism activities we did in this course were all good reminders to us as adult students, but how do you all teach your children these necesarry "fair use" skills?

https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2012/05/15/3-video-lesson-guides-on-digital-literacy/