EduBlogs Grrr...

I haven't had a voice since Tuesday. It's been really hard to give directions and start my kids on all the technology we use and my classroom procedures without it. I've been trying though! Tuesday, when we get back, I'll start them on blogging!

I'm so excited to start blogging with my students. I have things all setup. I finally have them all entered and blogs created on EduBlogs. I decided to abandon KidBlog this year. I thought that I could so much more on EduBlogs. I think that I can except for one thing: linky parties. I really wanted my students to have linky parties following the schedule I posted about earlier in the summer. Come to find out WordPress powered blogs can't. Yeah... any ideas out there about how to get around this?

I've also spent the past 3 hours today at Starbucks. It was the only way to get any work done. Hey- I got a blog post completed, 152 blogs created, lesson plans submitted, emails sent and a start on the following week's lessons too. Not too bad for a Saturday at Starbucks. Thanks Starbucks for letting me hang forever.

I wish I had more excitement about the beginning of the school year but I've just been plain worn out. Next week awaits!

Day 1! Whew!!

Day 1 is officially over! Teething baby, first day madness, 12 hour day, and now no voice, but it's all over and time to {try} and rest for tomorrow. Hopefully, my voice will be able to rest tonight and I'll have a voice to talk with. I've lost my voice at the end of the year but never after the first day!

Even after all the things going against me, this has really been a good day! You know it must be a good day if I can put the baby to bed, watch a little Real Housewives, and blog for a bit.

I have an amazing group of students this year. They are so enthusiastic and ready to go! I want them to keep that enthusiastic spirit even after the first week goes away and we really get down to business. I told them that they were going to be blogging this year. I could see some expressions of fear but there were also glimmers of piqued interests and real interest in what this is all about.

We ended the class today with an ice breaker that I found called "I Mustache You a Question." (If this is yours, I want to give you credit so please contact me! I can't remember where I got it!!) The kids loved it! I can't tell you the number of excited little squeals when I started passing out mustaches.

The idea is the student reads the mustache to their group (I had them get in groups of 3). The other two members answer. Then after everyone has had a chance I had them introduce each other to the class, read their question, and share the other person's answer. It was a pretty low risk activity. The questions aren't even personal questions about themselves but questions like "What does Santa smell like?" and "If you could be the cafeteria chef for the day, what would you serve? Why?" You can't help but smile when you read these!

That's all I had time for today! I introduced myself, my class, and played the game! Whew! Maybe this is why I have no voice. Crossing my fingers for tomorrow! Have a great week everyone.

Twitter Chat Part 1 and Storify app

Last night was the first Twitter chat as part of a series for Aimee Buckner's Notebook Know-How. This was a new format of book study for my entire department. Their participation and enthusiasm for the discussion was so great! I have watched Twitter chats before but never participated in one. Wow! They are fast paced. As a Language Arts teacher, brevity is not my forte! We were all forced out of our comfort zones and pressed to be concise in what we wanted to say.

Below, is our Twitter chat in a published form. It's not always pretty, but I found this to be a great way to quickly share our thoughts in a short period of time. We can always come back to this and add to one another's conversations. I hope to see this grow and use it in the classroom.

I used the app, Storify here to make this transcript. You can quickly and easily create a transcript of something like a Twitter chat. This would be such a great tool to use in the classroom.



If you are interested in participating in tonight's Twitter chat it's over Ch. 3 & 4 and will again take place from 8-9CST. We hope to see you there!

Portfoliyo vs. Remind101: A New Way to Connect With Parents

I'm always looking out for new types of technology to use in the classroom. I especially like trying various things to connect with my students' parents. I used Remind101 last year. Many parents didn't understand how it worked and were hesitant to try it out. I had more students than anything sign up. They liked getting notifications about upcoming assignments.

I recently found Portfoliyo. I'm a member of Tioki, which is a site similar to LinkedIn but just for educators. Portfoliyo's setup is similar to Remind101. Send a text to a number, answer a few questions to get started, and bam you're set to get reminders.

Portfoliyo Signup Screen

The main difference between the two is that Remind101 doesn't have two way communication. You the teacher send out information. The parent receives it. It stops there. With Portfoliyo, you send out information and the parent can respond to your text. The parent can also respond to your text without you sending anything to them. They only need your special text number. This is a feature different than Remind101.

Dashboard in Portfoliyo

I can see Portfoliyo being especially useful for those parents that don't have email and it's hard to reach them on their phones. I'm pretty sure that the majority of my kids' parents have cell phones that can send and receive texts but they don't all have emails. I like the feature of the two way communication. With Portfoliyo, you login to their website and you can see any messages that you have waiting for you. You can invite other teachers and create groups.

Depending on what you need, I can see benefits to both applications. I would like to see an app for Portfoliyo. That would be beneficial to the teacher. Try them both out! They're great ways to add communication with your parents.

Technology Overload!

Right now I'm on a lunch break from my Technology Integration Academy. I'll be linking up with Technology Tailgate (I know it's not Tuesday but I've been here since Tuesday!)

 My school district is BIG into technology and after your third year they expect you to have a certain amount of techno skills! Three days of straight technology information is a lot but I have learned so much and now I have some really neat tools to use in my classroom. Some I've used/played around with before but never really knew the true capabilities of it.

Our district uses Moodle for teachers' assignments. Each teacher has a Moodle page and that allows parents and students access to files and other activities determined by the teacher. During TIA I learned that Moodle is now Moodle 2.0. Boy! Talk about bells and whistles. I'm going to need a class on the new Moodle to learn it all. I can now have a Twitter feed embedded into my Moodle page. And yes, I went ahead and created that!

I also discovered Livebinders (I know I'm super late to that party!). I've heard of them and seen people talking about them but never knew how to use them. Watch out 8th graders because I'm pretty sure you'll be using this (can we say PBL??).

Livebinders: used a Google search to fill with articles! WHAT?!?!

We also delve into Google forms. Again, I'm all over this. I'm thinking about creating a spreadsheet on Google forms to use as a Status of the Class for my Language Arts class. I've been the one that has been asking them what page they're on in their independent reading. Why am I doing all the work for them?? These are 8th graders. They need to take some ownership over their own learning and responsibility for it!

Google form: Status of the Class in progress

 We also played around with making a simple form for parents to sign in at Open House. You know sometimes things are just so simple you don't think of them yourself!

Google form for Open House- Please sign in!

We start back pretty soon. I see we're going to be talking about QR codes. I'll have to tell you in another post about my QR code and book trailer idea for my classroom library. It's time to get back to work. I just love technology!!

Aimee Buckner's Notebook Know-How

Yesterday I posted about starting a book study Aimee Buckner's Notebook Know-How. Just a quick update on this book study. My department is starting the book study next Tuesday night with a nightly Twitter chat from 8-9 CST under the hashtag #ladeptreads if you would like to join our discussion. I'll then blog about some highlights of what we talked about.

Chapters 1-2: Tuesday

Chapters 3-4: Wednesday

Chapters 5-6: Thursday

Chapter 7: Friday

I hope you'll join us in this invaluable book study!

Book Study: Notebook Know-How

I am so excited about this! While cleaning out the former department chair's closet I came across a set of books for Aimee Buckner's Notebook Know-How. If you haven't read this book, here's your chance to join my Language Arts department in our first book study of the year! {I know members of my department reading this right now are thrilled to learn of the book study this way :) }

In this book, Aimee Buckner takes the reader through keeping a writer's notebook with a very realistic and applicable way to use it in your curriculum. I was rereading it last night and taking notes all the while thinking, "Why am I not doing this with my writer's notebooks???"

So, if you are interested in participating in this book study with my department, go get a copy of Notebook Know-How (or dust off the copy on your shelf!) and keep up with my blog for updates for the book study. We'll be meeting on Twitter #ladeptreads. I hope you'll join us! CTMS LA teachers: get ready!