Common Sense Classroom

Through my husband Jamie’s PLN on Plurk, I have been able to hook up with the delightful Carrie Whalen and a group of great educators for a book study on Will Richardson’s book: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  We are using a meeting room app called Wiggio which is entirely text based, but has served our group quite well as a collaborative tool. 

After watching the “What is Wiggio?” video above, I began to wonder if this tool might have more to offer me than a one time book study platform I was invited to join.  I participate in a lot of groups on and off campus and I tend to live in frazzled state of frustration as I try to remember who I’ve emailed, who I’ve spoken to in the hallway because I know they won’t be checking their email, who is absent and not getting the information at all, and what information did I include/exclude when I communicated with the folks I was able to contact. 

What if I had one place where I organized all of my different groups?  What if all of my members had their cell phone numbers, as well as email addresses in their profiles?  What if I wanted to let all of my students parents (who don’t use RSS) know I’ve posted new information on my classroom blog?  Wouldn’t it be great to send a text to everyone without having to go dig my cellphone out of my purse? Could Wiggio make my life easier and  be a great platform for future collaborative book studies? You know, I think I might give this a try…

I’ll let you know how it turns out! 

Kerrie was invited to present her classroom blog at the TATN Event at TCEA 2009 in Austin. The picture shows the  student’s Water Cycle video.  They created it with Windows Movie Maker.  

This post was written by my husband, Jamie Gustin, who is a Technology Coach and Distance Learning Facilitator for our district.  It was reposted here before the server housing the TCEA 2009 blog is shut down August 1, 2009.  Here are Jamie’s impressions of my presentation…

Leslie Vazquez- Nieves, a 4th grade bilingual teacher in Georgetown ISD, uses powerpoint and clay animation with her students to demonstrate their understanding of animal environments and adaptations. She carefully monitors student progress throughout the project to insure that students are on the right track as they work through what they are learning.

All materials for the project with the exception of the clay, must be recycled.

She shares her view that students must be proficient in the use of productivity software, like Word, Power Point, digital cameras etc. that they will need for the project before they begin work.

At the end of the project all students in the school grades 3-5 as well as the faculty vote on who they think the winnners should be.

The lesson can be found on Mrs. Vazqez’s Website .

Karen North from Houston ISD is a 27 year veteran Computer Science teacher who moved down to the elementary level to teach tech apps to K-5 for one purpose: to figure out why students were not coming up to secondary with the skills they needed in order to be able to problem solve.

She is involved in research to develp a K-8 curriculum designed to prepare students for there future both in education and in the workplace.

She shared video of her 2.9 yr. old grandson developing a problem solving process in order to successfully complete the animal puzzles on the Smithsonian National Zoo website. As he worked out the problem solving process, he became more and more fluent with his problem solving.

North is using this same puzzle tool to monitor and evaluate the performance of her K-5 students.  She is monitoring whether there is a direct correllation between the increase in fluency of their problem solving skills and  there ability to perform on assessments of their application of core content learned in the classroom.

I found her premise compelling, and look forward to the outcome of her study.  In the meantime, I plan to use this site to assist my own apprentices with their fluency in problem solving. You will see it appear on my classroom blog very soon.

Christi Everett from Bryan ISD shared how she used interactive websites to study the various weather events in our area.  You can see her entire unit on the right navigation bar on her homepage.

It was a great fast paced session with a LOT of awesome weather links, some of which I am currently using on my classroom blog, and some I will be adding to my blog very soon!

Amy Hopkins from Caddo Mills ISD presented information on copyright law and our responsibilities in teaching and following guidelines regarding intellectual property.

The PowerPoint presentations for this session and her other session, “Resources to Use in Your Classroom” can be found at http://tcea2009.wikispaces.com

For an easy guide to copyright law for teachers that can be printed out and used: http://www.mediafestival.org/copyright_chart.pdf

Really good information on fair use laws on some of the slides.  Check it out!

Brooke Holt wrote a grant to get iPods for her Kindergarten class.  The grant covered iPods, stories on cd, and some other software to convert PowerPoint to video (Wondershare) although Moviemaker or Photostory3 could do most jobs just as easily if not easier.  It looks like they are using the iPods as a listening center like the lower tech cassette tape, although the video capabilities may take this to the next level.  Students can move around the room which makes it easier to manage the classroom that having all students on the listening center attached to the same tape player.

iPods are used at two times of the day.  During Literacy time the iPods are used strictly for reading.  Audio books are the only things they can listen to at that time.  During Mathematics, or free center time, they get to listen to podcasts, audio books, etc.  Coverflow shows a picture of each book and the students can select their book by its picture instead of having to read the title.  I believe that Coverflow is available only on third generation iPods.  Student’s menu options are limited by the iPod settings, but one has gone in and changed settings like language once on accident.  It was changed back easily. 

Sources for books are downloadable audio books from online stores like audible, download books from CD and upload it to iTunes, or search the iTunes store. To place the cover art, you might need to do a Google search for an image of the book’s cover.  There are also free downloadable video podcasts in iTunes.  Discovery channel video, Sesame Street podcast, etc.  Many of the podcasts are teasers so you may only get to download one or two of a particular show.  Scholastic has a Weston Woods catalog, which has several Spanish titles.  Class also created their own books using PowerPoint with the students voices and converted them to video for loading on the iPods. 

There seems to be an improvement in reading based on recollection of reading levels from previous years compared to reading levels this year.  There is definitely more enthusiasm for reading.

Here is the link to the News 8 Austin story on Brooke Holt’s use of the ipod in her Kindergarten classroom for literacy work stations. http://www.news8austin.com/shared/video/video_pop.asp?destlist=57179

Great demo of what she is doing in her classroom and student perspective.