Using Glogster

Well, after having my classes use Glogster, I have discovered a few good tips.
1. Have a partner in crime to help you--your media specialist would work well. It helps to have 2 people to "help" students get set up and help them along the way

2. Have the students work in pairs. I did this, and it worked well. This way you only have 15 students logging in. The first time we tried to have everyone, it slowed everything way down--it took forever to load in 1 picture

3. Make sure you go through how to save with students. I know they think they know how to do all, but I had a few people lose their work, because they did not go through the saving steps

4. Be willing to take the time to set up accounts for students. It takes time at the beginning, but it was well worth it.

5. Assign an additional task with it, this way you are making sure students are really learning the information. For me, they had to do a summary paper as well.

6. Be comfortable that it is a learning process--be willing to have pitfalls along the way. Not everything works perfect all the time

The good news is that we are sharing our posters in class this week, and they look great. Overall, the students seemed to like using this. At this point in the year, it was great to pull out a new tool to grab their attention. They were on task for all class periods in the media center, and best of all could use this at home as well. I would recommend trying this, but like everything else, don't overuse. This was perfect time of year to get something new and exciting for students to use.After surveying my first few classes, most students liked the change and were poitive about the experience---as you know, you can't please them all :)

Thing 10: Digital Storytelling-Setting up Glogster

I am set try to Glogster with my students starting tomorrow, so we will see how it goes with using this tool. I have set up accounts for all my students, but unlike other programs, I found it not as user friendly in setting up. When I set up the wiki, it gave me a class list of users and passwords, along with a little coupon like sheets you could just print out and give to students. This way, I still had a list as a taecher, but all I had to do was cut the slips apart and give them to students. Glogster edu just gave me a list of users and passwords. This has made the process time consuming--having to write out an index card for each student with a user and password. Hopefully, all this time is worth it :).

Thing 9: Copyright

Overall, most of this information was a good refresher. Obviously, I don't think that teachers set out to copyright, and I am starting to understand fair use more. I believe that teachers don't set out to copyright, but I thin we all have probably done it. I believe educators need to know fair use better, because it is no longer just a yes/no.

Out of the Technology World

I just got back from a Spring Break cruise to Mexico--yes, it was awesome. I enjoyed being away from it all, and yes, being away from technology was good. My cell phone was off, no computer (Hey--who would pay the crazy on ship rates,anyway?--It amazed me the people that did!), and best of all no email. Yes, I did live 1 week without all these items, and it felt really good to leave it all behind. I think my point is that yes, technology is good, but sometimes I feel it runs too much of our lives. I think that not letting it take over our lives is good. It is good to step away from it: go on vacation and leave it all behind, take a walk --now that it's spring. I believe that it's good for all of us to take a break from the day to day craziness of technology and enjoy some other things.

Thing 8: Databases

I am finally in the home stretch of History Day--yeah! It's due this week, and I am ready to see the products of months of work. Anyway, teaching students research is always an interesting process. Most students come to us only using the Internet to research --and that's really all they do. If it's not on their first Google search, then it must not exist and they need a new topic--at least that's what they say. I have to say that's one thing that History Day has been great for--pushing students out of their element and making them search a variety of sources. Once students start using databases, it can be an amazing light bulb turning on moment. I'm wondering if this process of using a variety of sources could start ealier. I am kind of concerned that students come to high school and can only research by using google. It can be a great starting point, but I believe rsearch skills need to be taught earlier.
I have taught my students a variety of types of databases and how to use them. One of my favorites for them was Historical Newspapers.This is a fairly cool site, because it can show you actual papers of the time-they have been scanned in. This is an awesome place to show students how to look for primary sources, because these are actual artciles of the time period.

Thing 7

In looking at all the different search engines available, I feel like I have a lot of new places to help students dig for information online. I liked the list of 50 search engines to try--I think we all get in a rut with google and yahoo, and after playing with some of these, I like the multimedia sources, as a way to get a new perspective on a topic.

Team Teaching for History Day

After finding ourselves answering the same questions and fixing the same issues over and over again for our History Day Projects, Connie (our school media specialist) and I decided to do some team teaching on some key concepts. We went over primary and secondary sources, how to do better key word searches, what places to use to find better info., annotated bibliography, and process paper writing. We're hoping that our efforts will be seen as students progress through this process.