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.

Thing 6.. more info.

Of all the tools I have tried so far, I have to say that I have been most successful with the wiki. It has been extremely helpful for History Day projects. It has allowed students to post some of their turn in items (key question, thesis, sample annotations, etc.). This allows all students to see what their classmates are doing. This can be great for finding examples or knowing when a correction needs to be made. It has also saved me from dragging a ton of papers back and forth.

I would like to use google docs with more of my classes, especially with History Day and having students across different hours and/or teachers. As many people have found, it has been difficult to set up. I wonder how far away we are from each student having their own school email accounts?

Deleting on a wiki

One frustration I have found with the wiki: If students make comments on there that you would like to delete, you must do each individually which can take time. I emailed the wiki people to see if they give me a response or can change this. Most of the time you want the comments to stay, but if someone puts something dumb there, it would be nice to get rid of a chunck at a time, instead of one at a time.

More on the Wiki

Since break is over, I figured I better get back to blogging. I have continued with my wiki, and overall it has been a success. I gave the students extra credit for going to a public library for History Day research, if they would blog about it on the wiki, and I did have some students do this over break (shocking, that they are all A students!). This week I used it to have my students post their thesis statements. I liked this, because I didn't have 150 sheets of paper, I had all the thesis statements in one place, and the students could look at each others and assist one another. The wiki has actually made it easy to check through who has completed certain tasks, and who is not keeping up. So, that's all for now.

History Day Wiki

Well, I finally have my wiki set up for History Day. Bachman and I are using the same one, so I got all our students on and made sure it worked. They only had to write their topic and key question down to make sure everything works-- simple enough. It worked fairly well. The best part of having the students have accounts is that their name is attached, so if someone decides to write inappropriate comments, it's attached to them. Let's just say, there always has to be one to try it, and that genius could not figure out how I knew it was him that was calling people names on the wiki.
Why does there always have to be one kid to wreck something? I did have to spend 10-15 minutes going through and deleting his comments, just so noone else feels like they have the freedom to do this. So, he has joined the ranks of wiki probabtion--- any more inappropriate comments and his access will be gone, and I guess I will need to babysit him. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH--Thank goodness it's time for break. Merry Christmas :)

Thing 6

Well, I thought I should probably do Thing 6 before the holiday season, or this month's would not get done. I did find it interesting to read the teacher's assignment on the students going in and fixing up wikipedia--what a good way to have students do research, yet also look for fallacies. I don't mind students browsing wikipedia for a topic search or just to get an idea, but many of them cannot break away from using it--like it's the know all end all source. I just attended a History Day Workshop yesterday, and they are trying to get students out of this habit too. They told us there really should not be any sources on their bibliography from wikipedia.

As for GoogleDocs, I cannot say that I have ever really used this. I have learned about them through MILI and have gone through the steps of working with one. I have even set one up, in case I get the urge. However, right now I feel that I have enough on my plate. In the future, I would like to look further into using them in the future--if I can think of a great reason to use it. I have talked to a few students about using it for History Day, since they are working with people in different hours or classes. So, we'll see if we get to try it out.

Moving onto wiki's, I will be setting one up for History Day. I am not making it mandatory, but will offer some extra points for using the wiki. So, I just got started on this process and will need to find out how it works.

History Day-- narrowing down topics

Next week, we start working on helping students find History Day topics. Since we teach World History, students are required to choose a global individual (Non-American) who made an impact and is a legacy. I have looked at the research process materials, and I believe that there are a few sheets I can utilize to help the students who are struggling with narrowing down a topic or topics. Has anyone used any specific one and found success?

Shopping for deals

I will admit that I was one of those crazy people who actually went out and braved Black Friday shopping. I always have, and I think I always will, but I went at 10--I'm not getting trampled by the extra craziness (I mean a Walmart employee on the East Coast go killed by people, when he tried to open the door to let customer sin). Anyway, I know you can shop online, and yes, I have done this before, but I don't like paying all the shipping charges. My sister has already done quite a bit of her Christmas shopping online, and she encouraged me to look, because there are good deals. Lots of places were offering extra 40-50% off for buying items online. Plus, many places are offering free shipping this year, even if you're not spedning lots of bucks. So, I'm off to check out some deals.

Thing 5

I remember as a child loving to go to the library, in fact I liked to read and would go through books so quickly that my parents did not want to buy them. In elementary school, I loved library time. I always had my books finished by the time it was to bring them back. In middle school, I liked reading, but stuck to the more popular series like Babysitter's Club or Sweet Valley Twins--so my parents did a lot of buying, since the latest was not at the library fast enough. Our middle school librarian did remind me of the old lady in the movies-- there were 4 chairs at all the tables, but her biggest rule was only 2 people per table. It was like the 11th commandment or something.
Between being busier in high school with things and not having the weekly trip to the library, I usually did not visit too much ih high school, except for research projects. I did continue to read for pleasure, but I was not a frequent visitor to the library. In college and graduate school, the library was again more a place for research. This summer though I decided to get myself a library card in my area- Maple Grove. I have liked that they let you check out a lot of books at once and you can renew online-- in case you can't make it back in 2 weeks.I haven't really used it for much other than pleasure reading.
As for my students, I really am not too aware of their use of the public library. As a history teacher, I do take my students to our media center and teach them about the resources there, however, being that I don't live in Carver County, I am not that familiar with the libraries or student usage. I know that Larry Bachman and I are going to encourage public library use by offering some extra credit for history day and we are having public librarians come in and teach our students about the resources. Other than this, I haven't had a lot of time to think about better usage for students.

Mili This Past Week

I enjoyed looking at the data bases in class this week. I looked directly at Historical Newspapers, which I found to be a fairly interesting place. It was impressive to see how you could get articles and cartoons on historical topics easily, and they were from when it happened. I will need to explore this site more to be ablt to say exactly how I would use it.

Thing 4

Today I started to look at Thing 4, and worked at a customized homepage. I chose igoogle, basically because we have used many google things in MILI. Many times I choose to use yahoo as a search engine though, so we'll see how it goes. I will probably try this one and see how it goes, I can always change if I find something I like better.

I like the added information you can just check and add to your page. I am going to try this out as my page and see how it goes. I like the news, entertainment, and time features. I have always enjoyed logging into yahoo, because of the quick nes stories they have, so I think it will be useful to have these on a page I can make into a homepage, if I choose.

Lookin at the online calendar, I am not sure about using this. I already use the calendar in my email, and I have found this very useful to have right in my email. Someone emails me about setting up an appointment, and I can just check my calendar right there. So, I'm not sure I would change this.

As for the to do lists, they made me feel overwhelmed. It just felt like a lot of work to do in 1 lesson, so I think I am going to have to revisit this with a fresh mind. I am interested in taking a closer look at the project calculator, but today.... I feel overwhelmed with all I have already examined, so I think another day I will look at this more closely for how I could use this tool.

Wiki for History Day

I have decided to create a wiki page for History Day this year. This page will include a spot for both my students and Larry Bachman's, as we are working through this together. He's done History Day before, and hey-- I'm willing to be the one who jumps in to try and set up this wiki for our students. I have learned how to set up accounts without email addresses, and so I have done that step. Now, it's just a matter of teaching students how to use and figure out how best to manage this. Any suggestions???? I'll let everyone know how things are going once the ball is rolling--- should be early December when we start to use this.

Thing 3

Well, since this is going to be a very busy week with the end of the quarter and all, I thought I'd use my lazy Sunday afternoon for something productive. So, yes, I did thing 3.

Research is one of those things I really enjoy about teaching history. There's always so many things you can do, so sometimes I really need to think about the outcome of what do I really want my students to know leaving my classroom?. What is easy for me about research is coming up with the ideas for research assignments. I am an idea person, so that part of teaching has always been very easy for me.

The challenges for research, and I think many teachers would agree with me, is getting students to learn how to do quality research. I know that they can google something, but if what they are looking for is not in the first site, then they are not patient and say its not there, I need a new topic. Well, of course they don't get a new topic, but yes, I can definately use some tools to help my students research.

As I am doing History Day for the first time this year, I am glad that I am taking the MILI course. It has made me stop and look at all the things available for teachers and students to work on research projects. Yes, I am interested in the project calculator, and I did see some hand-outs that I believe can assist students with this project. While I believe the project itself is signifcant, overall I think that students will this year be getting better research skills along the way-- thanks to this class. I am also setting up a wiki for History Day students, not only for questions, but also for writing about how this process is going once a week.

I am trusting that teaching better research skills will have my student's trips to the media center be more productive. Hopefully, this will assist me in helping all these students' projects.

As for support, I believe that our media specialist is awesome here, and she's willing to use these resources as well. In all, I think that just like anything else you try with students, you just have to try some of these resources and see what works best for your classes.

All the technology we have and yet.....

After recent conferences, it has come to mind that while some parents use our technology, we have so many others that do not. We have been told many times that our World History textbook is heavy, ummm yeah there's a lot of history in the world that has happened. When you mention that the book is online and that we have CD Roms available, this still did not make some people happy! We cannot purchase 2 textbooks for each student at eighty dollars each, so either carry the book or use the online version. I had a few parents say, well it's hard to monitor their use, they may switch onto different sites--- hello I have to check on 30 plus students when we are in a lab-so maybe you can check up with your student.

So anyway, the real part of my post is that we have all these tools to use: Online book, parent portal, email, webpages with assignments posted and the actual assignments ready to print, and many times parents don't help their student take advantage of them. Even parents I had attend Curriculum Night asked me at conferences, can I see their assignments? He says he never has homework-- wake up this is high school, if he never does, his grade is probably not looking to good--- use the website, use portal!!! I guess my frustration is that we spend a lot of time with technology resources for students, but many times they are not getting used. Now, I know we have people who watch the portal hourly, and I don't want obsessiveness either, but with all these tools, if you have internet access-- check it out, and help your student use the resources.