Online Learning Module

Today, I created my first online learning module.  I chose a topic about which I have become passionate:  Prezi in the Classroom.  I chose to use a blog to deliver my instruction and organized my lessons into individual pages within my blog.  Each lesson requires a response that can be posted as a comment.  The module itself should take a grand total of about two or three hours to complete and provides learners with an overview of Prezi, many practical uses of Prezi in the classroom, an introductory how-to, examples, and the opportunity to create and share a Prezi. 

I find that the more I use Web 2.0 tools, the more I enjoy them.  I love the many ways I can adapt these applications to meet my needs, and I see a plethora of uses for so many of them in the classroom.  Prezi is only the beginning. 

Glogster

While searching for help applying the connection between Universal Design for Learning and Web 2.0 digital tools, I came across this Glog on a Wiki.  It is fraught with resources that can be put to good use providing access to the general curriculum for all students by simply utilizing the web-based tools available to all teachers.  Enjoy!

Fine tuning Prezi...

Circles - parts, measurements, and geometry on Prezi

After doing a little more research on how Prezi can best be used, I decided to apply it to a math lesson I am teaching this week.  I am looking for feedback on my use of the Prezi features in this presentation.

Prezi Presentations

Volcanoes on Prezi

I was just introduced to Prezi earlier this school year by the Technology Facilitator for my school.  At the time, I found the concept to be titillating but feared I would not be able to think outside my linear "box" in order to construct a meaningful presentation using this format.  Indeed, when I chose to make my frst attempt, I began with a PowerPoint presentation I created for a science unit I taught during my internship.  However, once I started working with Prezi, I found out that it is an enjoyable experience that gave new dimensions to my linear designs.  I look forward to a long and exciting relationship with Prezi!

Digital Movie Making in and for the Classroom



This is the 21st Century.  Students today are expected to be able to collaborate, problem-solve, and create products.  The world they will enter when they graduate is one in which minimum-wage earners will not thrive and where the ability to correctly answer a multiple-choice question will be irrelevant.  This is the technology age, and children are attached to devices such as iPods, video game consoles, computers, and smartphones as often as they are connected to people.  They will need to be able to manipulate, process, evaluate, use, and produce media throughout their lives. 

The new digital literacies are developing to help prepare today's students for the world of tomorrow.  Where does digital movie-making fit into all of this?  First, today's teachers must understand that a student body of individuals who have been inundated by images, light, and sound since birth will not be receptive to or retain information from the lectures or drill-and-kill teaching methods utilized on us.  Our instruction must be quick-paced, colorful, and exciting or we will be tuned out.  Today's students may actually gain more from a three minute video clip we prepare than from a twenty-minute paper and pencil activity.  Moreover, http://www.p21.org/ lists competencies that today's students will need that can be gained through the planning, design, and production of video within the classroom.  Skills such as collaboration, creativity, innovation, and problem-solving can be learned through real, tangible experiences such as video production. 

Whether or not we are ready to face the truth, reality IS that students are already producing video and other media and sharing it through social media outlets.  If they are to develop the critical judgment skills they will need to survive in a mediacentric world, we must provide them opportunities to learn them.  As teachers, it is our responsibility to teach and hold our students to high ethical and netiquette standards.  How, then, are they to learn  and use these standards if we do not give them opportunities to create and publish in the classroom?  In today's school, it should not be only the students in the broadcasting courses who are using this technology.  It should be all students.

Attached is my latest creation intended to incite interest in the mountain region of North Carolina.  This short video could be utilized in the North Carolina 8th grade social studies classroom.  Students should then be assigned other regions of the state and challeneged to produce their own digital media works designed to inspire tourists to visit other parts of the state.

Volcanoes, a PowerPoint Presentation

VOLCANOES


Volcanoes by Melissa Townsend is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Social Bookmarking...WOW!

Until this week, my technologically-slow self had never heard of social bookmarking.  Now, I'm in love with it.  For years, I have bemoaned the sad state of my Internet Explorer Favorites.  They are hard to organize and not accessible except from my personal laptop.  Thanks to http://www.delicious.com/ and http://www.diigo.com/, I will never have to struggle with either of those issues again.

Social bookmarking allows me to not only store my bookmarks on the web; I can "tag" them with keywords that will help me sort and filter them when I need to locate only the ones, say, on math strategies.  I may also highlight text I may want to find again and leave notes or comments about my sites and the sites of others.  Since the bookmarks are stored on the Internet, they are available to me everywhere I may work instead of limited to one computer.  Furthermore, with social bookmarking I can share my links with others in my network and access their bookmarks as well. 

My personal social bookmarking sites can be found at http://www.delicious.com/mdt0430 and http://www.diigo.com/user/townsendm07.  As a new user, I am exploring the benefits and disadvantages of each of these major social bookmarking services.  Both have similarities and differences, but I am only beginning to get to know them.  More comprehensive analysis of both services will come later.

LiveBinders at Work in the Classroom

Like Wikis, http://www.livebinders.com/ allows teachers to coordinate and collect information, files, and websites into one location for easy access at home and school.  Unlike Wikis, LiveBinders do not allow students to alter information already placed there.  I recently discovered this little treasure and have put it to use in my classroom. 

In my school, we do not allow students to randomly surf the Internet, "Googling" for websites.  We provide our students with pre-screened websites for their use.  While there are several ways to accomplish this from dropping links into a document and uploading it to a shared folder to handing lists of web addresses to students for manual entry, none of the historically utilized tools really meet 21st Century standards. 

LiveBinders allows users to create virtual three-ring binders of information, files, and websites in easy-click tabs and sub-tabs.  Once students the correct LiveBinder, they have a sort of closed-circuit web browser at their disposal where websites are "Live" from the tabs on the screen.  Teachers can also add media, text, and files to tabs. 

This technology means that students can conduct research, pursue WebQuests, and explore new concepts on their own in school or at home, without having to look for a needle in a haystack.  I am still exploring the possible uses of LiveBinders, but I can envision future "Live" bibliographies and Webquests created by students to demonstrate their learning and understanding.  This resource could be the beginning of student presentations that go beyond research papers, posters, and PowerPoint presentations.

You can view a basic LiveBinder I created to help my students research ocean exploration technology by going to http://www.livebinder.com/ and searching for the binder entitled townsendhcms.  The site also features binders of all kinds.  Move over, Bookmarks.  A new era has begun. 

Wiki's in the Classroom?

The 21st Century is a time of creation and collaboration.  Our students will not graduate from high school into a world of fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, or true-false options.  They will enter a world in which they will be expected to reason, to problem-solve, to communicate, create, and collaborate.  They need Wiki's. 

With Wiki's, students can accumulate and edit information on a given topic.  Students can create study guides for tests by including and defining vocabulary or outlining chapters.  They can enjoy creating and publishing an add-on story or build a collection of information from which to build a research presentation.  Wiki's are excellent places for students to ask and answer questions.  A Wiki is also an innovative way to create a class bibliography of resources or websites. 

Of course, with Wiki's a teacher must lay some ground rules.  Spelling and punctuation may be edited, but no one should be allowed to delete or greatly alter another student's contribution without their permission.  All information input needs to be meaningful and on-topic, and students must be required to document sources of information they cut and paste or paraphrase. 

Among the skills students can learn using class Wiki's is respect for the work of others, acceptance of constructive correction, and the value of each contribution to a larger whole.  But, teachers, please monitor your students carefully as they begin to use Wiki's.  Technologies that are new to you and them can be the stimulus for unanticipated bumps in the road. 



Images courtesy of http://parcepsocialmedia.wikispaces.com/null?from=ss_embed

Whole Brain Teaching

When I first heard of Power Teaching (now called Whole Brain Teaching), I was an undergraduate student. The first time I watched Chris Biffle's basic training video on YouTube, I became enthralled with the interactive nature of the method. Power Teaching involves so many best practices that it can hardly fail to be effective for those courageous enough to try it.

I am in the process of putting Power Teaching to the test in my classroom of sixth and seventh grade students with special needs. I am taking it much more slowly than Chris does in his training video, but my students embraced the "Class-Yes" and the "Scoreboard" immediately.

My students are all male and very active. They also have a history of feeding off one another's frustrations. However, it is a beautiful sight to see the instant transformation when I say, "Class!" They all stop what they are doing and say, "Yes!" in exactly the tone and pitch I used. An unexpected benefit of this practice was the immediate feedback I receive for my own actions. They are so well trained that when, in exasperation, I spoke the magic word sharply one day, they answered me in like kind. We all had a good laugh, and then I repeated my "Class!" in a more restrained tone, to which they responded appropriately.

Since my students love to make noise and be silly, Power Teaching gives me just the tool I need to provide them with an acceptable outlet while serving my own purposes of classroom control as well. The results are well worth the performance. The "Teach-Okay" is my next step, and I plan to integrate it next week. Updates on progress will follow. In the meantime, feel free to visit for a wealth of helpful information about this innovative educational strategy.