Poetic License

As one who is somewhat unfamiliar with spreadsheets, I tried to create a “survey” type document that I could send out for collaboration.  I need some help with the design element, but was successful in creating the content for my Misfits unit at the beginning of the school year. I asked people to report about their experience with being called a “name”, how that played out for them, and what advice they’d have for others who shared a similar fate.  

I’ve already begun spinning ideas about how to use google docs in the classroom.

• I am using Google docs to create a plan for a unit I am coordinating with a friend in NY. She teaches The Misfits too, will teach it at the same time as me, and we will get started working on a plan for a presentation at this November’s National Conference of Teachers of English convention in Texas.
• Google docs is great for collaborative writing
• Google docs is terrific for taking the place of some departmental meetings. Put the agenda on the board, share and save time
• Keep records of all books read, blurbs and reviews – share them amongst students!!! I’m onboard with this one!
• Google docs is perfect for creating any kind of shared work in a classroom

Pageflakes took me many days to navigate, and I think I was just overwhelmed at the visual “business” of the whole thing.  I love the idea of pageflakes and initially began adding websites to my de.licio.us account that had to do with the first novel I am teaching, The Misfits by James Howe.  I’d like to build a page around the novel, but it will take more navigation and more time to get used to this interface.  I might just need to start with a scratch page rather than trying to modify what Shelley has done. 

As I mentioned, the problem for me is in the visuals. I don’t like the way the page is laid out and find it very busy and unappealing.  It helps to have more photo “squares,” but this is the same kind of feeling I got when playing around with the wiki.  As a visual learner, I find too much text overwhelming, and this is how I found the pageflakes template. I was able to modify the “theme” so that only two columns appeared instead of three, but still I wasn’t happy.

I’d like to learn more about how to use pageflakes and found another website that seems to have a similar set up (in terms of these “block” content areas) without the blank white space and text overload. Maybe someone can direct me how to make my page more like the one at New England Cable Network. Ideas anyone??

Find Something in ‘Common’ from USA Today caught my attention yesterday.  The article discusses how Flickr and the Library of Congress as well as other historical institutions have joined forces to post pictures as a means of allowing the photo-sharing community to play “detective.”  The implications are vast as there are thousands upon thousands of unidentified historical photographs which would benefit from further identification.  When I was thinking about the positive ramifications of such an alliance, Holocaust survivor photos seemed to be the perfect match. There could be, this many years later, connections made between survivor families, if not among survivors themselves.  What a positive benefit of the Internet today. 

Youtube and teachertube are such addicting sites. It’s no wonder my teenager spends so much time on youtube. A few weeks ago I found him asking about flammable liquids and was clued into the fact that he was watching a youtube video on making fireballs. So…although youtube has many applications for educational purposes, such as “How To” do something, as adults, youtube needs some monitoring but should not be blocked at school sites. I do believe that teaching responsible usage is a part of tech education for our students.

I explored some civil rights videos to correlate with my Watsons go to B’ham, 1963 unit. I watched old film footage, listened to Joan Baez sing “Oh Freedom,” watched people get their noses and tongues pierced, found the video on fireballs my son must have been watching, learned how to make sushi, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

There are many applications for watching videos in the classroom – to illustrate a time in history, to bring to life a poem, to teach kids how to do something. There are also ways to show off what students have created for all to see. Next year, I’d like to post our Poetry Slam video.

Below is a video from a spoken poetry night. I remember receiving it a few years ago. It’s about what teachers do. Always inspirational, especially when we are contemplating going back to school so soon.

When asked to do the initial RSS Feed task where I added subscriptions, podcasts were included in my subscriptions.  I LOVE NPR and enjoy listening to it in the car, but now that I have teens, I’m often overruled when it comes to listening.  In the morning, I don’t compromise however and get to find out what’s going on the world.  Podcasts are a way to catch up. For instance, the new David Sedaris book just came out, and I’d like to listen to him read an essay to decide whether or not I should buy it. I found an NPR podcast with that exact thing while exploring the various options tonight.  I visited Podcast Alley and NPR and PBS sites which all had things I wanted to listen to…the downside is finding the time to do it.  I do own an IPod as do virtually all of my students, and IPods are great for listening to podcasts. Kids are attached to their IPods like we are attached to our cell phones, and they are a wonderful vehicle for imparting information.  

For my particular students, creating podcasts will have more allure than actually listening to the ones others created, unless those others are their friends’.   There are many applications for classroom usage. I’m thinking that podcasts would be great for recording memorized poems (videocasts would be better), creating radio shows in writing workshop, presenting research material, or other things.

We’ll see how easy it is to actually create this podcast in the next thingy…. If kids can do it, I can too!!!!

I’m not so impressed with Library Thing. At first, I thought this would be a great way to catalogue books, tag them, post reviews, and share with students and other teachers, but honestly…the execution isn’t so great.  I explored the Library for over an hour and didn’t find it user friendly at all. I tried all the buttons to search including adding some “groups,” but most of the groups were abandoned and the search engine seems persnickety.  I don’t understand why there’s an Amazon Search, a Library of Congress search and over 600 others. Isn’t there an easier way?  Maybe I need a better tutorial, or maybe Library Thing just has some bugs to work out. I wonder what others thing too.  When trying to add “tags” my library addition kept getting deleted. Not user friendly and unless simplified, I think I’ll pass…

I really do like Del.icio.us as a social bookmarking site and got busy searching tags and adding websites to my own list. I found some wonderful sites about YA literature, but by no means a complete list.  I like the fact that my bookmarks can be used from any computer, but wonder if I have to upload the links to Del.icio.us on each computer as I use them.  For instance…I’m on a laptop now and have bookmarked the Post Del.icio.us URL as well as the Del.icio.us website itself.  Do I have to do this again on my computer at school? I’m assuming so.

Here’s a link to my personal list created in less than an hour: Terri’s Del.icio.us list

I will readily admit that I can’t keep up with the news. Checking the RSS feed every other day is daunting, but I’m managing occasionally.  I really like the feeds I’m getting from YA “know-it-alls”  like Terri Lesesne who keep recommending wonderful literature. I’m also enjoying reading Laurie Halse Anderson’s Blog, Mad Woman in the Forest, to keep up with what she’s doing personally and professionally. Having personal connections (or so it seems since they come so frequently) helps with the professional motivation.

On a personal note, I like reading about new restaurants and am enjoying the posts in a feed I get called Table Talk by Meredith Ford. She reports on the Atlanta restaurant scene – something I don’t always have time to read about in the AJC.

So…I get sucked in easily. I love where the web leads but hate the productive time it sucks up in the vacuum of cyberspace.  Today I visited four new tools of choice. I’ll report on each individually-

1. Letter Pop is a website that allows one to create newsletters for free. There are hundreds of readily created templates available for use, and students would like this as an alternative to Publisher newsletters. Letter Pop is designed to be shared on-line, thus we waste less paper. I like this idea for group collaboration during writing workshops. I often have students wanting to do newsletters to distribute to their friends. This would be an easy way to do so and share with a lot of people. It’s also a neat tool for me to use to communicate with parents on a semi (am I being ambitious?) regular basis.
2. Mixbook is a website used for creating personal books.  It’s similar to I-Book that I’ve used a lot lately on the Mac. SnapFish and other picture storage sites on-line have their own versions. I like that Mixbook is a lot cheaper than I-Book, has a refundable guarantee, and presents more format choices. I think I’m going to try to use it for the next photo book I have to create. Grandparents are waiting for pictures from my children’s b’nai mitzvah in February still.  One of the neatest things about this website is that one can share the book on-line, for free. Way cool. Mixbook even allows users to interface with other uses to collaborate on a book.  I just went on vacation with four other families, and this would be a good way to collaborate on the vacation book.  Just gotta convince the others. Yes, there are loads of other classroom applications too…along the same lines.
3. Toondoo is a neat website too, especially for the creative types.  It’s a website where one can make their own cartoons, publish them to the toondoo website or embed into another interface like a blog, website or wiki.  I was particularly thinking of my English classroom boys who enjoy writing but also like the illustrative aspect of any piece of literature. They may not draw well, but Toondo solves this by having the available toon images at the ready.  This could be an independent Writing Workshop addition or a collaborative piece for any writing assignment. I originally wondered it Toondoo could help with creating a storyboard for a film project my students work on at the end of the year, and this is entirely possilble.
4. Weebly is a web-site creation space.  It’s free.  When I get a lot of time, I’m going to use it to help create a website for my jewelry business as it looks to be fairly foolproof.  When I visited the site, user organizations were featured, and one particularly caught my eye – it called Present Tense and is a “zionist-based” organization that gives feeder money to and support for entrepeneuraial start up companies (profit or not) who are based in Israel. I then went to look at the people benefiting from funding. One young woman started a business called “Challah for Hunger” which supports groups who want to raise money for charitable groups by making challah each week and selling it.  Neat!  I also found out about a young man’s project called “Bible Raps” – I’ll pass this along to the Judaic teachers.