5 Technologies You Should Consider Using in the Classroom by Don Waisanen

reprinted from Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-waisanen/5-technologies-you-should_b_5669035.html

The news this week has been replete with stories about whether or not iPads or similar devices can contribute much to students' learning. Whatever the answers, what is clear is that online and mobile media technologies aren't going away any time soon. In an environment where students are as likely to look at their phones as take notes, new styles of learning and interaction will continue to present a challenge for educators. As a communication scholar and teacher, I've attended a number of workshops and conferences related to this topic over the past year. Without replacing existing teaching methods, it's clear to me that teaching with new technologies at least offers a host of new strategies for presentation, discussion, or assignments worth considering. I've compiled a list below of some platforms others may find useful in their own teaching.

Since there's so many new tools out there, I've tried to think about each of these from the viewpoint of a bored, skeptical student who might rightly question such technologies as "gimmicky." With that lens filtering my suggestions, here's some programs potentially applicable to many courses, with some rationales next to each:

1) Poll Everywhere. I love this one, although we can definitely put it in the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" category. Since students bring their cell phones to class and are constantly tempted to start texting friends and others, why not let that impulse serve your educational goals instead? Poll Everywhere replaces "clickers" in the classroom. Instructors can pose a series of prepared questions or take a quick, impromptu poll on a topic. Students then text their answers to the numbers/options presented on the classroom screen, and voila, you've got an involving way of seeing students' thoughts. This method is also great for getting everyone in the class to participate, drawing out those who wouldn't normally respond to instructor prompts.* (www.polleverywhere.com)

2) Powtoons. Somewhere between a Prezi presentation and a video commercial,Powtoons allows students to create professional-looking cartoon videos on any subject matter. I run a campaigns course where students have to create 1-2 minute commercials as part of their final projects. Students in my course have found this program easy to use and a way to bring more creativity to their assignments. If you are working in a completely online course or moving a current class into more of a hybrid online/offline format, you should also consider using this program to create lectures that can be posted online. (www.powtoons.com)

3) Social Media "Sentiment" Analysis. Let's face it, many students already spend countless hours broadcasting their opinions on social media. Whether you're teaching a statistics class covering the concepts of validity and generalizability, or an English class unpacking an author's textual choices, the different programs that claim to measure public "sentiment" on a topic can make unfamiliar subjects more relatable. (For a variety of tools, see http://bit.ly/JZaJGY)

4) The Social Media "Wall." For this one, I recommend first deciding how "public" or "private" your course will be. As much as this strategy presents an opportunity to rework how a course is taught, there's also a level of risk entailed if you choose the more "public" route. Create a class "group" formally or informally through a site like Ning, Google Hangout, or Facebook--or through various programs' instant messenger functions. The instructor can keep this wall up on the screen during class, inviting students to post comments or questions while the session runs. For an even more "public" version of this strategy, you can create a Twitter wall or hashtag to which students can post. This makes the classroom space less private, but it also offers an opportunity to actually produce a larger conversational commons. From my perspective, I consider classrooms private spaces where students should have the ability to experiment, so I would err on the side of limiting the site to course members only. But as new programs and forms of social media develop, this seems like a great strategy for making lectures, in particular, more participatory than traditional formats have permitted.

5) Ethelo Decisions. Moving beyond the simplicity of Poll Everywhere to a tool that promises to bring online research and group decision making fully into the 21st century, Ethelo Decisions is an online collaboration platform that can take students through parts of a research, analysis, and decision making process on any particular issue. As the site outlines, there are survey and voting tools, social media and other sharing features, reports, and data management options all in one place. For the teaching context, what has most stood out to me is the tool's potential to engage students in how collective knowledge might be produced and evaluated. (http://ethelodecisions.com/)

New technologies aren't everything, but they can broaden an educator's repertoire and work with methods of understanding that are already a part of students' everyday lives. In that spirit, if you've found some novel uses for these or any other new technology methods, join me in advancing this conversation on Twitter@DonWaisanen.

*I'd like to acknowledge Shannon VanHorn and Jonna Ziniel's National Communication Association workshop, "There's an App for That," for being especially helpful in drawing my attention to the Poll Everywhere, Powtoons, and social media wall examples.

Don Waisanen is an assistant professor of communication in the School of Public Affairs, Baruch College/CUNY.

Follow Don Waisanen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DonWaisanen

No More Snow Days?

Through the use of technology, teachers and students can stay connected and recover instructional time even though falling snow has traffic stalled and schools closed.

Hun School teacher holds class via tablet as she sits in Pa. turnpike gridlock
By Alyssa Mease/The Times of Trenton 
on February 15, 2014 at 6:30 AM, updated February 15, 2014 at 6:33 AM

PRINCETON — After missing multiple school days because of snow this winter, Hun School history teacher Lynn McNulty wasn’t going to let a series of chain-reaction car crashes and a miles-long traffic jam on the Pennsylvania Turnpike yesterday keep her from school another day.

“I was probably about two miles back from the big, serious pileup, but there were accidents all around,” McNulty said yesterday. “And I was like, ‘Oh this is bad.’”

After sitting in the stand-still for about an hour at the Willow Grove exit on the turnpike and live-streaming a news program on her cell phone, McNulty realized her chances of getting to school in time to teach her advanced placement European history class were not good. So she posted a message to her class through the school’s internal communications system, telling them to contact her via video chat when they got in.

Bridging a distance of miles through technology, McNulty yesterday used the school’s electronic resources and her tablet computer to teach her class from her car that was stopped on the turnpike, which was shut down for hours because of an initial 25-vehicle pileup around 8:30 a.m. in the eastbound lanes between Willow Grove and Bensalem and Willow Grove, according to 6ABC.com.

“Literally no one was moving, and I sat through a total of four-and-a-half hours,” McNulty said.

All freshman and sophomore students in the school are given tablets, so the classroom was equipped with the technology to support a virtual discussion, McNulty said. The school’s technology coordinator and McNulty’s department chair sat in on the class to make sure everything ran smoothly, she said.

“It wasn’t really out of the realm of possibility,” McNulty said. “I could see all the kids, and could see all the kids discussing with one another.”

The topic of yesterday’s discussion was Napolean III and the Crimean War, McNulty said.

“They were into it, and I think they knew I was serious about being there,” she said. “I flipped the phone around to show them I was really stuck on the turnpike.”

McNulty said she usually gets on the eastbound turnpike at Fort Washington and had just passed the Willow Grove exit when she encountered the stopped traffic. Although her car was not damaged and she was not injured, she said the road conditions were poor yesterday morning and a few cars around her were involved in minor accidents because they couldn’t come to a stop in time.

Learning Theories and Course Design

When designing courses and learning activities for the upcoming semester, educators will want to consider various learning theories, like those shown in the image to the left. For teachers integrating educational technology, Constructivism and Connectivism are the better fit.

Case Based Learning and Cognitive Flexibility Theory

Case Based Learning

Case Based Learning (CBL) can encompass many of the learning theories of which we’ve learned: goal-based scenarios and anchored instruction, for example. CBL emphasizes learning in context and helps students develop skills in analytical thinking and reflective judgment by reading and discussing complex, real-life scenarios. First used in law schools, and then business schools, case based learning allows students to be involved in dynamic learning.  Cases have stories or storylines with which students can interact, and through these storylines, students learn from the experiences of others.  CBL is used primarily to teach students about realistic decision-making situations; while it is used less in K-12 than in higher education, cases can be designed for students of all ages and abilities.  Cases can be designed with either complete or incomplete information; cases can also be designed to incorporate multimedia.  Students are involved in conversation and reasoning as they work to solve the problem.  Multimedia and web 2.0 tools can be used in Case Based Learning lesson construction.  Students could interview virtual experts, participants, or witnesses. Case designers could collect and organize resources using a social bookmarking web service like Delicious, and GoogleDocs, for example, allows for asynchronous student collaboration. One drawback to Case Based Learning is the time required to collect resources and design the lesson.  Collaboration among teachers who would bring various skills to the design team would be one way to lessen the workload.

Case Based Reasoning

Case Based Reasoning (CBR) differs from CBL in that multiple cases are presented for students to study and compare.  As in CBL, prior solutions can be adapted to new problems and students see how prior cases can be related to new cases.  CBR is present in everyday human problem solving: all reasoning can be said to be based on past cases personally experienced.  The process of CBR consists of four steps: Retrieve, Reuse, Revise, and Retain.

There are case based reasoning activity and lesson repositories that teachers may access, and there are resources, such as the Turf Grass Library, where students may retrieve cases similar to the cases they are studying.

Cognitive Flexibility Theory

Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT) proposes that individuals learn and grasp the nature of complex information more readily by being presented with multiple media representations, multiple case perspectives, and learner interaction with the same information in varying contexts.  According to Spiro, CFT is based upon the premise that the majority of knowledge to be taught is complex and ill-structured. In these complex and ill-structured domains, learners spontaneously restructure their own knowledge. The way students are taught has great impact: if students are exposed to various, connected cases they will develop flexible knowledge that can be transferred to different situations and in multiple contexts.  If the learner is called upon to combine their own experiences and incorporate new materials and then develop their own opinions on a given topic, greater knowledge will be constructed. When the CFT lessons are designed, the concepts and their relationships are presented in multiple, yet similar, ways: simulations, audio, video, text, images.

Both of these constructivist theories use the study of prior cases and use the knowledge gained in the past to solve future problems.  The student interaction with these narratives results in greater student learning.

Multimedia representations can be complex and multifaceted, and the linking attributes of hypermedia makes web 2.0 technologies well-suited for CFT lesson design. Twitter, for example, could help us connect with experts and other participants in case studies.  Simply adding video to modules constructed for online access would add a valuable digital literacy element. It is important to remember that the cases are not teaching the concepts, per se, but the student learns after reconstructing the information from the cases.  The exercise with the Plantation Letters was an effective introduction to the ideas and possibilities in the Cognitive Flexibility Theory, and I would recommend teachers interested in learning more about this and other theories to seek out and participate in similar interactions.

Learning Objects 

Learning Objects are useful resources that can be used in web-based modules in different learning theories, and the best learning objects can be reused in different classes and in different subjects. A resource can be tagged with descriptors that facilitate sharing and use.  There are designations, such as Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), that identify certain Learning Objects as high-quality. Good educators have always accumulated learning objects for use in the classroom, and in the past, some teachers were quite protective of their favorite objects, whether proprietary or not.  Now digital content allows educators to access a growing database of resources, and the sharing of these resources is easier than ever.

I will first attempt to use Case Based and Cognitive Flexibility in the eighth grade social studies classroom.  There are myriad resources, many of a rich, narrative nature, that lend themselves to use in lessons designed following these models. For instance, the slave letters provide a great example of how digitized primary sources can be used.  Digitized letters, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as radio broadcasts and video clips can be used as learning objects. From the early history of North Carolina to more contemporary issues, there is really no aspect of the curriculum that could not feasibly be used in a cognitive flexibility activity.

Context Based Instruction

The idea that “…knowledge is less likely to remain inert when it is acquired in a problem-solving mode rather than in a factual-knowledge mode,” is at the heart of these pedagogical models.

As an educator, reading and thinking about these approaches to learning is both interesting and inspiring.

In Goal-Based Scenarios, it is critical that the teacher identify areas of student interests; of course, every good teacher knows that you have to get to know your students. Once the teacher is aware of student interests (and they are varied), then a learning scenario can be devised to involve the student with the curriculum. The optimal Goal-Based Scenarios embed curriculum and create goals that require students to develop a specific set of desired skills. The planning of a Goal-Based Scenario will begin with desired skills in mind, then develops goals that interest students (context). The seven steps can be followed when devising Goal-Based Scenarios:

1: Learning Goals

• content and process goals

2: Mission

• a relevant and realistic mission that will motivate students

3: Cover Story

• a plausible and important task that will create the context for learning

4: Roles

• students have specific tasks

5: Operations

• the activities students conduct to reach their goal

6: Resources

• necessary, even conflicting, resources to complete goal are provided to students

7: Feedback

When students are motivated and interested, real learning will inevitably take place. Goal-Based Scenarios take into account student needs and interests; in addition, students practice valuable 21^st century learning skills: using various means of communication, meaningful collaboration with peers, creativity, and critical thinking.

Adherents of Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeships hold that knowing is inseparable from doing and all knowledge is situated in authentic activities in relevant contexts. Skills are acquired through these authentic experiences in context and through communicating with peers and experts about those experiences. Like the Goal-Based Scenarios mentioned above, student learning activities in the Situated Cognition model should be focused toward a relevant outcome. In the classroom, the teacher is advised to model, coach, and fade. This is an excellent description of the teacher as facilitator model desired by many educators. Knowledge and learning comes from creative problem-solving and “thinking on the fly” rather than the storage and retrieval of conceptual knowledge; therefore, learn by doing can be considered the motto for this educational model.

Anchored Instruction

In the two learning models above, students learn desired, specific skills as they work to creatively to solve meaningful problems, problems often related to the real world and designed with student interests in mind. Anchored Instruction presents, often through a narrative, a realistic (but fictional) situation which raises an over-arching question or problem. As contrasted with Goal Based and Situated Cognition, the problems to be solved in Anchored Instruction are formulated and solved by the students. In the Jasper series, for example, students glean the necessary facts, often having to discern and discard irrelevant or superfluous information, from the narrative. This model seems to me, so far, the most difficult to create for the classroom. That’s why I’m working on one.

The STAR Legacy model also poses an interesting, real-life problem for students to solve in a series of specific steps. This problem is open-ended and provides opportunities for student reflection; this is Step 1: The Challenge. Students begin by activating prior knowledge through brainstorming exercises; students will revisit these thoughts later in the process; this is Step 2: Initial Thoughts. In Step 3: Perspectives and Resources, students use provided resources to work through the challenge. In Step 4: Assessment, students are formally assessed to find out what they have learned and what they can do with this knowledge. During Step 5: Wrap-Up, students return to their initial thoughts in Step 2 to compare them and reflect on what was learned as a result of the activity.

MOST Environments

The MOST model would help students improve reading comprehension skills through improving listening comprehension skills, an important, yet often overlooked, component of literacy. In addition, digital literacy skills can be enhanced through the inclusion of interesting, and therefore, motivational, audio, video, and interactive media. In addition, subtitles and captions can be used to support literacy and reading comprehension skills. The MOST model may be of interest and use to educators integrating Common Core, especially with its emphasis on the use of texts in increasing complexity.

There are several easy-to-use multimedia tools that lend themselves to storytelling and would be useful for the educator and/or student creating animation/videos for these context based instruction models.

Go!Animate - adds your dialogue to animation; basic is free and easy to use. Limited choices of characters and backgrounds.

Animoto - easy to make slideshows with music, text and transitions; free educator accounts

Storybird - flipbook creator

Photo Story 3 - free Microsoft product that combines images, text, voiceover, music, and transitions to make a video

What the 4C's Look Like

I had the honor and pleasure to present at the 2012 Collaborative Conference for Student Achievement: Engaging North Carolina in Transforming 21st Century Teaching and Learning. I was nervous, but the capacity crowd seemed friendly and eager to hear about the good things being done with educational technology in Asheboro City Schools. I hope you'll find something of interest, and I'll be happy to answer any questions. In fact, I'd be happy to come to your school district and repeat the presentation in person! What the 4 C's: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking Look Like in the Classroom

View more PowerPoint from barryrbarber

Models of Collaborative Learning

“Odds are pretty good that [students] will be asked to work with others from around the globe collaboratively to create content for diverse and wide-ranging audiences. Odds are also pretty good that they are going to need to read and write effectively in linked environments as they locate, analyze, remix, and share the best, most relevant content online for their own learning"(Richardson, 2010).

My initial reactions to these learning models were interest and a vision of how these may look in the classrooms of my school. I do, however, realize that there are barriers to the successful implementation of these learning models. Foremost is the dependence on student self-motivation. If students are unable or unwilling to maintain the focus and levels of perseverance and performance required, the time will be wasted. There is also a question of relevance: can I develop relevant learning opportunities for my students? The benefits of implementation will be increased student learning, student leadership, and participation in the decision making, problem-solving process. These skills will be needed for student success no matter their path in life.

There are similarities and differences between the models: each develops individual student knowledge through active participation in cooperative learning experiences. “Real learning moves beyond the memorization of facts, encourages the learner to be actively involved in the learning process, and occurs best when it occurs within a community of learners” (Trivette, 2005). Collaborative tools that facilitate these instructional models include Google Docs and Google Sites. They both allow students to work on documents or websites at the same time.

In Guided Design, students work collaboratively to investigate and solve real world problems and find answers to open ended questions; the collaborative nature of the student group models real-life situations: students must function as a member of a group, assessing and offering information and ideas, justifying or rejecting based upon merit and validity. Unlike the models that incorporate research, guided design is based on a student’s prior knowledge. The strengths of guided design include increased student motivation through the use of real world situations; students can develop collaborative problem solving skills and practice decision making skills. The weaknesses of guided instruction include difficulties for teachers to manage groups, especially in large classrooms; difficult to motivate unmotivated students. Teachers may also find it difficult to develop relevant learning activities.

Cooperative learning combines academics with social learning experiences in which students share responsibility to complete tasks. Students share and evaluate information and ideas; because student success depends on the group’s success, students must monitor each other’s work. While this has the benefit of increasing student motivation, a cooperative learning group saddled with an unmotivated student can suffer. However, this challenge can be educational and enlightening as students learn to deal with adversity. Students assume roles within the group; these roles can remain fixed or can rotate.

Problem-based learning requires students to develop knowledge, problem solving skills, collaborative skills, self-directed learning, and self-motivation as they work in groups to find solutions to realistic problems. Students synthesize prior and new information in effort to resolve the problem. The teacher facilitates learning by providing necessary motivation, monitoring, and scaffolding.

Situated Learning and Cognitive Apprenticeship requires the teacher to enlist the aid of experts to teach students skills in context. For example, students role play in a real or virtual environment: workshop, construction site, kitchen, or garden. Skype, Google+ hangout, and other tools that allow for virtual face-to-face communication between students and mentors can be used for Situated Learning and Cognitive Apprenticeship. The online delivery of this learning model may be facilitated through the use of avatars and virtual worlds.

The successful implementation of these learning models will lead to greater student self-motivation and an increase in student communication, collaboration, and critical thinking and creativity skills.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Trivette, C. M. (2005). Effectiveness of guided design learning strategy on the acquisition of adult problem-solving skills. Bridges 3(1).

Personalized System of Instruction? That Sounds Like 1:1!

Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) is sometimes called the Keller Plan and that's because it was developed by Fred S. Keller, along with others, in the 1960s. The research shows that when compared to traditional lecture-based methods of instruction, The Keller Plan has an influence on learning that is significantly positive.

As I learn more about this method of instruction, I see its relation to the use of instructional technology, especially as this technology facilitates distance and independent, self-directed learning. Traditional classroom teachers, even those not yet in a 1:1 or technology rich environment, will most likely find they incorporate many, if not all, of the five elements of the Keller Plan.

• In PSI, written texts provide the medium through which new ideas and content should be presented. This is not to say that other media is not to be used (I would be hard pressed to find a teacher who says that the role of digital media is sure to decline), only that there is great instructional value in texts which are in the students possession; i.e., texts that are portable, can be read at a place and pace determined the student, and can be reviewed and annotated by the reader. My school is demonstrating a renewed emphasis on literacy and the use of grade level texts, and as we increase our use of ebooks and ereaders, we are seeing the potential in portable and personal text. This is not to say there are no drawbacks, but we are learning how to use this new technology.
• While the teacher may establish the order in which lessons are done and units of study completed, students proceed through the material at their own speed. Again, this sounds like a 1:1 classroom.
• Students have time to explore the material at their own pace; they are no longer compelled to stay on the same page. This is the promise of education enhanced through technology: personalized instruction.
• The previous bullet point notwithstanding, students must demonstrate mastery of the material before they are allowed to progress to the next unit. Students who are unable to demonstrate mastery are redirected and review unit materials. Being allowed to continue is, to behaviorists, sufficient motivation; classroom teachers, those jaded and otherwise, know that for some students, "being allowed" to move on to the next unit of study is hardly motivational.
• The future classroom teacher will be more of a facilitator of learning rather than the fount of knowledge. They guide students by addressing areas of weakness and modifying learning activities based on constant formative assessment. Teachers will model and reinforce the learning behaviors necessary for success.

I am eager to learn more about PSI through the creation of a learning module. The Audio-Tutorial approach is also suited for asynchronous distance learning, although the required assembly sessions may chafe learners used to the freedom of PSI. Like PSI, A-T students are themselves responsible for their own learning, and upfront planning by the instructor and facilitation through formative feedback lead to greater probability of student success.

Why Public Education?

The purpose of education, in my opinion, is to prepare students, with a love of learning and the training to take future experience and turn that into knowledge. To paraphrase Robert Maynard Hutchins, education “frees a person from the prison-house of class, race, time, place, background, family, and even nation." I also feel education plays a role in the sharing and shaping of local and national culture. Since most children spend a great deal of time being educated, educators have the power of the bully pulpit to promote these desirable personal qualities: love of freedom and respect for responsibility, cooperation and consideration for the common good, defense of the weak, etc. Education is also relevant to the propensity of a populace to function as a society. As Lord Henry Brougham said, "Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave." The truth of this statement brings into question the motives of our elected representatives and others whose actions are detrimental to education.

Photostory 3

Sometimes called PowerPoint on steroids, Photostory 3 is an excellent educational technology tool for students. Created by Microsoft and freely available, this program allows users to take still images, add narration, text, and a variety of effects, transitions, and music to create impressive multimedia presentations. One of the most attractive features is the Ken Burns effect: students can create zooms and pans that highlight selected portions of the image or add artistic expression to their project. Learn more from the Langwitches blog or from the University of Houston.

Today is the Day

It's always trouble that makes you strong
Today is the day, today is the day
Today is the Day – Yo La Tengo

There are several reasons why this refrain from Yo La Tengo’s Today is the Day is appropriate for online learning and why it keeps running through the background music in my mind. One, if a student in distance education wants to stay caught up, there’s really no time to wait: there’s an assignment to do, and today is the day. Another reason is that today is the day could be a slogan for educators contemplating/integrating educational technology in their classrooms. Depending on the comfort level of the teacher, it could either mean today is the day to just try it or today is the day to do it differently or better. Finally, today is the day means exactly that: today is the day: technology integration is happening, not in the future, not even tomorrow, but right now – today is the day.

The Flat World is Better Off

I recently reread Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and found it reads differently now than it did before the global, debt fueled financial troubles began to surface. The implications of Thomas Friedman’s flat world on education in general and student preparedness in particular are real; however, in light of recent economic upheaval which can be blamed, in part, on forces that use globalization in pursuit of profit despite resultant cost to country or society, Friedman’s sometimes breathless promotion of a flat world can ring hollow to some readers today. Like the world of Friedman’s book, education is also “changing due to the advances in technology” and our society is undergoing change in response to these forces. Educational technology in the hands of teachers and students can change the traditional classroom from one that is hierarchical with clear lines of command-and-control to a much more open, unstructured, and non-hierarchical configuration. What are the ramifications of a flat classroom? Will the tools that we use in distance education lead to future outsourcing of teachers or open sourcing of education? A bill in the Florida legislature will allow for outsourcing of teachers. The bill's sponsor, state senator Anitere Flores (R-Miami), calls it "broadening the choices available to school children and their parents. Teachers call it "outsourcing."

In Mr. Friedman’s Flat World, the untouchables, those workers whose job or work cannot be outsourced, are special, specialized, anchored, or really adaptable. Educators can help students achieve untouchable status by imparting the knowledge and practicing the skills that will prove to be valuable; job requirements are becoming more complex. On the library shelf below The World is Flat, I found Better Off. It also demonstrates the need for critical reasoning, communication and collaboration skills; I found it to be a nice counter to Friedman's vision: " a plug-filled, free-trader leg-humping that passes for thought in this country."

Google Sites

What is Google Sites?

Google Sites allows users to easily create free, custom, fully functional websites.

Google Sites began as JotSpot. Google purchased JotSpot in 2006, and Google Sites, using the JotSpot technology, was launched in 2008.

Features

Google Sites lets students work together to create webpages and edit content; this feature is especially attractive to educators in the 21st century classroom.

Information can be organized and stored in a central place (on the web) so that viewers and editors can access the site from any device and anywhere there’s an internet connection.

Access to view the website or pages can be restricted, and only collaborators who have been invited can make edits. Edits are recorded; this means editors can be identified and edits can be rolled back.

Google Sites works really well with the other Google Apps, and teachers and students can easily add documents, images, presentations, spreadsheets, calendars, forms, embedded media, and videos to the webpages they create.

25 GB of storage for Google Apps users (100 MB of storage for free account)

WYSIWYG editing; there are many templates to choose from.

How Google Sites can be used in the Language Arts classroom

Classroom webpage (communication, announcements, assignments, calendar, student work, links, etc.)

Project based learning

Platform for student products (see student created sites link below)

Classroom discussion and sharing of ideas

Responses to literature

Online newspaper, digital literary “magazine”

Collaborative writing projects and presentations

Group projects

Student portfolios

A platform for international collaboration

Provides a larger audience for students

Incorporate technology and give students anytime access to the classroom

Give students experience working in a collaborative, online environment

Battle of the Books team, clubs

Examples

Student created sites

More Google Sites for education

Classroom Site

Student Book Reviews

Internet Safety

More information

Google Sites for Educators Webinar

Intro to Google Sites

This Information in a Google Site

Edmodo - (if it's not )The One Tool to Rule Them All (at least it helps)

As students and teachers anxiously await the arrival of the protective cases which will finally free the laptops from the proximity of their classroom carts, the excitement continues to grow. Teachers with varying levels of experience and comfort have started using Edmodo as a way to organize and manage their classrooms and assignments. Students like it because it looks like Facebook and it helps with organization. Edmodo has a number of features that make it attractive to teachers. Foremost, it is private. Students create an account for which an email address is not required, and then users join classes using a code provided by individual teachers. The code is entered once and the student joins the class; each time the student logs in to Edmodo, their classes appear on a sidebar menu. Teachers post notes, links, announcements, alerts, assignments, polls, and quizzes. Teachers can communicate to the entire class, to small groups, or to individual students. Student posts are private to the teacher or to the group; there is no private chat between students. A code for each student is available that gives parents access to the Edmodo account of their student. In the class, students can read comments from their peers and add their own. If a student has trouble with this freedom, their status can be set by the teacher to "read only" until the student is ready to demonstrate a better understanding of cyber citizenship. The creators behind Edmodo are very receptive to the concerns of teachers and respond quickly and thoughtfully to suggestions for improvements. These are some of the reasons I advocate the use of Edmodo in the classroom, especially in 1:1 environments. I look forward to learning more about this useful tool and how it can be used to facilitate learning.

Should Students Be Using Technology in the Classroom?

Critics of a connected classroom correctly point out that attention spans, already shortened by TV, have been made even shorter by the point and click, sound bite content that dominates the Internet. It is true that the Internet lacks any quality control, and there is much that could be considered inappropriate for none but the most jaded or corrupt. While I understand the point made by David Gelenter when he answers an emphatic" No" in a 1998 Time magazine article entitled Should Schools Be Wired to The Internet?, and I agree that a large amount of information available to a populace doesn't necessarily correlate to a well-informed citizenry, the future seems to require, for better or for worse, the ability to navigate through an environment filled with information and rapidly changing technology. Therefore, if schools and educators intend to prepare students for the future, these students will have to learn to navigate this future and thrive using the tools that, in the words used by Vice President Al Gore to answer the question posed by the article in the affirmative, “dominate the economy and shape our society. “ Students are well-served by teachers who incorporate into their lessons instruction on how to navigate through this landscape of the present and future.

Anecdotal evidence from my own teaching practice concurs with the articles from Bread Loaf Teacher Network which point out the many benefits derived from collaboration facilitated through technology. Many students succeed when given the opportunity to create expressive products using technology. The students studying Beowulf in the connected classrooms grew in their abilities to express themselves through text, and other teachers describe the strides made by students in areas such as writing, critical thinking, communication skills, and even empathy through the types of online collaboration referred to in the Harris article, Curriculum-Based Telecollaboration. Of course, collaboration, especially with peers, opens both teacher and student up to criticism and judgment, and this can be uncomfortable.

There will always be technical problems, and there will be some teachers who use technology to pacify students. But there will be many more teachers who will use technology to enlighten and motivate, and there will be students whose lives will be enriched and whose education will be propelled through the use of technology in the classroom.

North Carolina's Education Numbers

This information will be of interest to many North Carolina citizens, especially parents, students, and educators. The Friday Report is published weekly by the Public School Forum of NC.

Education Cuts Highlighted in Fitzsimon File’s Numbers

Published: by Chris Fitzsimon

Fitzsimon File’s Monday’s Numbers

Monday, September 19, 2011

16,678—number of jobs eliminated in public schools in North Carolina in the last four years (“North Carolina’s Disappearing Educators,” N.C. Budget and Tax Center, September 2011)

8—number of school districts in North Carolina that have eliminated more than one in five positions compared to 2008 staffing levels (Ibid)

24—number of school districts in North Carolina have eliminated more than one in ten teacher positions compared to 2008 staffing levels (Ibid)

31—number of school districts in North Carolina have eliminated more than one in four teacher assistant positions compared to 2008 staffing levels (Ibid)

49—ranking in 2007-2008 of North Carolina among 50 states in administrative spending for public education (Ibid)

1,445,628—number of students enrolled in North Carolina public schools in 2008-2009 school year (N.C. Department of Public Instruction)

1,480,991—number of students expected to enroll in public schools in 2011-2012 (Senate Education Committee on Education Target Comparisons, Fiscal Research Division, N.C. General Assembly, May 11, 2011)

0—number of teacher and teacher and teacher assistant positions that House Speaker Thom Tillis said were cut by the General Assembly in the 2011-2012 budget (House Speaker Thom Tillis, June 15, 2011)

534—number of teachers laid off in public schools due to the cuts made in the 2011-2012 budget (“Public Schools Have Cut More than Eight Percent of Staff Since 2008-2009, N.C. Department of Public Instruction News Release, August 31, 2011)

1,260—number of teacher assistants laid off in public schools due to the cuts made in the 2011-2012 budget (Ibid)

2,418—total number of layoffs in public education in 2011-2012 due to budget cuts made by the General Assembly (Ibid)

6,307—total number of public school jobs that have been eliminated in 2011-2012 due to budget cuts made by the General Assembly (Ibid)

4,000—minimum number of current public school jobs funded by one-time federal stimulus dollars that will be gone in 2012-2013 (“North Carolina’s Disappearing Educators,” N.C. Budget and Tax Center, September 2011)

45—ranking in 2007-2008 of North Carolina among 50 states in per-pupil expenditures for education (Ibid)

49—ranking in 2010-2011 of North Carolina among 50 states in per-pupil expenditures for education (N.C. Department of Public Instruction)

Wikis in the Classroom

Wikis, a web-based document that can be quickly and easily edited, viewed, and shared by many people, are useful to both students and educators. I first used wikis as a format for student products. In one example, a small group of students worked independently to contribute to a group project. Each student was able to make contributions and corrections to the final product.

On My Way to Carolina
In this project, students imagined the trials and tribulations faced by early immigrants to our state. Along the way students answered the following questions for the fictional character they created: Where did the early settlers of our state come from? What compelled them to make such a treacherous journey? What hardships did they face? What did they find when they arrived? Through the use of historical fiction, students create stories for these intrepid emigrants who were the first immigrants to the new world called Carolina.

Through research, students gathered the sufficient background knowledge they needed to create the pages that make up this wiki. In addition, students selected images, practiced literacy skills, incorporated technology, demonstrated critical thinking, and worked cooperatively to solve problems.

The Blog as Classroom Tool

One of my earliest and most successful forays into using educational technology was Mr. Barber's Language Arts Classroom, the blog I created for my language arts classes. When I started the blog back in 2008, I was looking for a way to communicate with students and parents, record the content objectives, essential questions, and day-to-day activities of the students, and, importantly, provide for myself a place for reflection on the outcomes of lessons. I was afraid it would be something that could be easily begun but hard to faithfully maintain; however, I found that once I got into the routine, I looked forward to the daily posting. I promoted it to my peers, and the concept was nominated for a Bright Ideas award, a recognition from my school system for classroom practices and ideas with educational merit.