March Madness: It's Delicious

Is your browser bookmark list too lengthy or messy to manage?

Organize your favorites using a social bookmarking site. I recommend Delicious. It's free. It's easy. And it's a really handy way to tag, find, and share websites.

The best reason to use Delicious is that you can find your saved sites from any computer, at home, work, a friend's house, on your mobile. Your favorites are available anywhere your have connectivity.

Haven't used it before? Take a look at my bookmarks here.

You can get started in 3 easy steps:
Go to delicious.com
Open an account
Start saving sites
You can click here to get started with Delicious

Check out these tips and tutorials:
Social bookmarking in plain English on Common Craft by the LeFevers
Social bookmarking with Delicious by Dave Fleet
Ultimate guide to Delicious by Robin Broitman

It's a great way to capture your thinking while you're surfing or researching, tagging your finds for future reference.

M.E.

March Madness: Passion is Power

These days in education it's easy to feel discouraged. Disillusioned. Powerless even. Overwhelmed with paperwork, mandates and curricular changes, we sometimes forget that WE ARE the face of literacy to so many students, day in and day out. For some, we're their only hope.

High school teacher, literacy coach and author Penny Kittle carries a message for us. Everywhere she goes, she relays this simple, encouraging reminder:

"Literacy is a magnetic attraction. And the force of the attraction is the passion of the teacher."
(August 18, 2009, keynote address, Toronto, Canada)

Penny reminds us that we have the power to charm a child into a lifelong relationship with language. We ARE reading, writing and thinking to our students. And our influence goes on and on and on.

So, show your love of reading and writing, in big doses, every day! Read with expression. Talk about your favorite genres and authors. Read aloud a recent email, note or text message you've written. Share photos of your bookshelves at home. Bring in your favorite childhood book. Fill sticky notes with literacy quotations and place them on student desks. Tell stories about how you learned to read. Make sure your students know how reading & writing have changed your life.

Don't hold back. Literacy passion is literacy power.

Tanny

March Madness: I Didn't Know They Came with Instructions!

Source: Frontline digital_nation

   If you've been in a classroom lately you know what I mean. Today's students are wired differently. They process information differently. They communicate differently. They are a generation on fast forward.
  

  Have you ever wished these students came with an instruction manual? Maybe it isn't exactly an instruction manual, but this Digital Native Map from Frontline comes pretty close. The interactive website show how life in a hyperconnected world impacts students' bodies and minds.

   It also explains a lot about what we see (and don't see) happening in the classroom. For example, did you know students read text on websites in a completely different pattern than text in books? Did you know students from ages 13-17 average over 1,700 text messages a month?

 If you would like to read the "user's manual" for your students, check out the Digital Native Map.

Cheryl

This is post 11/23 of our March Madness series

Mrch Mdnss: Hyphaeresis

"Kids these days! Text messaging all the time and using crazy invented spelllings. What is the world coming to?"

Have you had similar thoughts or overheard comments such as these? Well, guess what? There truly is nothing new under the sun! Kids have been using hyphaeresis for a long, long time.

hyphaeresis (noun):  the omission of sounds, syllables or letters from words.

In the 1830's, American teenagers and college students deliberately misspelled and abbreviated words, changing the English language to "make it their own". Some examples were published in the March 23, 1839 (that's right...1839) edition of the Boston Morning Post:

NS: 'nuf said
OW: oll wright
OK: oll korrect (for more information, click here!)

Remember: language is never static. We use new forms of words, written and oral, to express ourselves, to feel part of a group, to start trends. It was that way in March 1839 and now, in March 2010, we're still at it! OMG!

Thx 4 readn,
TanE

Spotlight: M. Fogelson

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Amelia Middle School teacher Mark Fogelson has taken advantage of students' digital learning style by integrating an audience response system in his eighth grade history classes.

Realizing the different learning needs of digital students - students who spend over five hours outside the school day accessing technology- Mark began using the audience response system this year. The system allows students to respond to questions projected on a screen with "clickers" or small, handheld devices. Student responses to quizzes, polls, questions, etc. are projected instantly, providing immediate feedback and allowing Mark to assess students' comprehension.

Colleague Brian Wallace convinced Mark and fellow teacher Erin Cupito to give the audience response system a try. Now students actually look forward to taking quizzes. "It's a video game culture," stated Mark. "If there is one thing every kid knows how to manipulate, it's a remote control."

Now that's a Learning Channel!

Cheryl

March Madness: Free Tech 4 Teachers

Short and sweet. If you bookmark only one teacher website, let it be this one: Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers.

Here's why:
1. It's free.
2. It shares free stuff.
3. It's written by a teacher for teachers.
4. It always shares the free stuff, plus it explains applications for your classroom (what + so what).

Take a look at today's free tech, here.
Take a look at Richard's Twelve Essentials for Technology Integration.

Enjoy,
M.E.

March Madness: Thinking in Pictures

Pictures for Summarizing and Note Taking Voice Thread were captured using Google Images.

   You've heard it before, but it's true...a picture is worth a thousand words. Especially for today's students who prefer processing pictures, sounds, color and video before text.

   If you are looking for that "just right" picture to complement your lesson, try Google Images. Thousands of images are available at the click of a mouse... pictures that can help students visualize abstract and complex concepts.  

   Dirk Bogarde stated, "The camera can photograph thought." So here's to thinking in pictures. But don't take my word for it... check it out here!

Cheryl