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A New Digital Age of Celebration

Posted by  on Thursday, November 4th 2010     

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Yesterday, I aged another year! Yes, it was my birthday and what made it really special was my personal learning network (PLN)!

Some people may think that choosing to spend time online for a birthday is insane, weird, antisocial, or geeky. They rather disconnect and that’s okay because every person should be allowed to spend a birthday the way they wish. For me, I have enjoyed exploring the ways to celebrate digitally. I moved to Germany 4 years ago and during that time I have been away from family and friends. However, digital technology continues to amaze me in the way it affords me to spend time developing close friendships and relationships and keep in contact with my friends and students across the globe.

Second Life

This is my second year spending my birthday with my online community. Last year I had a great celebration with close friends on Second Life, all who I met face to face later in the year at conferences. We went to a poetry reading that day, exchanged virtual gifts, danced, and enjoyed a Pearl Jam live concert on Second Life. In the past year, I attend edone of their weddings in Istanbul, met another’s newborn baby at a conference in the UK, and spent the summer in Greece with another one. The first time I met each of them face to face felt like I knew them for years because we had spent time together chatting and getting to know about each other.

Ways to Celebrate Digitally

Through technology we can show are appreciation in so many ways. We can send e-cards, share videos, exchange photos, leave a message on social networks, and so much more. This year my PLN created a birthday Wallwisher for me which was incredible. With Wallwisher, friends can leave a 160 character message accompanied by a video, image, or audio. Thanks to everyone who left a birthday message on the Wallwisher, Facebook, or Twitter!

Special thanks to Greta’s (@gret) wonderful 5th graders from Argentina who left me the video message below.

More Ideas

  • Try sending a flash card through Care 2 Cards and support a cause at the same time! This is a free service!
  • Send them a thank you video!
  • Manipulate images so that you create a magazine, newspaper, or other image for them!
  • Create a comic for them with many of the ones listed in David Kapular’s blog.
  • Send them an Animoto music and image video! Thanks to Lisa Dabbs who sent me one of these!
  • Create a talking photo with Blabblerize!
  • Create a slideshow with music, pictures, audio, and more! Larry Ferlazzo has a great list of these on his blog.
  • Send them a birthday audio message with an image through Fotobabble! Thanks to Ana Maria Menezes for this birthday Fotobabble!
  • Send them their own Twitter Parade!
  • Throw a party for them on Second Life!
  • Dedicate a song to them on Twitter or Facebook through Blip FM or on many online radio stations!
  • Make them a birthday Wordle or use another word cloud tool! Thanks to Marisa Constantinides who made me a very cool one that was in the shape of my profile!
  • Find another very creative way to show your appreciation or celebrate with your friends digitally!

Challenge:

Celebrate with someone digitally using one of these tools!

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What has been your most special digital celebration or gift?

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category: Cool Sites, Tech Tips
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Educators as Collaborators: 25+ Resources

Posted by  on Tuesday, November 2nd 2010     

Part of the Cool Sites series

Collaboration is the real step to education transformation. When we gather to produce, our ideas, talents, and skills embody our final outcome. Each person who participates has the ability to add full attention to the designated task versus one person spread thin over several tasks. Collaboration is also important for students who will have to work with others in some capacity to be able to problem solve or brainstorm.

Why Teaching Online Collaboration is Important

While completing my Masters online, I discovered that many people lacked collaboration skills. I observed 20+ global teams in which members fought or offended each other by their lack of communication and team building skills. These skills include having the ability to compromise, lead, meet deadlines, deal with disagreement, and communicate in an effective manner. When we collaborate online many forget that online communication is very different than person to person communication. Sometimes an online message can be misread or come across quite differently than the message we originally tried to communicate.

Why is Online Collaboration Different than Face to Face Collaboration?

Online collaboration is very different than in person collaboration mainly because we don’t have nonverbal cues to support our messages. Many researchers believe that nonverbal communication is as high as 60% to 93% of all communication. This means that a majority of our online messages could be misinterpreted, yet many of us do not communicate with this in mind. When we accidentally offend others we shut down the lines of communication, which jeopardizes the final outcome or our efforts. In our digital world, online collaboration will become increasingly important, yet schools rarely teach students to collaborate online. We can change that by ensuring our students participate in at least one online collaborative project this year. I would love to see the day when schools teach all learners to collaborate effectively with their peers worldwide. We would be able to solve issues like the environment, the economy, and possibly prevent wars. Wow! That’s pretty powerful potential!

Top Collaboration Sites

These are my favorites free tools to get your students and you collaborating! Included is a brief description and helpful links to facilitate using these tools more effectively.

  • Wiggio- Developed by college students this free site has everything from meeting planning, your own whiteboard, updates, group mailing, a calendar, video conferencing room, group text messages, and much more! I love this website. Read more about it in the ILearnTechnology blog.
  • Enter the Group- create project pages and online classrooms for free. Includes features like to-do lists, tasks widget, chat, message boards, group email, file sharing, an online calendar, checklists, blogs, polls, and more!
  • Juntos- communicate in real time through audio, video, and chat. Supports a multivideo chat and scheduling option.
  • iBrainstorm App for iPad and iPhone- Allows up to 4 to collaborate on a brainstorming diagram or group thinking process that can be emailed. Has drawing and writing tools.
  • Scribblar-Real-time multi-user whiteboard, image upload/ download, text chat with userlist, live audio
  • Google Tools for Educators- One of my favorite ways to collaborate! Collaborate in real time to create slideshows, drawings, documents, and more that are on the web and can easily be embedded and organized in folders.
  • Zoho- Collaborate on PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, word documents, and more. Similar to Google Apps, but shows a condensed view of all recent project activity and includes group chat rooms, forums, wikis, and a tabbed interface.
  • CrocDocs- Collaboratively highlight and comment on PDFs, Word documents, images, and more!
  • Prezi-the alternative to PowerPoint. Create non-linear presentations with images, text, video, and cool transitions. Now with the ability for students to collaborate on one Prezi together in real-time.

Collaborative Document & Whiteboard Tools

  • Twiddla- real time collaboration on documents, websites, and images. Includes writing and drawing tools and audio to talk in real time. No registration needed.
  • Skrbl- Multi user whiteboard that can be embedded. Sketch, text, share files, upload pictures all in one common shared space. No registration required.
  • Groupboard- Free online whiteboard and chat that can be easily embedded into your website. Also is an iPhone, iPad and Android app.
  • Titan Pad- real time collaboration on document that assigns everyone their own color. Includes formatting options like MS Word. No registration needed.
  • Meeting Words- nearly the exact same service as Titan Pad.
  • Type With Me- Like Titan pad with the ability to save as a PDF, website, bookmark, pdf, and more.
  • Writeboard- real time collaboration on document that tracks changes from each person, no registration needed.

Online Sticky Boards

Most of these services allow you more options if you sign-up for free. You can also make your walls of post-its private in all these services.

  • Wallwisher- Put messages up to 160 characters on an online board. Looks like post-its but these can include videos, links, images, and audio. This online board is embeddable which is its best feature. Additionally, you can choose from a variety of backgrounds and pictures from Wallwisher’s library! You don’t have to be registered to post. I love Wallwisher and am registered since I have around 30 walls. The problem is that this service is unreliable and often down so here are other options below.
  • Pindax- Post text, images, and files, also the ability to embed and search your posts! Not as nice looking as Wallwisher but a good alternative.
  • Linoit- Include links, images, video, and audio as well as change the size and color of your fonts. Has various background options and other attractive options. It’s embeddable as well.
  • Stixy- Add tasks, appointments, files, photos, notes, and bookmarks to boards. More options than Wallwisher but doesn’t have an embedding option.
  • Listhings- It’s a corkboard template, but has the ability to change the color of notes and create several note pages! I haven’t found the embed option. Read more about Listhings here.
  • Spaaze- Described as a virtual corkboard, add images, video, and more. No embedding option but does allow you to search content.
  • EditStorm- Brainstorming board that allows collaborators to post ideas on different colored notes. Has an idea bot idea bots that look up related concepts, synonyms and even words that rhyme with any term that has been used. You can also poll ideas but you can’t add video, audio, or images. Some html is supported. There’s also templates to choose from and an iPad/iPhone app. Not embeddable.

More Resources

Challenge:

Use one of these tools to get your students collaborating online this year!

You may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

What collaboration tools do you love?

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category: Cool Sites, Tech Tips, What Works for English Language Learners
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Survival Tips for Teaching Kids English: 30 Tips & Resources

Posted by  on Wednesday, October 13th 2010     

You may not know that I also teach 2 to 10 year-old students English. When I began teaching in Germany, I had a tough time acclimating. I thought I would be able to work with the children since I had taught young learners in the US English and science. I remember teaching a group of 14 seven to eight year-old students. They climbed the walls (oddly there were racks on the walls), fought a lot, and flew paper airplanes everywhere. I went home after a 9 hour day and cried. I wanted to quit. I have a fighting spirit, though, so I went online to research lessons and ideas. Throughout the four years that I have been teaching in Germany I have collected some great research, resources, and tips to make me a much better English teacher of young learners! I recently shared these tips in a Pecha Kucha (PK) presentation at the recent Virtual Round Table Language E-Conference. You can catch the rest of the recordings of all the presentations from this great event here.

What is a Pecha Kucha?

A presentation technique invented in Japan by architects Klein and Dytham. About 14 presenters or less deliver back to back PowerPoint presentations that must total 20 slides auto-advancing every 20 seconds. The PowerPoint presentation is only 6 minutes and 40 seconds so the content is highly visual and meaningful. For this reason, these events are gaining popularity at several conferences and have now entered the education conference scene! Enjoy my PK: Survival Tips for Teaching Kids English!

Glogster or The Tools I Use in My Classroom

My Survival Tips

  1. Channel in your inner child!- Can you identify the 2 members of our personal learning network in this slide?
    • Have the ability to act silly – I often dress-up when reading books, play charades, make silly voices and faces, and sing and dance!
  2. Wear the right gear! Don’t dress to impress! Dress for a mess!
  3. Children love to play pretend games!
  4. Have lively music that is easy for the children to understand and that you will enjoy singing very loudly to!
  5. TPR- Total physical response is a must for every lesson. Find out more by reading this post.
  6. Puppets are great for children, especially when you incorporate the puppet in every lesson.
  7. Play board games, physical games, and online games- We play Twister, bingo, English Raven’s games, and more!
  8. Include stories from great children’s authors and make the reading time fun. Check out my class wiki for various books and the themes they support.
  9. Use colorful flashcards and play games with the flash cards.
  10. Color with a purpose! Give children a task to see if they can follow directions, such as telling a child to draw a circle and color it yellow. Without direction, I’ve had children color on the wall and on me!
  11. Incorporate drama activities such as mime and improvisation games.
  12. Felt boards are great for having children piece together what happened in a story or to learn new vocabulary.
  13. Finger plays like the Itsy Bitsy Spider work wonders. Read this post on how to digitalize your finger plays using Blabberize.
  14. Trust kids with technology! My five year-old students complete online activities each week which I put in a wiki. Kids love technology and will repeat what they learn.
  15. Explore the outdoors with scavenger hunts.
  16. Use realia- My students play Bingo with pennies from the USA. Introduce real world objects to students from an English speaking culture. Play Show-and-Tell!
  17. When all else fails, have fun!

More Resources

These are more resources to help you teach young learners.

EFL Teacher’s Kit for Surviving Kids- In this post, I explore more tips for working with young learners.
Learning Beyond Walls- Games and Wikis!- In this post, I explore how to use wikis with young learners.
Character Development Using Voki Speaking Avatars- In this post, I explore how to use Voki speaking avatars to get young learners to think about character development for digital storytelling.
What Works: Cooperation vs. Competition- In this post, I explore how cooperative learning improved the culture and behavior of my young learners.
Getting Children Involved with Edtech- In this post, I explore using Voicethread for class collaboration projects.
Mobile Motivation: 17 Digital Storytelling & Literacy Apps/ Resources for Kids- These apps will have your young learners speaking English using a mobile device.
Parent Release Form for Publishing Student Work Online
Parent Release Form for Publishing Student Work Online PDF
VoiceThread Tutorials and Tips for Educators
Glogster Tutorials and Tips for Educators
Voki Tutorials and Tips for Educators
Digital Storytelling Tutorials and Tips for Educators

Challenge:

Try any of these resources with your young learners.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

What are your tips for working with young learners?

category: Cool Sites, What Works for English Language Learners
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5 Reasons Schools Should Switch To Online Tests by Shankar Ganesh

Posted by  on Sunday, October 10th 2010     

Part of the series: Cool Sites by Guest Author, Shankar Ganesh

Make no mistake – there’s an evolution happening in education right now. Schools are increasingly embracing technology to enhance learning in their classrooms. Still though, a few processes, like examinations, for example, are done in the traditional way. It’s time schools get rid of the plain old pen-and-paper way of testing and move to online tests. Here’s why:

1. Time Saver

Since online tests are self-graded, Professors can be relieved of the burden of evaluating test sheets manually. There’s also a good chance that students will complete online tests quicker, once they get accustomed to the process.

This is perfect for public schools and universities – all the time saved can help instructors focus better on preparing lessons and course material. Students get their results in no time – enough motivation for them to get involved in academics.

2. No Logistical Challenges

Believe it or not: conducting paper-based exams is logistically challenging. Test times have to be scheduled and test sheets have to be gathered. There’s plenty of work involved and there are chances things could go awry.

An online testing platform eliminates all that cumbersome work. Scheduling tests can be done at the click of a button. Students can be batched and questions can be replicated in random order for each of those batches with little effort.

3. Multimedia

Schools have embraced multimedia by the way of instructions. It’s time to bring all that interactivity to tests. Multimedia is a great choice for authentically assessing a candidate’s level of understanding. Plain paper is inadequate in that respect and it should be chucked.

An online test can be embedded with relevant multimedia elements to make it more challenging, unique and fun for students. More student engagement, guaranteed. It’s not like assembling projectors in classes. Embedding videos and pictures is a piece of cake.

4. Low Cost

Development and delivery of online exams is much more efficient and cost effective when compared to distribution of paper and pencil-based exams. There’s not much effort involved in reproducing questions for tests if they’re done online. Scoring isn’t expensive as well – it is all automated.

In addition, online tests take away the costs involved in storing the enormous volume of data that is associated with the analysis of student scores and report generation. Online tests are your best bet.

5. Reduced Cheating

Better scores translate to more rewards in the US and according to experts, one to three percent of teachers tamper with students’ test scores every year. No disrespect to educators, but that means a few thousand teachers indulge in “actual cheating” annually (NYTimes story).

On the contrary, evaluation in online tests is completely automated – the computers know nothing about the candidates. There’s no way to skew answers and this is possibly the best way to do away with cheating in exams.

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Shankar profile-pic
Shankar Ganesh is a young blogger from India. He’s pursuing his bachelor’s degree in engineering in India, and is currently working to make sure that more teachers and educators get to know about Zoho Challenge, Zoho’s sweet quiz maker application.

category: Cool Sites
tags: , , , ,

Learning Beyond Walls: 28 Resources for Your Students to Connect Globally

Posted by  on Sunday, October 3rd 2010     

Part of the Cool Sites series

Many students have yet to ever communicate with another student from outside their city, state, or country? This simply isn’t built into most curricula. Creating successful global citizens should be a goal of all schools. Educational institutions should provide opportunities for students to learn to communicate and collaborate with their peers worldwide!

Why?

Globalization is our current reality. Most companies have established themselves internationally. Foreign policy is as much of a concern as domestic policy. The environment, global warming, the global economy, and lack of resources are international problems requiring international collaboration and problem-solving. However, many students have not adequately learned a second language or learned to communicate effectively with their peers worldwide, much less collaborate with them. International collaboration and communication are skills that are developed with practice and guidance. If you have experienced joining online professional communities, you probably have witnessed that even professionals have problems with collaborating and communicating effectively online. Disagreements ensue and the conversation ends. We cannot afford to end conversations, because the consequences of miscommunication can be deadly and costly.

In a world of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) developing quickly and becoming staples, international communication and communication with these technologies is a necessary skill. The exciting part is that many free tools and resources can help us extend learning beyond our classroom walls and motivate students to collaborate with their peers worldwide.

iGlobal Projects Presentation and Resources

Yesterday, I presented the following resources and Prezi at the recent Tri-State Educational Technology Conference (TSETC). You can view the Prezi below and click on the links to visit the resources. I have also listed the resources below, but you can also visit the Technology 4 Kids: Global Projects Wiki to find all the links and resources.

iGlobal Class Projects: Extending Learning Beyond the Classroom Walls on Prezi

Where to Find Classes Worldwide to Connect

The Epals Global Community- With classrooms in 200 countries and territories, ePals makes it easy to connect learners locally, nationally or internationally.
Voices of the World Ning- These global projects connect students with voice only in case you are not able to use student images.
Around the World with 80 Schools Skype Group- @langwitches, Silvia Tolisano, started this group to get classes to Skype each other.
Project Peace- Connect with other classes and make videos for peace!
Find Educators to Collaborate with On Twitter!- This is the way I met Ozge Karaoglu who has been connecting her young learners in Turkey with my young learners in Germany.

Internet Safety Information for Parents and Forms

Accepted Use Policy Document by George Couros
Internet Safety Information for Parents by Pernille Ripp
Why the Internet is like the Mall: Internet Safety Lesson by Pernille Ripp
Another Acceptable Use Policy Form
Parent Release Form for Publishing Student Work Online
Parent Release Form for Publishing Student Work Online PDF

Using Skype to Collaborate

Learning Beyond Walls: 21 Skype Resources

Video: A Teacher’s Perspective of Skyping in the Classroom

Video: Students’ Perspectives of Skyping by Silvia Tolisano, @langwitches

Around the World With 80 Schools- Helsinki from langwitches on Vimeo.

Using Wikis to Collaborate

Wiki Tutorials and Tips for Educators
Glogsters From the World Wiki- Join other classes worldwide in sharing their countries’ culture and traditions through interactive posters. Created by @abfromz.
Celebr8UandMeDigitally Wiki- Join other classes worldwide in celebrating their countries’ holidays and traditions. Created by @evab2001 @alexgfrancisco.

Using Blogs to Collaborate

Blog Tutorials and Tips for Educators
Young Clovers Blog- Young learners in Lebanon connecting with kids worldwide. They send their teddy bear to adventures in other countries. You can be one of the classes who gets the teddy bear and blogs about its adventures.
Sharing Our Good News-Greta Sandler’s (@gret) class in Argentina connecting with others worldwide.
Edublogs for schools
Kidblogs for schools

Web 2.0 Tools to Embed into Wikis and Blogs

VoiceThread Tutorials and Tips for Educators
Glogster Tutorials and Tips for Educators
Voki Tutorials and Tips for Educators
Digital Storytelling Tutorials and Tips for Educators

Challenge:

Try any of these resources with your students and get them to learn to collaborate with other classes worldwide so they will be responsible global citizens.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

What are your ideas for integrating Skype into the classroom?

category: Conference Highlights, Cool Sites, What Works for English Language Learners
tags: , , , , , , ,
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