Each week I tweet several links to new tools I find through the blogs I subscribe to and read! Often, other members of my Personal Learning Network (PLN) will also find these links and provide examples. The best way to share these cool tools, lesson plans, and materials is to post them in a weekly series! If you enjoy this new series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates, leave a quick comment of how one of these tools helped you, tweet this, or share this series with your PLN through your RSS reader or Delicious account.

Multimedia Sites

Made up Memories is a site for students to insert their photos into several video adventures. Students choose an adventure such as skydiving, starring in a fairytale, or being a superhero! Mary Beth Hertz was super cool to help me out by creating a skydiving video! Students could create stories about these adventures and post them in a blog or wiki. This site is also very easy for English language users.

My Movie Moment, which I learned about from Ozge Karaoglu, the links queen on Twitter, works the same way with students inserting their photos. However, students get to choose from a variety of video clips from famous movies. Several of the movies they may have never watched and many are not PG so you have to use careful filtering with this site.

Earth Touch provides hi-definition video documentaries of nature. Think of this as the Discover Channel in your classroom!

Build a Jam will let you create and edit music collaboratively. Students sign-up for free and create a band. Then they upload mp3 files created on Audacity or Garageband. This web site could be used to create original music for podcasts, videos, or web sites. However, the teacher has limited possibilities of monitoring which music the student listens to and this could be a problem.

Literacy Sites

Pan Raven is a free site for creating digital stories. Students can use video, music, photographs, and text to create books or stories! Furthermore, the site offers photo editing tools and ways to share the story in a blog! This is another great site for English language learners. Check out Kaleigh Irwin’s Sixth Grade Summer Vacation digital story below!

Storybird is another site that offers students a way to create collaborative digital stories. To find out more information on this tool check out these blog posts. I recommend subscribing to these blogs like I have!

• David Kapular‘s post with a video of how Storybird works.
• Kelly Tenkely‘s post that gives you ideas on how to integrate Storyboard in your classroom.
• Larry Ferlazzo’s post Use Storybird To Create A Story
• Read Write Web‘s very detailed post with examples Storybird: A Family-Friendly Storytelling Tool

Read Print is a library of free online books and poetry for students and teachers.

Challenge:

Use one of these sites to improve a project for the school year!

Recently, I received a pleasant surprise in my mail box in the form of a very informative and thought-provoking comment from Anne Hodgson in response to my blog, What Works: Cooperation vs. Competition. I had so much I wanted to respond to and thought the Voice Thread format would certainly enliven the conversation. I would love to hear about your personal experiences with using cooperative learning. Do you think competition can be healthy? Do you think society puts too much pressure on students to achieve?

World Map Photo by Su-Laine licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.

Please let me know if you would like to discuss any other topics on Thought-provoking Thursdays!

Visit Anne Hodgson’s blog for more insights on her teaching methods!

Many of you may be acquainted with Alfie Kohn’s radical views on creating a noncompetitive classroom environment. When I first read his controversial views on education, I shook my head and rolled my eyes. This response was in reflection of some of my teaching habits. Yes, I reward students with external awards, such as stickers, prizes, and grades.

Kohn’s theories also made me reflect upon my educational practices. Self-reflection is the first step to change!

Photo by Max-B licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic.

My Comedy of Errors

At the time, I co-taught at an English camp for German speaking children. The class consisted of 20 children between the ages of six- to seven-years-old who spoke and understood very little English. On the first day, I received a less than warm welcome. The children ran around the classroom flying paper airplanes. They climbed the walls! They ignored me, since I knew as much German as they knew English. The worst part of the week was that one little boy was treated as an outcast and the children were quite cruel to him. We experienced many behavior problems. Everyday, fights occurred.

The second year I was asked to help at the English camp again. This time I decided to try Kohn’s idea to make the classroom more cooperative versus competitive.

The Transition

First, I set-up learning stations and group work areas. Then, I put the students into groups of three. Since we were learning about Native Americans,these small groups represented their tribes. Each student was given a role and responsibility in the tribe. Each day the tribe was given a mission. Furthermore, we only played cooperative learning games and activities. My co-teacher looked at me strangely when we played the cooperative learning version of musical chairs! However, the children enjoyed this much better than the original version.

My Growth

This experience in a cooperative learning environment was one of my best teaching experiences. The children learned English. We experienced no behavior problems, no fighting, and no cruelty. Instead, the children helped each other. At the end of the camp, I actually received hugs from all the children. They wanted to return the next year!

Your boot camp challenge for this week:

Reflect upon yourself as an educator, by taking this teacher effectiveness quiz. Ponder the results. Can you improve in any area?

Do you have a teaching strategy, tip, or lesson that caters to diverse learning styles in the classroom, including English Language Learners?  Please, include a comment!

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