Flips

Flips
Originally uploaded by eldon.germann

I love my flip cameras. I have found so many ways to use them in my classroom. I will be sharing some examples in upcoming articles.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

The day the sub came and I still had to work!

Today I had a very unique experience as a teacher. I am currently not at school ... in fact I am not even in Macklin. I am at my relatives for the rest of the week. Let me take you back.

A few days ago I received a call from my wife saying that we will need to go to her parents for a funeral. I would be missing school Thursday and Friday. This posed a problem to me as I am new into this term and my IP10 students are beginning projects on digital citizenship, a topic they know very little about. The premise of the project is to do a little research, enough to ask proper questions and create blog entries that begin those converstations. Here is the list of problems:
1. They have never done digital storytelling.
2. They have only discussed digital citizenship for two classes.
3. They have only had the project explained to them once. (They are teenagers
remember!)
4. My substitute teacher is not familar with any of the material I teach.
5. I usually field numerous questions on technology problem solving.
ie. "My password doesn't work." (forgot it or typed it in wrong)
"The computer lost my file." (forgot where they saved it)
"My keyboard is broken." (Not plugged in)

My answer to this was to communicate with my class while at my relatives. I was lucky enough to have nothing going on this morning and relatives nice enough to free me up so I focus on the computer. I prepared my class by leaving instructions for my sub to have them log into Edmodo. (We use Edmodo alot so they ARE familiar with it.)

I spent 45 minutes answer questions, guiding students to answers, basically doing what I would do if I were there. I even did some discipling. I have included a video that recaps this mornings lesson.

This is obviously not possible for most times we have a sub in. In fact, I am not sure I will ever have this opportunity again. What this morning did do was reaffirm my belief that knowledge of different technologies and the use of them in appropriate places can be very beneficial, even powerful.

My students did not fall behind, I was able to relax about my class staying on track and I proved to my students one of the many abilities of online communication and collaboration.

Maybe I didn't quite save the world today. Maybe my class just thought their geeky teacher was "Geekin' it up". Regardless, I was able to teach normally even though I was not there with absolute ease with the help of Edmodo.

Wiki As Class Oragnizers

This year I decided that my technology based courses should be examples of what I encourage my staff and students to try. Here are links to my CPT 20 and IP 10 wikis.

These wikis were designed as constant work-in-progress sites.  I hope to update often an

d showcase a number of web 2.0 tools.  I also plan to showcase as much student digital work as possible.

My ultimate goal, is that students recieve feedback on their blogs, which would promote their pages of the wiki and more importantly, their work.  This feed back would teach them to; a) Take critism and continue to improve work, b) take comments with a grain of salt and c) never quit editing.

If you visit the wikis, please notice the student pages.  CPT have not began theirs but IP10 have links to their digital citizenship wikis.  These students would love feedback!!!  You can find them on our class blog under ELA 10A. 

My ELA 10 Macbeth Wiki

This is a wiki I developed last year.  It is used for our student scribe unit in which the students hold each other accountable for the note taking by taking turns.  Each day a new student is in charge of keeping notes on the days topic. I provide the basics that the students will need to understand the play, but the true insights are provided by the students themselves.

Some of the advantages of this type of study are:

1. Students are able to focus on the play not note taking.
2. Students get insights from each other.
3. Students practice dictating self notes.
4. Students learn to use a wiki.
5. Students get to display podcast projects.
6. Students provide each other with links to extra resources.

Some of the disadvantages are:

1. Some students zone out and don't take advantage of the extra focus.
2. If wiki is not accessed, notes are useless.
3. If the Internet is down, as it has been a lot lately, cannot work on the wiki.
4. Lack of effort in note taking hurts all students.

All in all, this has been a good project.  I believe that this unit works well for this since Old English is difficult for students to understand.  I look forward to this years students podcast being added next week.