Another educational blog that intrigued me was Jeff Utecht's "The Thinking Stick". Jeff has twelve years of experience in education and is currently the High School Technology and Learning Coordinator at the International School Bangkok.  His blog, http://www.jeffutecht.com/ truly proves his mandate: looking for ways to improve education for students through technology.

What impressed me first were his blogs on teaching how to do a search for content on the web. I had seen presentations on this topic before but was impressed by the simplicity of Jeff's teaching and how he had lessons tailored to each of the grade ranges. (Second grade, 3td to 5th grade, 6th to 8th, and 9th to 12th). 
To show how practical his blog posting is, check out http://www.thethinkingstick.com/kindergarten-2nd-grade-search-lesson/ and see how he has a section on how to set up the lesson (even with hints for the teacher), a section on how to "prime the pump" where he gives suggestions to gauge the level of understanding, and then guides the class through their first search.  As part of the lesson he outlines the importance even of teaching the critical skill of identifying the ads on the webpage. And, if that wasn't enough, he allows you to download the full lesson for a very practical application!

Reading through other postings, including "Why you should be playing with Google+ now": http://www.thethinkingstick.com/why-you-should-be-playing-with-google-now/  and

"The Classroom Newspaper Google Docs Style": http://www.thethinkingstick.com/the-classroom-newspaper-google-docs-style/, I was finally drawn in to investigate the options under Google More..and even more.  I can't believe there were so many forms, excell spreadsheets, and documents that I could format and save in my Google drive.  Since I had been encouraged by this blog to play with Google +, when I came across a website: "Ten Great Free Google Forms Every Teacher Should Be Using":  http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/07/10-great-free-google-forms-every.html, I was excited to investigate and apply the specific ideas. 

 

I will certainly be back to Jeff Utech's blog very regularly so that I too can improve my use of technology in the classroom.

 

 

          

Wordle in Careers 10

I had fun today applying wordle in my Careers 10 class.  I plan to use the idea of Tony Borach to use wordle as a pre-assessment and post-assessment tool, but, for now my students had just completed three weeks of portfolio work and personal assessments, so they were able to gather all the words to describe themselves in their own creation.  They loved playing with the colors and random settings and were proud of their final results.  I couldn't figure how to just save the final result, but here is a link that includes a little more than just Shannon's final summary.         http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/5776814/Me

For my first blog review, I did some reading of The Tech Savvy Educator:  http://www.techsavvyed.net/

Ben Rimes, who calls himself a TechSavvyEd Blogger, is a K-12 Technology Coordinator for Mattawan Consolidated School District in Michigan

I was totally intrigued by his blog because of the challenge he brings to educators to learn more about technology, but, especially, because he teaches how to use technology in the classroom in a very practical way.  Teachers can very easily find archived blogs and video teaching clips for many subjects, including Art, English, Language arts, music, Social Studies, Science, and even Assessment.  As an example, for Art, I found instruction on creating an online photo gallery of student work, creating classroom posters, simplifying stories into icons, and using the app “Echograph” on an iPad.

Under the archived blogs for Assessment, I was most intrigued by his discussion on the use of Wordle in the classroom.  Using the heading, “A Highly Effective use of Wordle in The Classroom,” Ben Rimes talked about how he was often disappointed by all the information on the web which just reinforced ineffective use of technology in the classrooms. He then shared how he was delighted to find Tony Borach’s blog which didn’t just teach students to play with word clouds but to begin a discussion about magnets and create a word play as a pre-test.  Later, after a lesson and sharing experiences, these students were encouraged to create another word cloud that would reflect the learning. http://tborash.posterous.com/designing-lessons-using-wordle

 I appreciated how Ben Rimes was very willing to share any practical application he had found.