Shutters Unshuttered

I share lots of websites, apps, software, and other tools at our faculty meetings each week. Some have asked me where these resources come from. I believe great teaching is taking the ideas of many and customizing them for your students and teaching style. So here are a few of the places I find out about resources (coincidentally, this is what I showed teachers at our most recent meetings!).

• TWITTER: You can follow like-minded educators who share fantastic ideas and resources on Twitter. It’s free, it’s easy, and every Tweet has to be under 140 characters. See my previous post on Twitter for more info, or take a look at my recent Tweets.
• CONFERENCES: There is no WAY I would be the same kind of teacher I am now if I didn’t go to at least one really good ed tech conference each year. What many teachers don’t understand is that these conferences are great for ALL educators: not just technology teachers! I guarantee that no matter what you teach, you WILL come away from these with great ideas. Here are some good ones in our area coming soon:
  • NICE Mini-Conference: Saturday morning 1/26. $5. 40 breakout sessions. iPad playground. What more could you ask for? A great conference for those who can’t commit a whole school day. You can pay at the door; no registration required.
  • ICE Annual Conference: Tues 2/26 – Fri 3/1. I go to this conference each year, and have given presentations at the last two. It’s four days of fantastic teachers and ed tech rockstars presenting what they know. Sign up here; more info here. I’m going this year; are you?
• Virtual Conferences/Communities:
  • Global Education Conference
  • edWeb
• BLOGS: Reading other people’s blogs is another great way to find resources. I use Google Reader to organize and read the blogs I follow. Though I’ll admit that I don’t visit Google Reader too often anymore. Instead, most of the blog posts I read are from links on Twitter (see above)!
• SmartBrief on Ed Tech: I get one email each school day from these folks. It has links to articles that have recently come out about things related to ed tech – anything from new hardware reviews to blog posts about how teachers are using iPads in their classes. The best part is each article link comes with a brief summary, so I know if I really want to read the whole article or not. Sign up here. It’s free.
• Big Deal Book of Technology: Sends out two email newsletters each month for free. Each one contains about 20 links to resources that are free or inexpensive, including places to apply for grants and contests. Each link is accompanied by a short blurb that helps me to know if it’s useful or not. I have found many, many great resources through this newsletter. Sign up here; see past issues here.
• Next Vista for Learning: I have seen Rushton Hurley speak at the ICE conference (see above!), and signed up for his newsletter there. You can sign up too! Links to cool resources, many having to do with video in the classroom (but not all). PS: Check out Next Vista for neat videos made by kids and teachers too.
• GETIdeas.org also sends out a newsletter with five (yep, just 5 – short and sweet!) resources each week. Sign up here.

Overwhelmed? Don’t be. Some of the best advice I ever got was that the best ideas will come back around. You won’t miss out on great ideas if you can’t constantly look at your Twitter page, RSS feed, or email newsletters. If you do just one of the things listed above, you will get some great ideas. But if you aren’t doing anything like this, you ARE missing out on some good ideas!

Oh wait… you just read a blog post, so you are doing one of these things. Nice work!

Google Doodles are those fun reworkings of the Google logo that show up on holidays, famous individual’s birthdays, etc. Each year, Google sponsors a contest for K-12 students to create their own doodle. There is a different theme/question to answer each time. This year’s theme is “My best day ever…” I have had a few students send in their own Doodles for a few years now, and I have to say that we have some pretty talented artists here at Roycemore School! Hopefully we will have several students enter the contest again this year.

Visit the Doodle for Google website for more information, to download an entry form, or see past winners: http://www.google.com/doodle4google/.

• The answers to the digital media quiz, in case you’re dying to know (scroll down to the last few pages): http://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/6-8-unit1-digitallife101.pdf
• You can make a survey or quiz using Google Forms.  When logged in to your Roycemail account, click Drive at the top of the screen.  Then click New, then Form.  Here are two nice YouTube tutorials.  Both are part of 3-part videos.
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNbEgHIXpJQ (general form/survey)
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3nQB3VujPI (self-grading quiz)
• A quick way to share a link with someone, such as a class of kids, is to use a URL shortener.  The one I use is http://bitly.com/.  You don’t need an account to shorten a URL, but if you create one, you can use some extra features.

As I mentioned at our last faculty meetings, I’d like those of you who have a school Mac laptop to do some “spring cleaning” over winter break. The process below only takes a few minutes. Please take the following steps sometime before January 7:

• Open your Applications folder – this can be done in multiple ways, but one way is to click the Go menu (top of screen), then Applications.
• Open the Utilities folder.
• Open Disk Utility.
• Click Macintosh HD.
• Click Repair Disk Permissions.  Wait for it to say Permissions repair complete.
• If it says it cannot repair permissions, please email me!
• Here’s a YouTube tutorial for this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t6gknzoUAA
• By the way, any time you need to know how to do something on your computer, searching for the thing you want to do plus the word “tutorial” often turns up many hits!

As always, let me know if you have any questions, happy new year, and see you Monday!

Here are the links from our recent faculty meetings (week of 11/12/12).

Lower School:

• The Global Education Conference is going on this week; educators from all around the world are presenting on fostering global awareness among our students.  Click here for the link to the session schedule.  If you can’t tune in live to a session, they are all recorded; click here for recordings.  Also, this site has some suggestions for what to attend, as well as videos for how to participate.
• Seymour Simon’s science website and blog for elementary school science photos, activities, and resources.
• Thematic classrooms: “online learning spaces preloaded with content addressing a range of important issues” – one in particular is about deforestation for primary grades.
• Handwriting Worksheets
• Check out the math games on this site
• Sign up for Postcrossing to send and receive postcards around the world.

Middle School:

• In addition to sharing documents or web shortcuts with students via their Class Folders, as described on the sheet I gave you, you can share documents via Google Docs/Drive.  Here is one teacher’s suggestion of how she does this.
• Google Story Builder, and an example and some ideas for using it
• The Global Education Conference is going on this week, but all sessions are recorded for you to listen to at your convenience.  Here’s a link to the conference Recordings page.
• If you are interested in creating connections with other teachers/students/classrooms from around the world, consider using one of these websites.  They are all free to use, but may require you to sign up for an account:
  • United Classrooms
  • GETIdeas.org
  • ePals
  • Postcrossing – This is a simple project where you send a postcard, then receive one from someone else, anywhere in the world!
  • Here’s just one idea for a collaboration activity, but you can check out other links on this site for more.
  • Project Explorer – this one has resources for teaching about different cultures, but doesn’t necessarily connect you to other classes.

Here’s why I haven’t been keeping up with my blog for awhile:

I was asked to send out a list of the websites and resources we used during our Where in the World? Discovery session.  Here they are:

General:

• AirPano: 3D virtual tours around the world
• Glogster (email me if you have forgotten your password)
• CIA World Factbook
• Real World Math: Math lessons using Google Earth (this is where we got the Water Problems KMZ)
• CountryReports
• GETeach: Fun ways to look at Google Earth and statistics
• Geography Quizzes from Sporcle
• Google World Wonder Project
• Mapas Interactivos: More map games
• Traveler IQ Challenge
• Twitter
• William Wanders: More country facts

Asia/India:

• Mahatma Gandhi Quiz
• Gandhi Pictorial Biography
• Diwali Site 1
• Diwali Site 2
• Teach India Project: Many of our other resources are from here.

S. America/Brazil:

• Busuu: Language learning site (sign up for a free trial)
• Learn Portuguese
• Brazil Inside Out (also has Portuguese lessons)
• Samba Drum Beats
• You can listen to our samba songs here.
• Amazon Street View

Africa/Niger:

• Hausa Photography
• Hydration Calculator: How much water should you drink each day?
• Intro to Hausa
• Mancala
• Teach Yourself Hausa
• The 200 Word Project: Learn Hausa and other languages.

Oceania/Australia:

• Our Animals
• All About Australia Quiz
• Dot Paintings
• Dust Echoes
• Guide to Australia
• Ngaka Ngaka Game Examples
• Passport: Australia

Our last day of Discovery was spent hosting a “culture fair,” where we showed off what we learned to other teachers and students in the program, as well as our parents and friends.  We spent most of the two days before preparing for this fair, and we were happy with the results.  Thanks to everyone who stopped by!

Each student chose a country that we had studied and set up an activity table for that nation.  In the center of the room, we set up a larger area where guests could label and color various world maps, look at our big atlas, and take online geography quizzes.  Each guest was given a “passport” when they entered the fair (we made these the day before) and received a stamp at every table at which they completed an activity.  I think the passports motivated the visitors, especially our younger ones, to be more excited to participate.

At the Niger table, guests practiced carrying water buckets on their head, winnowed some millet, and learned a few Hausa phrases:

At the Australia table, participants could color in a picture of Australian animals, learn about Australia from various websites, or play Ngaka Ngaka on our lovely game boards:

At the India table, there was more coloring (images of Holi and Diwali celebrations) and a little yoga.  Even other Roycemore staff took part:

Guests tasted Brazilian mochas and “Romeo & Juliet” treats at the Argentina table, and watched a PowerPoint presentation to learn a little Portuguese:

The culture fair was a great conclusion to our three weeks of learning together.  Stay tuned for a post with links to the many resources we used throughout this course.  Otherwise, have a great rest of your summer everyone!

Our final unit was all about Australia.  First, we did an overview of Oceania, which includes 14 countries.  We found a fact about each of these and located them on a map.  Almost all of these countries, small island nations in the Pacific Ocean, were ones we hadn’t heard of before!

Then we focused in on Australia.  We spent time watching another movie from Discovery Atlas called Australia Revealed.  One of the things we learned from the video is that most people in Australia live within an hour of the beach, and there is a lot of remote territory in the middle of the country.

We also saw several Aboriginal style dot paintings, and decided to try our own the next day.  This website had the idea to create a tic-tac-toe style game called Ngaka Ngaka with dot painting decorations.  We painted boards on simple black construction paper, and decorated stones as the playing pieces.  Students did a great job on the boards, and we enjoyed playing Ngaka Ngaka with others at our culture fair on Friday!

One year ago, I had the privilege of taking part in a volunteer trip to Niger in west Africa. It has been fun to share my experiences, pictures, videos, and souvenirs with Where in the World? students as we study Africa. To start our unit, we completed our traditional continent overview, finding at least one fact for each of the 54 countries in Africa and showing where each country is on the map. Then we focused in on Niger. We started with our study on water, then learned several Hausa phrases – with help from here and here.

Our biggest Niger activity was learning all about millet, the grain many west Africans grow and eat. The way millet and other crops are harvested and processed in Niger is quite different than the way crops are harvested in the US. We first looked at pictures of millet growing and ready to harvest, like this: 

Next, we learned how women in Niger pound the millet from the dried stalks down to grain, as in this picture:

After the millet is pounded enough, the grain, which is the edible part, needs to be separated from the inedible stuff. This is called winnowing. We didn’t have actual millet plants to pound and winnow, so to simulate the winnowing concept, I added some panko bread crumbs to millet grains from the grocery store. Then we poured the mixture from one container to another, and let the wind blow away the chaff (breadcrumbs). It wasn’t quite the same as the real thing, but I think it gave us the idea. We’ll practice winnowing again during our culture fair on Friday.

After winnowing, the millet might be ground further into flour. We practiced that by grinding grains with stones outside. We were surprised at how little flour came from our hard work. Imagine how much work would go into grinding enough to feed a whole family for a day!

Finally, we tasted some cooked millet. The verdict is still out on whether it was tasty enough to be worth all that work!