I was assigned to comment on Mrs. Ann Carnevale's Blog Bit's and Bytes.
In her post titled Exciting News and New Resources from January 5th, 2011 she told of a collaborative writing project called Write On. It involves fifteen classes of third, fourth, and fifth grade children from all around the United States. They are three groups of five classes, and are working together through a wiki to write and illustrate a story for a total of three stories. Mrs. Carnevale says," The purpose of this project is to expand writing skills while utilizing 21st century learning tools for communication and collaboration."
The creative efforts of these children is great! I suggest you take some time and click on the Write On link above and read the stories the kids have come up with. They are quite entertaining. Personally I will keep going back to read them until they are finished just to see what they come up with. They make me wish I was in third grade again.
Mrs. Carnevale also gave a link to a K-12 Section for Podcasts on iTunes. The only downfall of this site is there is no real organization, but if you take time to look you will definitely find something that will interest you.
When I looked around I found several links to podcasts directed towards high school history students. Just the few I listened to made me want to provide these for my students. I may even browse this site looking for information for myself while taking my college history courses.
The last part of this post she spoke of CarrotSticks, which is an online multiplayer math website. Students are able to play on their own, or with friends, in up to 25 levels of games. Teachers are able to set up and account for their classroom, and are given a link to share with their students.
It was a fun looking game. I would have loved it as a child. As competitive as I was, and am, I would have played it all the time. I asked Mrs. Carnevale if she knew of any sites similar to this, but tailored towards high school aged students, because my wife is a high school math teacher and she would like to have her kids try something like CarrotSticks.
In the second post I commented on, How Did You Do That?, she gives some keyboard shortcuts for a Mac, which will make navigating your computer easier. There is also a tutorial for the track pad on new Mac laptops.
Just watching the video made me want a new Mac. Maybe one day I can get one.
Since I don't have a Mac yet, I thought it would be a good idea to give everyone out there with a PC a few keyboard shortcuts to help them out.
CTRL+C: COPY
CTRL+X: CUT
CTRL+V: PASTE
CTRL+Z: UNDO
CTRL+B: BOLD
CTRL+U: UNDERLINE
CTRL+I: ITALIC
ALT+TAB: SWITCH TO ANOTHER RUNNING PROGRAM(HOLD DOWN THE ALT KEY AND THEN PRESS THE TAB KEY TO VIEW THE TASK-SWITCHING MENU)
Microsoft Support has many other useful shortcuts. I hope these help.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteI definitely want a mac after reading your post as well. I agree with you to an extent about the cell phones in class because yes we can use them for so much more as well as access the internet. I don't agree totally because as a youth director in our church I learned that cell phones can also be distracting because a child usually can't focus on just one thing so they will use the phone for other things as well. Several of my youth had the bible on the phone which is great but it wasn't notes they were taking during lesson. The great thing with computers in the classroom is that we can block other sites and keep them all doing what is assigned. After reading some of the stories I am amazed at the imaginations of these children. The math game is also a great tool and I will pass it on to a friend that tutors math to refer to her students. It's so exciting to learn so much more about technology!