Blog Archives

Social bookmarking

2/26/2013

I have to say that this week’s lesson has been one of love and hate. Well, maybe not “hate,” but frustration and dislike. I will begin with the dislike so that I can end on a positive by talking about what I really liked.

Therefore, to commence, I am not a fan of Delicious. While I love the idea of it (see my feed here), I find that I do not like it in practice. I resisted the idea when it first came out, so perhaps it is just me being stubborn. However, as I use my Google bookmarks button on every computer that I use, I find that not being able to easily import those bookmarks that I have been collecting for my entire teaching career is frustrating. Through a quick Google search, it appears as though the site previously had a way to do that, but the feature has been disabled. Now, the only bookmarks that can be imported are those sites sent out via Twitter or Facebook. I do like the idea of being able to search through the sites that I tweet, but it seems to me that I could just as easily do so by searching my Twitter history.

So what do I use instead? As mentioned previously, I use Google Bookmarks almost exclusively. With any new computer that is mine to alter, I download the Google Toolbar so that I can have my bookmarks. When I first received my new laptop for Christmas and began using Chrome for this program, I was devastated to find out that while I could add bookmarks in the browser, I could not access them via the same button. Since then, I realized that I could simply add a bookmark to the bookmark bar and visit the web version of all of my bookmarks. I know that this is simply my collection, and not social. However, since I find many of my resources already via Twitter, I am still social, if my bookmarks are not.

On the other hand, I also use Pinterest as a form of visual social bookmarking (you can see my school “pins” here). I have boards for everything I enjoy, from personal to professional to social. As I collect more pins, I have found the need to separate them into sub-categories. Pinterest could improve by following in the footsteps of Google or Delicious in this area. I follow fellow teachers, EdTech bloggers, EdTech companies, and “gurus.” All of these people share sites they find interesting and informative. I share them in turn when I pin them. I am also able to see what else has been pinned by similar pinners or onto similar boards. To me, this is the definition of social bookmarking, even if not the recommended tool.

Lastly, to end on a positive, while not strictly part of the blogging assignment for this week, I did really enjoy finding new leaders in education and educational technology to follow on Twitter (see my profile page here). Because they were not mentioned, I will share some of favorite Tweeters here as well:

@langology: Language news and language education
@joedale: Independent MFL and technology consultant
@msjweir: a high school English teacher and self-proclaimed technology “geek”
@WeAreTeachers: an online community of teachers of all subjects and levels
@21stCenturyTch: devoted to education in the 21st Century

Who are your favorite Tweeps?

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Digital tools to increase learning and engagement (plus a bonus for teacher productivity)

2/26/2013

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This week, I looked at lots of new online tools to help increase student learning and engagement. On the list provided were some tools with which I was already familiar. The one that I use most commonly is Quizlet. A tool designed for learning vocabulary, it can also be applied to almost anything that can be broken into two parts. When I began using Quizlet almost 6 years ago, I used it just as it was intended – vocabulary interaction. I created flash card sets for my intermediate French classes with French on one side and English on the other. Later, I began using it with my more advanced French classes. For these students, I created sets of French words with French definitions, characters from stories we read with descriptions, dates from French history with events, etc. When my son entered school, we began using it to help him study for tests in all subject areas. He is now at the point where he makes his own sets, as he has realized that creating the sets also helps him to learn the material.

Another tool that I found (though not from the list) is one that I discovered via my Google Reader account, from Free Technology for Teachers. The tool is called Blubbr. Blubbr offers free accounts that can be created with an email address, or linked to Facebook or Twitter. After having created an account, a user can then create interactive video trivia-style games using videos already available. The teacher (or student) just needs to create the questions. For example, my French 1 students are studying fashion vocabulary now. I searched “la mode” and found videos of fashion shows in France. Using clips of no more than 20 seconds, I simply added multiple-choice questions about what different people were wearing in each clip. To see my game, click here or press play below.

While I think that these video trivia games will be fun for students to play, I think that they may be even more fun for students to make and share with the class. Before a test or quiz, I could imagine taking a day in class for students to create their own video games and then share them via our LMS or a wiki. One challenge that I foresee is the need to circulate constantly to help students with choosing video clips, and to be certain that they choose only acceptable videos.

A bonus tool that I found via my Google Reader account is For All Rubrics, an online rubric site that interacts with iPads and allows the user to import rubrics already created in .xls format. I have been searching for an app that does this and had not yet found a free one that was not associated with a specific LMS (not the one that my system uses). Accounts are free for teachers. I have not yet played with it much but will do so soon. Once I do, I will report what I find.

What is your favorite tool that you have or found?

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Engaging students with Flickr and the Creative Commons

2/15/2013

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Some rights reserved by vantazy

When I began pondering the reflection questions for this week’s blog, my initial thought was that I had never noticed the CC logo on any websites that I visit. As a result, I had never wondered what it meant. Later on, as I was perusing my Google Reader feed, I began noticing the CC logo in association with many of the photo credits on the blogs that I follow. It had never occurred to me that bloggers did not all take their own photos, as one of the very first blogs that I began to follow is by a friend in Senegal who is a photojournalist. Yet once I began thinking about it, I realized that not all bloggers could be as talented as she is, and so must get their images somewhere.

As it turns out, I have heard of Creative Commons before, as well as Flickr. I had not ever realized that they went together or that one could use them so creatively in the classroom to engage student learning. In Chapter 7 of his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson discusses a variety of projects and ways to have “Fun with Flickr.” As a teacher of literature in both French and English, I love the idea of illustrating important words from poems using images from Flickr, as David Jakes did. As a language teacher, I also like the idea of testing vocabulary with asking students to annotate and label what they see with what they know. This could allow students some measure of autonomy and choice in their assessment as well. With the use of a common sharing space, students could even assess other students if the annotated pictures were saved to that location.

Furthermore, I was also pleased to read that “the copyright issues of using an image already found on the Web fall under the Fair Use Doctrine” provided that the source be referenced (Richardson, 2010). I have always tried to limit myself to Microsoft Clipart Galleries, since I knew that as a Microsoft customer, I had access to those images. Knowing that attribution is all that is needed for my classroom use of other images online makes my planning easier, as I search for images to associate with vocabulary or to spark discussion in my classes.

Teachers in other subjects will be happy to know that searching for content using Creative Commons defaults to Safe Search features, allowing teachers the freedom to ask students to perform searches that allow for creativity while blocking images that are not safe for their viewing.

Lastly, this also makes me more comfortable about sharing what I create online. I have always been a great “harvester” of resources. While I always try to insert a footer giving credit to where I found the material, I do not always succeed. Yet because I also modify the original document to make it fit my classroom and my teaching style, I feel as though the original author and I are joint creators. Additionally, if someone else accesses material that I share online and improves it, then we are co-creators working together for the benefit of other teachers and multitudes of students around the globe.

As before, I leave you with a few questions:

What are your favorite sharing sites?
What are some the ways that this week’s reading has inspired you to incorporate Flickr and Creative Commons into your class?

RESOURCES
Richardson, W. (2010). Fun With Flickr: Creating, Publishing, and Using Images Online. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (3rd ed., pp. 101-110). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

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Wiki wiki in French and English

2/8/2013

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Image Credit: La Giraudiere (click picture to go to site).

About five years ago, I joined a Yahoo! Group for teachers of French who used a common textbook for upper-level classes. Through that group, I also found a linked group for teachers of AP French. Both groups were communities where teachers could share information, struggles, successes, and of course, resources. However, as the groups grew, our ability to share information became more limited. The group founders began looking for alternatives and settled upon Wikispaces. I was uncertain, but the materials that we had collected were all moving there, so I had no viable option. I created an account and joined TAP-FLC (Teachers of AP French Language & Culture). This new wiki had all of the benefits of our previous Yahoo! group, with the added benefit that we could organize the material more easily, and edit our documents together. It was a perfect fit!

Since then, I have joined two other wikis for this program, and visited a multitude of others. They have all been hosted by Wikispaces, which has made it easy to keep track of them. One of my favorites is LHS French Classes, which I discovered when I first had the idea to create a wiki for my classes at my new school in 2009. Unfortunately, when the domain name that I wanted was taken, I stopped. The teacher, Mme Theisin, has collected a trove of resources for all levels of French and sadly, I allowed her thoroughness to be my “excuse” for not creating my own site.

While researching educational Wikis for this module, I found two more that are inspirational to me. The first, English * Lizeowiki, combines my two content areas, as it is a wiki for French students learning English at all levels. Because they are learning English, many of the handouts posted are in both languages. While I have not yet contacted the teacher, I think that there could be a way to engage my AP French students with his students of English in collaboratively learning more about both languages and cultures.

The second wiki has started my creative juices flowing, trying to find a way to incorporate student projects on a wiki. The wiki is Lord of the Flies Essays and is home to a collection of essays by the students of one teacher. It caught my attention, as my classes are just finishing reading Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, and while we are wrapping up the unit, I am always looking for materials to add to my “collection.” Our next unit involved persuasion and we have discussed students producing persuasive Public Service Announcements, complete with annotated bibliographies. Wikis like this one could provide a good place for students to collaborate, post their final PSAs, and keep track of who did what and when.

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Feeding our needs, fueling our feeds (Or, finding useful RSS feeds)

2/1/2013

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This semester, we have been asked to set up Google Reader accounts and follow a variety of different feeds. For years now, I have seen the little orange “RSS Feed” icon and yet never known what it is or what to do with it. However, over the past few weeks, I have begun seeing its use more and more as a quicker way to stay abreast of current trends and information.

Today, I would like to share a video course that I found via the roundabout way that the Internet typically works. One of the feeds to which I subscribed is Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne. In a recent post, Mr. Byrne introduced A New Crash Course in U.S. History, a new video series by John Green of VlogBrothers fame and author of The Fault in our Stars and An Abundance of Katherines. I was intrigued. I have a passing familiarity with John Green due to his association with all things Harry Potter, and knew that he has a large Internet presence. This educational aspect of his work was new to me, and while I am not a history teacher, I occasionally bring history into my classroom as a way of setting up the context in which a literary work takes place. Consequently, I went to the U.S. History Crash Course site on YouTube, watched the first (and so far, only) video with my 5th grade son, and knew that this was a potentially great resource.

After the video was over, it then showed related videos. Lo and behold, John Green also has a Crash Course on English Literature! The short introduction video is something that I wish that I had had when the year first started. Watching it led me to other gems to use in my classroom, like a video about the French Revolution (perfect for French 4) and another about the Roman Empire and Julius Caesar (perfect for my upcoming 10th Grade Literature and Composition unit in which we read William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar). As I said, I watched the first video with my son, who loved it so much that he is now pleading with me to finish so that we can watch another. If my students like it even half as much as he does, then I will feel that I have accomplished my goal of increasing their engagement in the class.

If I had not already been convinced that my RSS feed would prove to be beneficial, last night’s perusing proved the point. While I won’t talk about them all here tonight, here are some other tidbits that I found intriguing:

What about you? Tell me your favorite finds in the comments.

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Angela Burgess is a high school French and Lit teacher, as well as an Instructional Technology Specialist. She is also understandably a Francophile and technophile. She obtained her M.Ed. in Instructional Technology from Kennesaw State University in May 2014.

Social bookmarking

Digital tools to increase learning and engagement (plus a bonus for teacher productivity)

Engaging students with Flickr and the Creative Commons

Wiki wiki in French and English

Feeding our needs, fueling our feeds (Or, finding useful RSS feeds)

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