Rifka’s blog

I really enjoyed the social networking in education experience. I signed up for Classroom 2.0 and found discussions that are valuable to me as a special education teacher. It is so nice to see what others are doing rather than constant reinventing the wheel. When I explored Ning two networks stood out to me in particular. One is Edureshet which is an Israeli educator and web 2.0 in the classrooms network. This was totally in Hebrew but I can’t wait to share it with my Hebrew partner and get her feedback. The second one was the Literacy Coach Network. My aunt is a Literacy Coach and she always has such a great support network and resources I am hoping to have some of the same social networking she has experienced.

Pageflakes is an interesting tool. I definitely can use it at home and it will help organize my middle schooler’s internet use. For the classroom it is easy enough to set up for a communication tool with parents to show them what sites we are using, maybe research tools, online dictionary, calculator to help their child with homework. The shared calendar would be nice as well as sharing class photos. Time is the biggest factor and maintaining the page as well is time consuming.

This was difficult for me b/c I am a microsoft girl. If it isn’t just like my microsoft tools I get frustrated when it comes to documents. I know it will just take practice and patience. I tried making a presentation from scratch but I couldn’t import pictures from microsoft clip art like I usually would and I didn’t have access to the wonderful graphics we keep at my school so that was a very aggravating experience. After 2 hours of effort I decided to go the lazy route and used the new template system offered by Google docs. A couple of clicks and I was done. I could have added voice to it but I was exhausted so I’ll save it for next time. In the classroom I can definitely see uses. First I would use the word processor for students so I can help them anytime anywhere. Another use would be a slide show like I created for this assignment, where students work collaboratively to create slides and then ask other to join in. Finally I love the idea of using spreadsheets that could be shared with parents to show progress both home and at school. For example when I am working on mastery of a syllable pattern such as CVC which is consonant short vowel consonant, I can input my data daily the parent can view this and do added practice with a student home deck of practice words and add their data as well. I will need to study the sharing component a little closer to make use student privacy can be maintained.

Only if I had unlimited time to watch videos. As a side note the staff at Evoca is awesome. My 12 yr old had downloaded real player library without telling me and I could not hear my podcast so I called them and they called back and helped me fix the problem. You Tube well I would definitely say this is a highly supervised adventure for the classroom. I can think of searches that would be helpful for class research but there is a great deal of inappropriate content even with screening tools for elementary age kids. I will say that You Tube video comes up quickly and plays smoothly and it was fun pursuing personal interests and seeing a whole group of people interested in the same subject. TeacherTube was not as smooth for the video every video I viewed had pauses in the video and the comment buffering came up over and over again. I am not sure if it is unique to my computer or if others had the same issue. Content was great for the classroom. I found a great site for my son regarding integers. Take a look.

Well I can say that my first podcast was a pretty simple experience. I used my microphone and was able to find my way without the assistance of the help video since it was not working. Embedding this into my blog is my next challenge since that video as well was not working. Here goes my effort.Podcasting in the Classrooms ideas

The Common Craft show as always did a great job explaining podcasts in a simple manner. I viewed several podcasts both teacher and student led. Grazr was  easy to use and all the podcasts I chose came up automatically and I could hear them. When I went on my own and searched Education Podcast Network I had difficulty playing the podcast. Either the site was unavailable to get to or it just wouldn’t play whether I subscribed from Google Reader or directly at the site.  I was able to hear some first graders read stories they had written and found that very interesting. Podcast Alley is a site I would never allow students to use. It was vulgar and even when you picked a site a child may pick such as comedy there was no way to tell what was clean or not. In my classroom I could use podcast to share writing they have completed or to practice fluency of a book. We could podcast our class meetings to give parents an insight on how our discipline process works.

Librarything.com is awesome!!!! This is probably the best thing personally I have seen in this class. I love to read and my family loves to read, especially series. None of us have time to join a regular face to face book club and this is the ultimate answer. For the classroom, I can’t wait to introduce it. I looked up a series my son and his friends are into and there was a group. It was definitely kids his age and discussion going back and forth was terrific. I loved the info on the authors, the recommendations section, common knowledge, and descriptions. It really jogged my memory about a book and what really got me hooked.

Social bookmarking was different. I am a little overwhelmed with the multitude of buttons now on my screen. It is distracting and I find myself constantly clicking on recently bookmarked sites to remember why I bookmarked it. When I used my local bookmark I now have an icon that automatically comes up to add it to del.icio.us and I find I am storing info both places. It took awhile to get the hang of sharing tags. I tried several times to tag to the wiki but I could never get it to come up on the wiki. I would definitely use it so I could refer to my bookmarks anywhere and see who else is interested or has found related sites.

When checking my google reader I found an interesting article called Guidelines to Better Classroom Acoustics. This article highlights the latest work of the U.S. Access Board which is a federal agency. This agency has put out new guidelines for public buildings especially schools regarding  acoustics.  Their goal  is to make  buildings more accessible for students affected by sound. This would include students with hearing issues,  auditory processing , learning disabilities, attention issues and others as well. This is good news and something we have addressed to some degree in the private school setting. It is good to see the public sector getting on board. Children’s listening skills in general are less developed and therefore all children can have difficulty filtering out background sounds such as A/C units, furniture movement, etc. Nice to see that the gov’t is starting to see the classroom environment impacts learning.

I explored two tools. First I explored Letter Pop which is among other things in a newsletter creator. In my classroom the free version would be acceptable because it will allow you to create 10 newsletters in a year and invite up to 25 contacts. Since I only have a max of 13 students this would serve my classroom. It allows for picture uploads, RSS and newsletter comments. Then I explored Quizlet which is a study tool. What a great tool. So many ready made vocabulary practice tools and you can add to already made or create your own quickly and easily. I could definitely use these and better yet my Hebrew teammate could use it for Holiday words because you can type in Hebrew and find matching English. Then you can share. I am excited by the possibilities.