Pop Quiz hot shot…
What are your plans to use technology in your classroom next fall? What is your plan for day one? Does it involve anything that I have blogged about? Does it involve a personality test that groups kids by colors? Does it involve asking students one by one to describe their summer vacation and the question, ‘if you were a car what one would you be?’
If you are already overwhelmed by my brief, yet aggressive, pop quiz, then here are some practical ideas you can implement next year from day one. If you subscribe to this list and try a few, you too, may be known as the “techie teacher” by October.
1. Obtain a Twitter account
Please, just try it before you sigh and move on to number two. I made this number one because I have been turned on to so many great teaching blogs and links to great articles. Twitter can be a very useful collaborative tool among teachers all over the world. Yes, world! I keep up with a teacher in Portugal. And it is very interesting!
Twitter allows you to follow whom you want and block those you don’t want. You can share and collaborate with fellow teachers and even set up a group that will allow your school to tweet together. Twitter does not spam and all that is required of you is a clever username and password. Set up your photo if you want and your ready to tweet away!
I find the best time to use twitter is to pick a few times during the day when you can scour your twitter feed and pick the articles you want, save them and read them later. If you try and stay current all day, you may find yourself in the weeds and overwhelmed by over-tweeting. Don’t try and keep pace, simply tweet at your own convenience.
The idea of twitter can also be used without even setting up an account. The twitter frame work – expressing yourself in 140 characters – can be used to extract main ideas and to summarize a reading. On day one have students go to the board and explain something they did this summer in 140 characters. It serves as a nice day one ice breaker and will probably draw a few laughs.
Go here for Twitter
2. Create a Google Calendar
I find that a Google calendar can be a lifesaver and a great way to integrate other calendars in your school. I personally have one calendar for my personal life, one for my school’s academic calendar, one for technology conferences and our tech coordinator has one for his availability. All these calendars can be viewed on one single page and you can turn different calendars off and on if your June begins to look like a bag of skittles fell on to the page.
The other amazing feature about Google calendar is that you can share and subscribe to other calendars. This allows you to set up calendars in your district and coordinate with each other at all times. I also set up a Google Calendar for each of my classes and embed them on our class Wiki. It is a great way to post assignments and keep parents, guidance counselors and supervisors informed.
Click here for Google Calendar
3. Create a classroom Social Network
This can be done through numerous venues. I have always had the best experience with a Wiki space. It is easy for students to understand and they can easily adapt to the process of editing and sharing on the page. You can make your Wiki space private, however, you can open it up to parents, administrators and grandma, who lives 3000 miles away, but would like to see what her grandson is doing in school.
The Wiki allows you to easily upload assignments, photos and videos. Students can participate in threaded discussion and allows teachers and students to collaborate through e-mail. I find the class wiki to be a great year-to-year resource as well. Everything my students create or that I assign is posted on the wiki. At the end of every school year I go back through and see what we accomplished and how I can make it better next year. Think of your class wiki as the lesson planner you always wanted!
Finally, the Wiki is also a great tool to house student portfolios. I covered this topic last month and find that a student portfolio wiki will allow students to track their progress from year to year and allow them to have access to it. This idea works beyond their high school years as well. They can take their wiki to college with them and continue to add and upgrade their portfolio.
Check out this post here.
Click here for wikispaces
4. Use Animoto!
If there were one tool that I am simply in love with, it would be Animoto. I have covered this site in a previous post and have used it numerous times in my own classroom. It is an application that can be used across all disciplines and will enhance your classroom flare!
I have used it to create movie trailers for all of the books my students will read during the semester. Rather than acquire a video camera and learn how to use editing software, Animoto takes care of it for you! Here is one I created for Hamlet. It took me roughly 5-10 minutes to create.
This is a great icebreaker for day one of a unit! Kids can showcase their prior knowledge and also make predictions about the upcoming literature. Another idea is to have your students create their own Animoto preview for the literature or play they just completed. Then you can showcase their films at the beginning of next year. Tell students their target audience is next year’s freshman class and that they have to draw them into reading Hamlet!
Find Animoto here
5. Plan Ahead this summer!
There are lots of tools out there for teachers to use and it can be overwhelming to try them all. At the end of each year I recommend reflecting on your lessons and trying to find a new web 2.0 tools to enhance that particular lesson or unit.
One of the biggest mistakes one can make is to try all these tools out mid unit. This creates chaos and is not healthy for the classroom. If you spend more time trying to tweak the application you are using than provide the content then the point is lost. Try these steps when trying to implement new technologies into your classroom.
1. Become an expert on the application
2. Synthesize the lesson so that the application does not distract from the content
3. Plan out your time and set parameters for equipment usage so that you don’t usurp valuable class time
4. Provide a supplemental handout for students in case they do not understand the new application
As always I look forward to your feedback and would love to hear how you are planning ahead for next year. Please comment with any new ideas you are trying out or any additions to this list.
Happy Summer!