Quick note on the subject of Tablet Talk… I have more or less synced up the blog, the twitter stream, the mailing list and (finally) the facebook page. If you are subscribed in more than one of these places you will be receiving redundant content, so feel free to adjust according to your needs and preferences. I won’t get my feelings hurt, I promise! If you read strictly on fb or email, though, remember that on the website (http://tablettalk.info) I do maintain several ’static’ resources such as the A-Z Cool Tools, the tools for Art, Music, and PE teachers and the Training tab with all of the presentations and handouts. There are also several ‘oldies but goodies’ such as the video tutorials on The Hat, MS Ink Flashcards and more!
Thanks for reading and a special welcome to all the recent subscribers!
As I was polishing my presentation for KySTE this morning, this quote came to mind. I remember it being printed out and posted in several teacher’s rooms when I was a high school student. Those were the “Print Shop Days” when it was new and innovative to print out little motivational posters.
It went nicely with the theme of my presentation so I lead with it. I haven’t read any full works by this author but a five minute scan of his bio makes me think he has influenced educators ad education more then we might think.
Here’s the text of the quote… you can copy it and make your own little poster for your classroom. And when you are having ‘one of those days’ be sure to read it and reflect on the meaning behind it.
Also, for those unable to get in to the KySTE session (thank you all, by the way, for showing up! I’ve never been more honored and humbled than to have a standing room only crowd of my peers show up when there were dozens of other choices!) the presentation and the notes are can be viewed by selecting the ‘Training” tab up top.
Quote:
I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a student’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a student humanized or de-humanized.
Hiam Ginott
Also, if you want a link to the video I used it is embedded below… Just FYI there is some PG-13 language in it so use discretion if viewing at school.
Do you ever want your students to chart their findings of scientific observations?
Do you need to create a pie chart, bar graph or other representation of data for a class meeting and find Excel to be just a little intimidating for a quick project?
Here is the most simple and straight forward graph making program I have ever seen. I used it just yesterday with my fifth grader who has virtually no Excel training and she created a wonderful bar graph and pie chart. We were able to show the data of her experiment testing the effects of different types of music on concentration while playing cornhole in just a few minutes.
You can use the site as a whole group, modeling how you label the axis and discussing things like why you chose the type of chart you did.
Graphs can be printed, saved in several formats and the data can be reused in several output formats. The tabs on the right hand side of the page basically walk you through the project and the kids will enjoy the many options for colors to represent their findings.
There is no registration required and the site is maintained by the National Center For Education statistics.
I’m going to depart from the usual subject of great teaching sites and talk about super deals on this post. Whether you are shopping for school related items or just trying to stretch that public servant salary, here are a few sites that might interest you.
My first stop for purchasing computer gear is always NewEgg. They are an online only retailer that has been around forever and they have fair prices with exceptional specials. I have bought several large and small items there, and been please with the price and service. The strengths of NewEgg are the blatantly honest customer reviews and the specials on refurbished and clearance items. They have recently started a ‘notebook of the week’ special and they also have an interesting email list you can subscribe to.
For more whimsical shopping you might check out Woot! The unique thing about Woot! is that they offer one thing for sale per day. It is usually an exceptional value and a limited quantity. I’ve bought a few things from them and they have shipped quickly and the products have been good. I enjoy the write ups about the products, they are usually a humorous and sarcastic (remind you of anyone?) fictional story that weaves the product into the storyline. Woot! frequently offers technology stuff, but the deal of the day has been gourmet food, clothing, bags and other random stuff. About once a month they hold a ‘Woot-Off’ and when an item sells out they offer another one, rather than waiting for a new day to start.
I recently learned of a similar one-deal-a-day service called “Groupons.” Groupons offer a coupon for sale, usually it is at least a 50% off deal. The goal of the site is to introduce site specific deals to new and upcoming businesses. I only recently joined the list and haven’t bought anything yet, but I have to say I am really intrigued. I like the fact that it is geared to area businesses and some of the data would actually be good to teach with if you are doing some economics or consumer math type lessons.
Finally, and this is more for fun than anything, you can subscribe to the “Deals of the Day” RSS feed from LifeHacker. They publish a well organized list of good bargains from reputable shops like Best Buy and NewEgg. They sort the list in to tech gear, not tech gear and free stuff. I have signed up for a few of the free things and other than a few pounds of coffee and other trivial items, it hasn’t been overly exciting.
So where do you find great deals for buying gear for your classroom?
Okay, we all endured learning about the parts of speech when we were younger, right? One way to increase the engagement level is to use the Mad-Libs style games. Surely you remember doing this as a child, right? You entered in a noun, a verb, your buddies name and voila, a silly story came out. There are several online versions of them, here are some links to a few. The Wacky Web Tales has a simple but helpful “Parts of Speech” help table for kids who need a reminder about the definitions. Some other options:
MadGlibs Interesting because students can click to fill in blanks if stuck
MadLibs A flash based, longer game. Site was a little ad-heavy but once you get in to the story it has a full screen option, nice for a large group activity.
There is a super simple and ultra functional website called Etherpad. Etherpad allows you to create a document that multiple people can edit at once. It can be handy for collaboration with other teachers, creating a super-simple wiki page and a few dozen other uses. There are other sites which allow similar functionality, but what sets etherpad apart is that you can create and share a new page without an account (type in to your browser http://etherpad.com/xxx where xxx=what you want your page to be titled). Another thing that sets etherpad apart is the simple chat function in the bottom corner of the page. It allows users to discuss things before they set them down on the page.
So if etherpad is so great, why would you ever use anything that was similar? Well, etherpad was purchased by google (have you heard of them?) and the technology behind the product is going to be used in other products that google offers.
Google will not be keeping etherpad up and running, but to their credit they have made the source code available to other designers. The first (that I’m aware of) replacement is TypeWith.Me and is linked up at the top of the page. You can navigate to the site and create a pad (or you can place http://typewith.me/xxx in your brower’s URL bar, where xxx is your desired title) and start collaborating on shared documents!
If you want to just ’see’ what a pad looks like before you create one, click here:
I learned recently that the site formerly known as “My Award Maker” has returned, but under a new name. Check out Certificate Street for colorful, printable and customizable certificates and awards for all occasions.
There are more certificates than one could ever make use of, and they are categorized nicely by Sports, School, Special Occasion, Business, Personal and Relationships. The files download as a PDF that you can personalize and print.
Check out Certificate Street the next time you need to make awards for your class, team or coworkers!
“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.”
-Maya Angelou
There is a certain quality of the human voice that simply can’t be expressed in text. You can use sideways smiley faces, underline words and add abbreviations like LOL all day, and one can rarely express themselves as well than if your audience can hear you.
I have enjoyed sharing the voice chat utility Skype with teachers the last two days, and believe that the usage of this tool is going to be unlimited. I have helped the teachers to download and install the program, then they all built accounts and added one another as a contact. We modeled and practiced doing text and voice messages. In short, we used the tool. Once there was a basic comfort level with Skype we scanned the two articles (linked below) that outlined the different projects that had been done with Skype.
We also shared other ideas, among the top ones were the parents who were deployed overseas having the opportunity to join in parent conferences and children who were home bound staying connected by Skyping in to class meetings.
I want my teachers to have me as a Skype contact so that I can provide technical and instructional support through the screen sharing function as well Many times a two minute demo (click here/click here/click here) will save several rounds of clarifying questions and a chain of emails.
I can’t wait to provide this session to all my schools, and look forward to hearing about the authentic and engaging projects they come up with.
It seems the wildly popular and teacher friendly web based text cloud generator site is down. There is a copyright issue with the name “Wordle” and while the issue is being taken care of you won’t be able to access http://wordle.net
There are other places where you can creae “Word Clouds.” While wordle is my favorite, you might find “Word It Out” to be similar. At the time I am writing this, “Word It Out” is loading incredibly slow, presumably due to all the wordle traffic heading there.
Click here for an interesting and helpful article that listed twelve sites for creating word clouds. Each offers something slightly different than the others, including one that enables you to specify the shape of the cloud, by Image Chef and another that allows you to create links to definitions on the word cloud. (Lots of other fun projects on Image Chef, too. I enjoy the image creator, that is another subject though.)
The post also has interesting project ideas for wordle, handy for when the site is back up and running.
It seems the wildly popular and teacher friendly web based text cloud generator site is down. There is a copyright issue with the name “Wordle” and while the issue is being taken care of you won’t be able to access 