Technologically Teaching

Enter Turnitin.com and others like it

To combat the long-standing issue of taking one person’s words as your own, enter Turnitin.com or any of the other program like it. Turnitin is a program that searches for duplicate strings of phrases within its extensive database. It is fairly simple to use once you know how. Once your students create their account and log in they can upload their file to the program and it can then give you a read out of how much of the document could be plagiarized. Now there is some margin of error as certain phrases occur naturally when people speak, and those are picked up on in the program, as well. But for the most part, it gives you a fairly accurate picture of how much of the document is from your students’ heads.

Really Ms. W?

Imagine reading an article that alludes to another book and bam! you have the entire class download it and start reading. The ability to have the students go to Amazon on the iPads and download it right then is nothing short of amazing. Not only do you capture the students at a time they are interested in the material, but you can start reading within minutes. You capture learning in the minute; directly connecting it to the lesson you are teaching. In the past, when you found reference to a written work, you would have to go through a lengthy process to order the books for the classroom, sometimes taking months before the books arrived. In that time, the students have moved on and barely remember the connection to that original lesson.

Have a talk with your school about utilizing the Kindle app. Discuss the money and how it all works. They may just be open to the changing technology which can only benefit literacy in your classroom.

On a personal note ….

Not Just Another Slide-Based Show …

Prezi was created to be much more visual than the usual slide-based presentation software available.There are art templates to set as a background or you can upload your own art. From there, you create zoom points which can be text or pictures. Each time you click you are zoomed into a specific part of the presentation. The pieces within those parts can be video, graphics, or text. As the presentation continues, it follows a path to completion. The creator(s) of the presentation set the path the presentation will take, leading the audience on a visual journey.

Oh No, I Left My Laptop At Home!

Another great thing about Prezi is that it’s cloud-based. This means that you save it to the cloud and it is accessible from any device that can connect to the internet! That’s a life saver for any teacher who has heard those immortal words “I saved it on the computer I used last week!” on the day of the presentation. Access from anywhere; you and your students will be thankful for that feature more than once.

One way to engage the students to answer the questions is to have them raise their hands. Sometimes, though, it is hard to tell who raised their hands first. One really fun way to get them to want to engage is to spend a few extra dollars and pick up a buzzer system that you can use for all games. You can find a nice colorful, wireless system at Amazon. The buzzers are linked to a main control board which lights up when a buzzer is pressed. Let me assure you that students of ALL ages love this! There are so many ways to use these buzzers, get creative!

 For younger students that are just learning how to spell, there are vocabulary games to play. These games require the students to go to the SMART Board (who doesn’t like that!) and fill in the missing letter in the word. Other games include matching word games and high frequency word games like this:

How hard is it really?

Once you have your template chosen, there is a little bit of a learning curve for what buttons are where, but most of them are from dropdown menus. It was fairly easy to pick some of their stock photos and upload them into the template. It was also a breeze for me to upload some clipart I had downloaded to my computer. It was not difficult to change the background to my site, either. All in all, a pleasant experience.

What can you do with it?

There are many applications for a design tool this powerful. The one that comes to mind, because it is the one I am currently working on, is a webquest. It was easy to create a slide show of natural resources with links across the top for various pages I wanted to create. The look is very professional and the elements easy to move around. You can embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo. There are also social media buttons that you can add to your side and link to your social media. Say if you want to set up a class page in Facebook or have a Twitter feed, you can link all that from your WIX pages. There is a lot you can do with this. As a teacher, there are many educational applications that it can work with, more than just the webquest angle. There are presentation pages that can be created, research that can be aggregated and many other ideas that are outside the box.

The Basics ….

Once you get to the Google Sites page you click on "Create."  From there this is what I did. I put in a classroom name. The first name I entered was taken so I needed to find a second name for the URL. But it was a fairly innocuous process.

The second step is to choose a theme so I chose a blackboard theme.

Third, I put in the security code at the bottom to ensure I was not a robot bent on making phony sites, and voila! My site was created in mere seconds.

The Goodies ….

So what exactly do you get for a website? Lots of goodies and they even give you tips on what types of items can go where. There is a place for “student of the month,” a place for your own picture with a link that will take you to an “about me” page. There is a section to link to homework, word of the week, announcements for the class, places to upload photos, etc. There is a way to create a page that allows students to collaborate on projects and way to limit editing access on certain pages. Honestly, there is so much to this site I haven’t been able to completely run through it all.

Why Use Google Sites?

There are many sites out there that schools can use as virtual classrooms and Google Sites is another collaborative tool to use that is easy to navigate especially for younger students. Some virtual classrooms can be very cumbersome to get to or to find links that are relevant to what you need. Google Sites has made it easy to reach the page you need. Students just need the link and it will take them to the correct webpage. From there you can link a WebQuest or anything you’ve created in Google Docs. It’s very helpful for students that lose worksheets to be able to access them at home if they have an internet connection. It also links all the other Google products such as Picasa for ease of adding pictures, YouTube for videos, Google Calendar and much more. Another great thing about Google Sites is that you can choose who sees it and who can modify it. You can choose to have just those people with a link, sent home at the beginning of the year, to have access thereby bypassing the worries of having the site tampered with by anyone on the internet or someone posting inappropriate content on the site.

Another interactive survey site is SurveyMonkey. This site offers templates to help you create a survey as well as teach the students how to create their own survey. Teaching students what types of questions to ask in order to find out the information they are seeking is just as important as answering questions.

One last one I will highlight is through Google. Through Google forms you can create your own survey and share it on multiple social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. You can invite people to your survey and it will analyze the results for you. The program walks you through the process and allows instant collaboration through familiar surroundings for the students.

It’s all good …

  ENCHANTED LEARNING

Enchanted Learning is another website that has some great printables. These are more geared toward the younger elementary set but very useful. You don’t have to be a member but it’s worth it to become one. The printables are easier to print with the subscription and they offer answer keys as well. Lots to look at.

  WHO KNEW!

Of all the websites that are out there Pinterest doesn’t seem like the type of place that you would find educational materials. However, it is a plethora of ideas. An online pinboard, Pinterest has millions of pins under many different headings. Search education or any derivative of this heading and you will find tons of online printables and lesson information.

  EWW BUT AT LEAST YOU DON’T HAVE TO TOUCH IT!

This last website will help kids get a really good view of some stuff they may be a little squeamish about. Where else can you see a complete dissection of a cow eye? You can here! At 3dtoad there are all different kinds of dissections and skeletons to look at from all different angles. If you hold the mouse down you can turn the object 360 degrees. Pretty interesting stuff and you don’t have to actually touch it. Pretty cool!

The good the bad and the ugly

There are good and bad points with each of these methods. On the one hand, giving them a specific website to get information from will ensure that they find the information they are looking for, leading to lower frustration levels. The down-side to this is that they will all have the same information; nothing new will have been gathered leaving little open for discussion later. Giving students a URL to start with but then allowing them to get information from wherever they find it gives them a sense of individualism, however, they can get so bogged down on the numerous websites that they may not get half of what you want them to get finished. Another issue with letting them roam the internet is that they may not use reputable sites and their information may be incorrect. The way to counteract this is to continue to monitor their progress and stop occasionally to quiz the class about the answers they have found thus far. Frustration can also mount when students have to sift through a Google search result of about 200,000 results and they do not find the answer within the first 2 results. Still, I prefer to allow the students to find the information on more than 1 website. It also helps the students to stay on task if they are working in pairs.

OMG this isn’t so boring after all!

One good way to get students involved with a webquest is to create a funny story that needs essential information that they must find. The story should be inventive but easy enough, depending on the age group, to require the students to think about what information they are looking for and how it fits into the story. Another webquest idea is to make it a treasure hunt. Finding one source leads you to the next source, until the webquest is complete. One more method of creating a buzz around the webquest is to have students watch videos to gather information. This generation is so very visual, YouTube is their go-to place to kill time. This method would introduce them to the many educational videos on this website as well as Ted Talks. Lastly, a race is always fun. Of course, you want your students to take their time to take in the information they are gathering, but sometimes, a short webquest race such as the first person to find the answer to the question on the board, can get them in the habit of looking up information on reputable websites. A bonus point on the next project or quiz could be the prize, as could a new pencil or something small.