jc_plumm

LOVE this site!  Newsela is a personalized reading service designed to help students in grades 3 to 12 master non-fiction literacy by providing daily news articles at five reading levels.

This is scary, but true.  Sooooooo true!

Will kids forget how to play outside?!?

This week, my goal was a professional development focus to build a webpage for my future classroom. While this may sound like a simple task to most of you, for the technology-challenged folk like me, it was big accomplishment! After reading a great review of web design programs for education, I decided to go with Weebly.  It was said to be extremely user friendly with a lot of design options, and FREE! I’m so glad I decided to go with Weebly, because it turned out better than I could have imagined.  You can find it at www.jcpclassroom.weebly.com.  

I started out with the basic information: a tab for each “class” (period 1/2, 3/4, 5/6), contact info, and info about me.  As I started adding content, I started getting more and more excited about the project and interested in crafting it to be just right!  Dare I say, I actually enjoyed doing it?!  Me, the self-proclaimed computer hater, actually enjoying a computer app?!?  Yes, yes, it’s true.

Once I got my basic info on there, I felt like it needed more, so I added a blog.  Then, from the suggestion of an article I found about what every educators website should include (shown below), I added a tab for classroom resources.  I absolutely LOVE what it has morphed into!

A few other things I’d like to (eventually) add to my website:

·         Classroom expectations

·         Course description

·         Parent info/updates

Since I spent HOURS working on my website, I really didn’t have much time to spend on much else. However, I did try out Sound Cloud for the first time and played around with uploading it onto tumblr and my website. I figured out how to get it on tumblr after a few trial and errors, and unfortunately, the free version of weebly does not support audio being uploaded to my site.  But if I want to someday upgrade, it could be a possibility.  This may not be a bad idea when I have a classroom. Describing an assignment with audio, or posting a recap of class that day could really benefit some students.

Please check it out:

Still playing with audio...

https://soundcloud.com/user890357910/tumblr-test/s-srx46

These teachers are so inspirational!

I started the week off by figuring out how to publish my Twine from the week prior.  It felt good, but I had a nice a-ha moment --> It’s funny how once you actually read the directions all the way through, you tend to catch things you missed!  I’ve noticed that I have a habit of doing this…being impatient that is, and jumping to conclusions with the belief that “if I can just get the gist of things, I’ll be able to figure it out”.  Not true, Janet, not true.  Especially when it comes to me and technology.

So this week I wanted to focus in on web 2.0 tools that wouldn’t just be cool to learn to use or engage with, but ones that I would actually see myself using with my future health classroom.  So, I started off looking into Scoop.it.  I’d learned about this resource last term from a professor who talked highly of it. However, after my initial inquiry I did not wish to pursue it further.  After perusing their website, and seeing “Scale your content marketing” and “Plan, source, and distribute content in minutes”, I quickly made the snap judgement that it was just a similar website like Swayy, (which I already learned about) where it generates content for you rather than serve as a place for you to store it.  Wrong! I found out today, (thanks to this review http://www.searchenginejournal.com/scoop-this-a-comprehensive-guide-to-scoop-it-for-content-curation/38963/) that Scoop.it IS a place where you can place content under bookmarks or in groups, similar to Pintrest.  I also found this just by scrolling down on their main page…HOW DID I MISS THIS?!

Seriously.  Why do I jump to conclusions so fast?!  Argh, silly Janet!  So instead of spending my time learning about Scoop.it, like I originally planned, I instead found inspiration from a classmate, and looked into Symbaloo.

Symbaloo is ok.  It allows you to make quick little tile links (and by little, I literally mean a 1”x1” tile) to websites.  This can be a great resource for a classroom teacher to easily share resources with students. It’s visually pleasing, but what I don’t like about it, is the lack of information it allows you to share about each link due to how small the tiles are. You can name it, but can’t provide a description of it.  Here’s what it looks like:

I then caught up with the CLMOOC Make Cycle #4 by reading their blog and watching some of the videos posted.  For the All Systems Go! Make Cycle, I created a Popplet about the system of making healthy food choices.  I really enjoyed Popplet, and would like to see myself introduce it to my future students to use.

Then, I discovered Poll Everywhere. Making a poll could not be any easier, seriously!  What else is neat, is the option to answer via web, text, or twitter.  I couldn’t figure out if the text if free (I would assume maybe?), and I didn’t know how to publish to allow twitter answers...BUT, I made a poll, and a few of my classmates answered.  So at least I learned a new tool and accomplished a task!  Here’s what it looks like if you wanted to publish it into a Power Point presentation:

Last but not least, this week I learned how to make a Prezi, a presentation tool similar to PowerPoint, but in my opinion, way more visually pleasing!  I still have yet to practice adding pictures and hyperlinks, but I got a good start!

I love ted talks!

This is a great way to start thinking about systems for #clmooc’s Make cycle #4!

Great take aways from this short video!

“Go for the good of the whole”

“Make your language meaningful and truthful”

“Favor quality over quantity”

“Acknowledge mistakes, be a learner”

My goal for this week was to create a private Facebook group for my colleagues to stay connected, share, and learn from each other.  I have an interesting schedule as a community nutrition educator in that during the school year, all educators are in the office one day a week (Mondays), then out in the field doing their teaching Tuesday through Friday.  Now that it is summer, our schedules are no longer like this and have ended up all over the board!  Personally, my summer sites only run Monday through Thursdays 8am-12pm, so every day (Monday-Thursday) I’m at a school, then back in the office 12pm-4pm. Fridays we have off.  What this means is that we no longer have Mondays in the office together and my colleagues’ sites are on totally different days/time schedules.  

Because of the inconsistency in our schedules, we can go weeks without seeing each other.  This is bothersome to me, because like many people who love their colleagues, I rely on them to bounce ideas off of each other, swap stories, and ask for suggestions.  Hence, the Facebook page.  As soon as I set up the page I started getting several likes and comments on how great of an idea this was. Yay - success!  And not only did I invite current educators to the page, but I also invited a handful of past educators who no longer work with us.  Why didn’t I think of this earlier?!  Now that we are connected through the FB page, it is easier to send out info about events, share pictures, and stay connected when we are apart.  I love it!

Other things I worked on this week were connecting with more people outside of our CSE 627 course, and participating in the CLMOOC week make #3.  Now I have to admit that because I’m not a big technology fan, I also am not a big computer game fan.  So when I saw the theme of the week was games, I did not get too excited.  BUT, after searching the archived make cycle web page, I did find something that interested me: Twinery.org.  According to their website, a twine is an open source tool for telling interactive non-linear stories.  I think of it as a sort of choose your own adventure style of text.  As the author, if you write something in double [[brackets]] it creates a link to a new page.  So for example, I wrote, “On Saturday afternoon, you were hanging out with [[Sarah]] / [[Damon]].  As the reader, you could click on either name to follow the story as you please.  I can see this tool as being a way to encourage youth to engage with text.  Because of the choose your own adventure style, youth may stay more engage with the reading.  Or, it could also be a great way to have students practice writing!  The only thing I still can’t figure out is how to share my story!!  I read a tutorial that said all you have to do is click “Publish to File”, but that didn’t do anything. <<<UPDATE!  …turns out there is an application or website or something that will post my Twine if I sign in via Twitter!  So now my game is published – Hooray!  Check it out at http://philome.la/jc_plumm/conflict-resolution-my-first-twine---needs-edits