Wordle tutorial

This is my tutorial on Wordle, how to create a wordle document and embed it in a blog.
What is Wordle?



Credits to Jonathan Feinberg  who created wordle. For more information, check out FAQ

Education Blogs

                    

  Two other blogs that caught my attention are :
1) Joanne Jacobs
Joanne is my guide to finding interesting education stories all over the web.  She posts daily, sometimes several times a day, but her posts are usually brief summaries with links to other sources and the topics are always interesting.  For example,she directed me to New York Times article    involving  nine- and 10-year-old students, the fittest children, as measured by a treadmill test, performed best on cognitive challenges; MRIs showed “significantly larger basal ganglia, a key part of the brain that aids in maintaining attention and executive control. The results Since both groups of children had similar socioeconomic backgrounds, body mass index and other variables, the researchers concluded that being fit had enlarged that portion of their brains.

2) So You Want To Teach?
Who doesn't love a good list?  This blog is full of them, and they are truly useful.  Some examples are :
Top 5(Plus 14) character Traits of Superior Teachers,
 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teacher and 9 Reasons to Quit Teaching (and 10 Reasons to Stick).
3)
 These are some of the pros and cons reading education blogs.
the pros

Inexpensive: reading a blog doesn't cost anything except time

Personal view points can enhance the reading experience

Can choose which blogs to read, and even which of the messages you can read

Very quick response, can learn about news within hours or minutes of first announcement

The cons

Slightly difficult to set up (although it is getting easier)

Personal view points can cloud the issues

Very inconsistent, even on the best of blogs

Usually don't get the whole story

That's all the time you've spent reading news blogs

 The document 7 things you should know about......RSS , why it is significant is  because it can filter and organize the vast amount of information on the web and its downside is that not all content is appropriate for RSS such as a published article that is not going to change

Blogging is pretty cool, once you get use to it, definitey something  I will experiment with in the near future. My class has a set of laptops, my school is enforcing writing across all subjects and this could be one way to get my (N-Gen)students to do reflective writing  in mathematics.

Reflection on Vicki's post

What do you think ? The teacher is always right? Teacher knows  everything.
Do you think your N- Gen students believe that?
Net Generation  also known as Net Gen is defined by wikipedia, as the  generation that is born  1980s and 90s  and  is generally marked by an increased use and familiarity with communications, media, and digital technologies.

Vicki Davis post use of the of this classroom was that, definitely she had a stong understanding of her N-Gen students as she was also participating in the same learning fields, one could see her twitter feeds and her blobs.
One of the things that was interesting was the was she gave her students a choice to turn in their differentiated assessment (letting them turn in a video, blog post, or photo w/ commentary) which could be beneficial to students ;some schools are now pushing for this differentiated assessment especially for special education students .Definitely she has indicated that it is challenging  at times .

It was interesting how the school had a strict cell phone policy, with the exeption of her room but as she said "My headmaster is so visionary! ". 
As Marbito and Medley outlined in  http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=510
there are two factors that will drive the adoption of a pedagogy that can access  that accesses the strengths of the N-Gen learning styles.
1) Faculty members need need to spend time in the leaning space of the N-Gen learners to develop and understading of how the N-Gen literacies and learning styles develop, which is what Vicki did.
2)Such a classroom cannot be constucted unless there is tremendous amount of institutional support.
When are schools ever going to stop blocking these sites.

This  article Why Professor Johnny can't read had me thinking, I am sure there is at least one faculty member who never uses any of the Web 2. tools and they are educating N-Gen students. This is what they expect, I give it  you the information  , you store it, then you give it back to me. The majority of these N-Gen students conduct there researches using technology not print like their lecturers/professors.I think as educators we are afraid  to experiment and explore as we become embarass to know that our students know more than us in the technology field.
But if we endorse the the fact that learning is continuous , why not learn from these prosumers(N- Gen) how to better utilize these tools so as to cater to their virtual learning style.

All the interactive Sites for math lessons

So I had my training today, so now my kids will have their laptops.
Please leave suggestions for interactive math sites- Algebra 1, so I can explore
I appreciate all your help
Thanks.

Reflection on the PLE Video

This is just sharing my review on the PLE video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEls3tq5wIY 
In my opinion this is a typical 12 year old  just moving with technological developments in this age. Most definitely this would be something that I would welcome in my class as I strongly believe that students should be versatile and be prepared for the global market. I was excited with the fact that she took responsibilty of her learning and was even doing additional research. Something I would love to see all my students do.

However there is concern about the people she is communicating with. Is she really communicating with a professor ? What guarantees that ? finally too much freedom can be very distracting.

She has definitely utilised Web 2.0 as defined in wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
as web applications that facilitates interactive information sharing

 as she has has done video conferencing , and just the idea of social networking and being able to have the work check by someone in another country.

This definitely would have students interested. But for my school these social netwoking sites are blocked.

So where do we go from here?
 

Don't Stop Believing

The theme for my school this academic year is 'Don't Stop Believing"and I do believe everybody can learn.