Lookybook

This is so cool. Lookybook is a site to see free picture books. Sort of a Last.Fm of the picture book market.

Make a Mosaic

Testing a Flickr Toy for a project.


Embed from Ed's Flickr Toys

Inquiry Workshop

I got to miss school today to go to an Inquiry Workshop. The forward thinking of my Superintendent provided funds for a group of teachers from my school to attend a workshop all about implementing the Inquiry process at our school.

I was not expecting a terrific day. I was surprised. It was really good. The presenters knew their stuff, the staff was receptive and I think we have something here. I even got to go out and test the Flip video camera and do some inquiry about water. Check out the wild life I photoed!!

As I was talking to the group and mentioning K12online I was thinking about Chris Lehmann and the SLA. Here is a school based upon the whole inquiry process. Wouldn't of been great if I was able to show his keynote to the group. Well I am emailing them now and sending the link to Chris's inspirational talk. It makes me want to dabble a bit more in this process.

As a team this year we are doing a project ala Tim Tyson where we will make groups of kids and they will make a 2 minute video that has global implications. The video can not be just about something about them but has to help the world in some way. All questions and work will be done by the students for the students. I hope it is a success. My team members know that this is coming and I am slowly explaining to them the work that is ahead of us.

This leads me back to my teaching and how I can make it more..... inquiry based. I teach math not the easiest topic to teach in the world. But I manage to teach it in ways that make some people scratch their heads. I need to make the kids ask questions. I need them to take ownership of their learning. Doing the blog and other assignments is a start but I need more. Tomorrow they will figure out the lesson in math. I am just going to put the question on the white board and they will have to figure out how to solve it. They have the knowledge already but they will create the "rule"or rules we will use. It is a start.

One of the things we did at the workshop was to look at some quotes about inquiry. Here are some great ones that I wrote down today (In my hand made book by the way!!).

• The real sustaining force of inquiry is the window where learners meet face to face.
• We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.
• The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
• What really motivates learning is students really having a question to which they really want an answer.

Chris's keynote and the preconference keynote both were on this idea of the death of education and the dawn of learning. Viva learning. Long live the facilitator teacher.
I am looking forward to this new journey. Hope to have some success along the way.

Youtube, blogger and Substitute teacher

One of my former students will be subbing for me on Tuesday. She is an incredible person and young enough that what I am going to experiment with will not phase her.

I have created 2 video inserts for the lessons tomorrow. One will do the primary teaching of the integer unit being taught to 4 of the classes. I put a brief screencast using smart notebook and uploaded it to the class blog. Problem with blogger is that the video is very small. I have placed copies at youtube that can be magnified to full screen so the whole class can see. I hope that this experiment work. Half an hour of my time makes the her job easier.

She now can focus on helping the kids not teaching the lesson.

Hope it works
Integers Part 1



Part 2

Why kids are not writing?????

Ok I am a math teacher but I am seeing some troubling signs. Most of my students are lazy when it comes to writing. Many of my students do not capitalize proper nouns, the first word in a sentence and I could pick a plethora of other grammar faux pas. My team's LA teacher is pulling her hair out trying to get these kids to write like 14 year olds.

I really noticed this when I responded to a grade 6 student from Australia. Her writing was excellent and she really impressed me with how she responded to my comment. I then saw what my students "concidered" a comment and started to think of ways to make the write with a purpose. With this in mind welcome to an epiphany that I had during one of my math classes today. My math students are going to write a story. Hot just any story but a math story.

This all stems back to Michael. He was a great student who did and unproject for me using The Sims.

This year students will create a story with and adventure theme. Part of the assignment will be teaching them how to write (long live the LA teacher) and part of the story will be dealing with integers. The students will have to incorporate needed math knowledge into their story. One suggestion I had for them was to have a character come across some perilous challenges. Each challenge a different math question. Who knows what they will come up with. I will not add too much structure and give lots of freedom. Here is the assignment. I hope this is a success and that I can get kids to write better in school while still learning math.

K12online My first Session

I am privileged to know Alec Couros. I have met him in Moosejaw and live with him in my PLN everyday in twitter. He is a fountain of knowledge and an incredible K12 educator. Unlike most of my other networked friends he teaches at a University.

What are your recolections about becoming a teacher at school. Mine are not the best. Most of my Professors in my certifiation year were old, crusty and out of touch with the youth of today (yesterday 1992 was a long time ago). To them "tech" was an overhead projector and a chalk protector. Enter Alec. Young, charming, ..... and energetic (I would add handsome but that implys ...?). Living the life of a person intouch with the youth of today. Influencing a new generation of teachers to teach using tech that kids use. Not only to use the technology but to create PLN's. Leading by example he shows his students the power of the network. He gets guest lectures to come in and teach his class.

I would if it meant that I would learn something that I wanted to learn take more post-secondary education courses. None have interested me until I started to follow Alec. He teaches courses that interest me. I want to take his course and get a degree from the University of Regina.

George Siemens has created a "Certificate in Interdisciplinary Studies: Emerging Technologies for Learning " at my local university. I like George and the message he has for educators. If this certificate offered me the needed post grad courses to change my salary it might be for me.

Alec's K12online presentation is brilliant. You have to see it and hey Alec is entertaining too. Thanks Alec for sharing your experience. I hope more post secondary people take note of what you are doing and change the way they teach their courses. It would make university more interesting.

Trials and Tribulations Getting setup in the New Blogger

Signing up 280 students to 8 class blogs is a major undertaking. Not impossible but a few days of work. Along the way there have been a few roadblocks. This post is a how-to for teachers when setting up a series of classroom blogs using blogger when many students can author at one blog.

When I first started this process 4 years ago the process of signing up students for blogs was quite complicated. There was no google account and each student had to create multiple blogs to access the classroom blog.

When the "new" blogger" came out of beta the process was supposed to be stream lined. As an administrator I was able to invite many members to the blog as long as they had a google account. For some reason this year my students were getting error messages when they were attempting to sign up for the class blogs.
The steps I followed were the same as every year, get a google account, and once that happened I entered the students email into the class blog to invite to author. Many students did not receive an email to join and others that did receive an email got error messages. I found a way around this hassle though. Go back to the old ways of inviting students to the class blog. The steps are as follows:

• Students need a google account. Get them signed up using any email THEY have access to. If they need a gmail account get them signed up for that.
• One error some students make is that they do not verify their email. This is an important step not to be overlooked.
• Once the students have a google account get them to create a Blogger account. This can be done from google. After signing in the students go to my account, and scroll down to MORE. This is at the bottom of the page. This link will get them to all google apps and blogger is quite prominant on this page.
  
• Once at blogger the students will need to go through the process of creating a blog. It will be deleted once they have access to the class blog.
  
• When the students have created a blog the need to leave their blogger dashboard open. I then get the student to come to two workstations and enter their emails into the classroom blog. I have gone under settings to access permissions and invite authors.
• Students go back to their workstations with the blogger dashboard open and open another tab in their browser. Here they will open their email looking for the blogger invite.
  
• WITH THE BLOGGER DASHBOARD OPEN they accept the invitation to the classroom blog.
  
• The students will have to enter their google password one more time. Now they should see the classroom blog and their temperary blog that was created before on their dashboard.
  
• You can now delete the temperary blog from the dashboard by using the settings and scrolling down to the delete at the bottom of the page.

If for some reason the error message still persists you can keep the blogger dashboard open and uninvite and invite the student again. This seems like a lot of work and it is but the bonus of having the google suite of tools and apps at your fingertips is worth it.

I hope this is helpful.