Are you ready for digital behavior management?

Believe it or not, it's here! Real-time behavior management. A start-up company called Class Dojo developed a web-based program that allows teachers to monitor and record behaviors while minimally disrupting teaching. A lot of times, and I'm totally guilty of this, a teacher will tell a student to move up or down on their behavior management chart without taking the time to record it. Later on, you remember that a student misbehaved but you don't remember exactly what happened. In my opinion, this would be a great place to quickly record GOOD and BAD behaviors.

So far it's free, but it is only in the Beta version so we will have to wait and see.

Google in Education- For Teachers

Google  recently redesigned their education site and I finally had time to sit down and take a look at it. Overall the site is well organized and is divided into 3 categories: Classroom Tools, Professional Development, and Student Showcase and Opportunities. The Classroom Tools page features Google Apps, Chromebooks, lesson plans, and classroom videos. Each page is laid out in a clear and concise manner, allowing you to easily find what you are looking for. My favorite page is the educator resources page, which plainly displays resources into categories such as "Collaborate and Connect" and "Explore the World".

Pinterest! My newest addiction!

One day a few weeks ago Pinterest was blocked by our school system’s web filter. My head just about popped off! Initially the powers that be labeled it “social networking/online dating” and banned it. There was an immediate outcry from the technology contacts within the county because many of us have become dependent on it. It was promptly unblocked.

I’m sure many of you have heard of Pinterest by now, ranked 5^th in the list of most used social bookmarking tools. Twitter is ranked #1 followed by dig, StumbleUpon, and Reddit. I imagine that Pinterest will rise even higher given time.

So what is Pinterest exactly and how can it possibly be related to education? It’s essentially a virtual pinboard personalized to you based on your likes and interests. You can choose to follow people whose ideas you like, people you work with, or people you have never even met. When you come across an idea that you like you “Pin It” onto one of your pinboards. This is a clever way to organize all of the ideas and resources that you come across. Right now I have hundreds of pins and several education boards, but I imagine as time goes on my boards will become much more specific. Since getting started on Pinterest, I have been able to share so many great ideas and inspirations with my co-workers without having to send an e-mail or schedule in a time. Go ahead and give it a try, it’s FREE!

Exciting find!

I was mulling over what to post this week and came across a really great site! It is a Glogster that features and links a bunch of Web 2.0 tools to use in the classroom. A lot of the tools listed are favorites of mine (i.e. Dropbox, Wallwisher, Voki, Kerpoof and Audacity). I'm really looking forward to finding out what some of these other tools are!

http://karenogen.edu.glogster.com/web-20-tools/

NCDPI's Information Technology Toolkit

I'm not sure what other states started a new information and technology skills curriculum ,but North Carolina transitioned into a new one at the beginning of the 2011-12 year. With this new curriculum comes a deeper responsibility to teachers. Because we are in the day and age of a constant information flow, technology teachers and media specialists can no longer teach all of their curriculum in a "specials" class because there just isn't enough time/resources.

NCDPI has released a new site with plenty of great resources to get started: http://informationtechnologytoolkit.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/home

Quiz Buzzer

At the beginning of this year we started an informal interactive white board (Smartboard in our case) group where we meet monthly to share tools, lessons and ask each other questions. At our last meeting, one of my colleagues mentioned the Quiz Buzzer on an interactive whiteboard resource site. 

The quiz buzzer is divided into red and blue (2 sides). When a student goes up to the board and knows the answer to a question, they push the button for their team color. The student who hits the buzzer first will have their color side light up. Once the student hits the buzzer, a series of dots will light up which indicate how long the student has to answer the question. 

This tool has multiple uses potentially despite the fact that relay races are the most obvious! Enjoy!

Letter Dice

So this is interactive (sort of), but I figured I would try it anyways. The Letter Dice are a set of 16 capital letters that are "rolled" on a board. It reminds me very much of Boggle, where you can create as many words as possible from the letters on the board.

This could be a really fun activity as a starter for a lesson or if you find yourself with extra time at the end of a lesson or part of the day. There is a button on the page that allows you to "roll" the dice. Perhaps give students a minute or two to come up with as many words as possible before you roll the dice again.

Free music...whaaat???

At first I thought it was too good to be true, but it's not! Jamendo is a Royalty free music website. It's difficult to find snippets of music that are legal to use for educational purposes (most commonly for me are student projects). Animoto (a slideshow/video creation tool) has a great selection of music, but sometimes my students just can't find the right piece of music to reflect their project. I'm hoping Jamendo will come through for us on this one. The site does require a registration, however it is FREE.

On their home page they boast 336,959 free music tracks, streaming and downloading for free, and unlimited and legal sharing. I checked out their FAQ page and they offer the music for free for non-commercial uses. As a precaution and to re-enforce copyright to students I still recommend citing the source (or artist in this case) when using downloaded music.

PBS Kids Word of the Day

The PBS Kids Island: Raising Readers site posts a "Word of the Day" every day. The word of the day features a definition, an option for the definition to be read aloud, and a brief entertaining video to help children understand the definition of the word.

Google Chrome: Apps

Google Chrome has quickly become my favorite browser. It is a work in progress and still has some quirks, but overall I LOVE it! Normally when you open it up, the home page shows your recently closed pages (visited websites) OR it does this when you open a new tab.

I love this just because at school, I generally open up the same websites daily and it allows me to quickly open up my sites without wasting time or worrying about the students getting distracted.

Google Chrome's newest feature is the Apps page. You can "go" to the Chrome Web Store and save free apps on the page. There are a ton of different apps that are divided up into categories. I briefly checked out the education category and there is a ton of great stuff!

Online-stopwatch.com

At out Tech Contacts meeting last week the facilitators used a stopwatch to help us keep track of our time during activities. Keeping time for activities in class isn't a new concept, but this tool allows for the kids to make the connection themselves.

Before passing this along, we tried it out in the Media Center this week with book check out. In the past, students were told that they had 15 minutes and normally took 20. This week the kids had their books checked out and were sitting down and ready for the next activity before the 15 minutes was up!

Online-stopwatch.com has a bunch of different timers, the one we found most handy was the countdown, which you can set for anything!

Dropbox....No more flash drives!

Dropbox's motto is "Simplify your life", and it couldn't be more true. This tool allows you to save and sync your files to multiple computers. For example, I have installed dropbox on my work computer and home computer. Every time I update a file from home, it automatically updates at school.
No more forgetting to attach files, flash drives, or sending files back and forth. You can create folders to organize your documents, and then share those folders with your grade levels or other team members.

It's simple and it's free. Go to www.dropbox.com and create a login. Then download dropbox to your computer and you can start saving immediately!