19 Pencils - A Review #EdChat #ElemChat

I first heard of 19 Pencils from Kelly Tenkely's amazing site iLearnTechnology.com. It intrigued me and I signed up to see everything it had to offer and was impressed. That was months ago and I got caught up in other tech endeavors and let it sit for a while. The creators of 19 Pencils asked if I would come back to the site and take a look at their new features and share the site with my readers if I liked what I saw. I went back, liked what I saw and am here to share it with all of you.

19 Pencils is a customizable site for teachers that allows them to share websites, quizzes and videos in one location. The best part is that the links are shared visually on 19 Pencils. Instead of a page filled with URLs, 19 Pencils presents the uploaded links as icons students can click.

Once a student clicks on one of the links, they are not taken from the site, a separate box opens on the page that opens the link.

I love this feature because young kids can quickly get lost on the web if they are constantly taken from one page to the other. This allows all of the students to stay on the teacher site and freely and easily move from one resource to the other.

19 Pencils also allows for teachers to upload assignments for students to follow and provide links to the sites they want students to access to complete the assignment. I posted a question for my students on Transcendentalism and provided 8 sites for them to reference. After their research, students can post their responses on their blog. It was very easy to quickly create the assignment and upload the site links I wanted the students to access. The UI is great for beginners to website creation. 

Another little feature I think is very cool is the teacher's note. There is a little spot next to the class title, that is a note from the teacher. I think it can be a great place for reminders for the students. It could be a note to remember to bring their book to class or get a permission slip signed. Little touches like this really make 19 Pencils a nice tool for classroom teachers.

 

19 Pencils also offers a quiz feature that teachers could utilize. A teacher can enter in questions and answers to a new quiz. Then, the teacher would load their student's first name and last initial to create login and passwords to give the students. Once the student has the login and password, they can access the site and take the quiz. What the login and password allows the teacher to do is track the student's use of the site. There have been more than enough times where students are not accessing my site for materials they need, but insist they are on the site all of the time. This feature allows the teacher to track the site's use by students. This information could prove very valuable during parent conferences. 

The last feature I want to mention is The Playground. The Playground is a place on the class page that allows students and teacher to communicate. These could be longer messages left by the teacher or questions left by a student. They could even be messages left by parents using their child's login. 

In a class setting, questions could be quickly asked and answered using The Playground. The 19 Pencils website also looks awesome on iPads which is great news for teachers that have class sets of iPads. Students could do a complete backchannel using The Playground feature. The best part of that, is that the conversation will be saved on the site for students go back and check and students who were not in school that day could follow along with the conversation from home. 

I recommend 19 Pencils to teachers that are looking to easily and effectively:

- integrate a website into their classroom 

- save websites and videos with visual representations

- monitor their students online activity

- create assignments with references to relevant web resources

- add a teacher's note so that students have a clear understanding of what's expected of them

- create quizzes from scratch or use pre-made flashcard quizzes

- get instant feedback from your students with the social media Playground feature

Here's a link to the full set of features at 19Pencils:

http://www.19pencils.com/overview

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line at @TheNerdyTeacher.

19 Pencils is a paid sponsor of The Nerdy Teacher

Wordia is Vocabulary Coolness

Wordia is a site I only recently found through Twitter and I'm still exploring. I have high hopes for this site and it is currently working on a school version for users. The gist of the site is that it takes everyday words and gives you the standard dictionary definition. Next to the Standard Definition, there is a video of a person's view of the word, the connotation. The idea behind the British site is to make stronger connections to words beyond the standard definitions. The word Pitch is a great example of SD and Connotation. While the Lion is a bit goofy, the point is well made that there are words that have other meaning besides the SD.

The site has one vocabulary quiz game and a couple more on the horizon. It's always good to see more vocabulary games on the Internet. The more practice students can have with new words, they will become stronger readers and writers. The school version will help build those skills as well.

The school version of the program, once it's up and running, will allow schools to upload their own videos and share within the school or district only. This keeps the site safe for kids to use at school or at home. Comments can be moderated and approved to keep the site safe and appropriate for all ages.

I would love to use this in conjunction with my daily vocabulary words. I could have students record their own meaning of words and post them to the site and have other students comment on them. This would allow students a different way to learn vocabulary instead of looking up words and staring at a page. Working with the vocabulary words will hit far higher on Blooms than staring at a piece of notebook paper with definitions. As this site grows, I look forward to seeing what other things it has to offer for students and teachers to help grow vocabulary.

- @TheNerdyTeacher

Flickr for Homework?

I was walking around my classroom the other day and noticed some kids looking through pictures on the an iPhone. They were pictures of the weekend and were just shots of kids being kids. The phone was passed around from kids to kids and they were laughing and making comments. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I started to think about using pictures in my class. Pictures are worth a 1,000 words they say and that is perfect for an English Class. Below is an idea I have for incorporating digital photography into my class. Please leave your thoughts on my idea and any way you think it could be tweaked, improved, etc.

I have used photo essays in my class before and the kids always get a kick out of them. I have had kids create a poster board with quotes from "Walden" and corresponding pictures they would take of nature. They would take the pictures and decorate their poster board and bring it to class. I hang some in my room and it's a fun assignment overall. However, what if I could create a large collection of photos with my students and have them comment on the pictures and the quotes accompanying them?

My idea consists of creating a class Flickr account and allowing students to upload their photos and descriptions. Students could then view all of the photos and comment on the work of other students. If I give the students enough time to work on the project, about 1 week, they should have plenty of time to take and upload pictures to the site. Once the images are on Flickr, I could do many different things with them. I could take them and make  photo mosaic using Big Huge Labs and post it to the class website for everyone to see. Here is an example of a mosaic from a Spring trip I took with @JenniferPro to Rome.

I would love to give a photo assignment to my students after reading To Kill a Mockingbird or Romeo and Juliet. After spending some time discussing the themes of the stories, I could have the students recreate scenes from the story that represent the themes we have discussed. Class discussions could be held with the focus on the the pictures and how they represent the themes. Lively debate would occur as kids analyze the shots taken by other students. They could acquire a deeper understanding of the themes as they work with them in a different way. No longer would they be stuck expressing theme in essay form alone.

I think this is just another weapon to add to my arsenal as I try to connect kids to literature. As I typed this post up, I realized that I could also have the students take the pictures and post them to a Glog and they could share them with the class. I think both of these ideas would be cool and I plan to explore both of them next year.

Feel free to tell me what you think of this idea and how you might improve or tweak it.

StoryCorps - America Telling Their Story

Thanks to Michael Zimmer for passing this site along on his blog. 

The one thing I really wish I had was some of the stories my grandparents told about growing up in Italy. I hear some of the stories from relatives that remember bits and pieces of them and I remember some of those stories, but we all know what happens when you play the telephone game. Now there is a way for our generation to save these important stories for our future generations.

StoryCorp is a site that offers to store your stories for free. Here is a snippet from their About Us page;

"StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives. Since 2003, over 50,000 everyday people have interviewed family and friends through StoryCorps. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD to share, and is preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. StoryCorps is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, and millions listen to our weekly broadcasts on NPR’s Morning Edition and on our Listen pages."

They have places set up all around the country for people to make an appointment and tell their story. Over time, these stories will help define who we are as a people and it can be an invaluable resource in teaching history. History is often viewed as old men doing things that happened a long time ago. History texts are just filled with names and dates and students find it hard to engage in learning that information. I feel that StoryCorps offers the chance for History teachers to bring stories of people who lived history to the classroom. There is an educators toolkit that will help teachers considering using StoryCorps in the classroom. 

One example of how this site might be utilized in the classroom is the September 11th section. There is a full collection of stories told by various individuals about how the events of September 11th have impacted their lives. Watching news stories and researching information on the internet is one thing, but hearing people talk about the event is important as students learn the importance of Primary Sources. Listening to these stories could reach some students in a very important way that a text book might never accomplish. 

Take some time and check out the site. You might find it helpful for your class or you might even decide to make an appointment and telling your story to America.

Helpful Tools for the Classroom

Here are some great sites I have found over the past few weeks and I thought I would pass them along to you. Remember that if you are new to the blog, you should check out some of my older posts to see if there is anything you might have missed that could be helpful in your classroom.

Here is a great collection of Digital Storytelling tools collected by Ozge Karaoglu. Ozge is an awesome teacher that has put together some amazing collections of web tools for students to use. Click on her name to read her profile and see her e-portfolio. You should bookmark her page because she is sure to have something great to share with each post.

Jog the Web - This is a great site passed on by Anne Carnevale's Blog. Jog the web allows a teacher to set up a series of web pages the students explore in a set order. The best part is that it also allows the teacher to leave annotated notes that lets the teacher ask guiding questions as the student explores the web page. This would be great to use for Web Quests. There are many great examples on the site, but here is one that was created to provide background on Anne Frank before the students read her diary. This could allow students to have a guided tour of important webpages from their home. This is worth a look.

Awesome Stories is a search engine for Primary Resources. I think this site will be tremendously helpful in Social Studies classes as students look for court cases, biographies, news articles on important events and even video. Students often claim, "I can't find anything good to use." or "Why can't I just use Wikipedia?" Awesome Stories allows students to search a large archive of Primary Resources that should make their research easier and more meaningful. This should be a must have on all Social Studies websites for students doing research.

Here is a great post on Free Technology For Teachers video tutorials on proper citation. As a High School English Teacher, I find that students still struggle with correct citation of information. These guided videos could help teach students the correct way to cite information they intend to use in papers or projects. Little things like this would be great to add to personal website so students can access them whenever they have questions about citation. The videos are geared more toward Upper Elementary and Middle School, but I think anyone that has citation questions could use this and learn.

I hope you take a minute and look through these sites. They could come in very handy in class and really help students and even parents. Pass along these sites and consider posting them on your school site so students and parents can access the information from home.

Great Math Sites

Here are a collection of Math Links I've put together over the past couple of weeks. I hope that you take a second and scan these sites. You do not have to use all of these in your classroom, but you should consider looking at them and consider placing the links on your school website and letting students and parents know about them. These sites below all offer Math help in different ways. Take a chance and see how these students can benefit from an online component to their Math Learning.

Here is a great collection of Math Sites from @Kellyhines. She put together a Livebinder Collection of 16 helpful Math sites for students and teachers of all grade levels. This could be very helpful for teachers looking for different ways to present material and it could also be great for teachers looking for sites to send students who are looking for extra help.

Teacher Zone is a site dedicated to Math videos. They will help explain concepts that are important to Math students from grades 3-10. This could be another way to show students important concepts in action. Adding these videos to your website could go a long way in helping a student learn an concept. It might even help a parent understand a concept so they can better help their child at home.

MatheBook is another website that offers tutorials on Math and downloadable questions and answers to further help students understand difficult Math Concepts. I think it is great that there are more and more Math websites available to students and teachers. Websites are see have been more geared toward Science, Social Studies and English, but there are many kids waiting to use sites that focus on Math skills. This is another good one to share with students and staff.

MathTrain.Tv is a wonderful site provides more Math help through video, but the thing that separates this from other Math sites is that the videos are created and uploaded by students. It's students helping students. This is a great concept to explore in your classroom. Imagine offering credit or extra credit to students that create Math videos to post to this site or even your own school website. Sometimes we learn ideas better if we have to teach them. This site is a great example of how Math can be interactive and use technology to spread ideas.

I hope you give these sites a try and pass them on to your website for students and parents look at. In the long run, it could really help some students learn concepts they have been struggling to learn.

Great Youtube Editing Tool: Tube Chop

Here is a great site for teachers that want to show some youtube videos but might only want to show certain selections. Tubechop is a website that lets you take any youtube clip and chop it down to size. It is very simple to use and does not take very long. Just select the video you want, select the portion you want to watch and click the chop button. You will be given a link or a code to embed into a website. Below you will find a chopped version of The Ghostbusters Music Video by Ray Parker Jr. The orginal clip has an extra minute at the end that I don't need to see, so I chopped it out. Take a look at the video.

For those that like to show video of interviews or clips from movies, this is a great way to condense that information. No longer will you have to waste class time searching for the right part of the clip you want to show. You can set it up ahead of time and post on your website for kids to use safely.

- @TheNerdyTeacher

Scribble Maps = Geography Fun!

A few teachers from my PLN suggested that I take a look at Scribble Maps. I cannot thank them enough for encouraging me to look around. If you are familiar with Google Maps, this will not be a problem for you to use. The website uses Google Maps and allows you to draw on the map you have focused on. You can draw by hand, create circles or boxes, create text and even add images. This is a great way to use the SmartBoards in the classroom. Take a look at my example. You can save them for later editing or you can save them as JPEG's so you can add them to other documents like this:

Here is one I just did of my High School. It only took me 5 Minutes to draw, save and upload this picture.

You can do all sorts of things with this program. They have Terrain Maps, Satellite Maps and Hybrid Maps that you can use for different lessons. I know many teachers are always looking for different ways to incorporate their SmartBoards into their lesson plans and I think this is a good tool to use with the students. This could also be used in other classes as well. In English, I could see using this to show the students where the story is taking place and adding my own visuals to the map. Perhaps a map showing East and West Egg and adding different pictures from The Great Gatsby so the students can see where the story takes place. You have as many options as you can think of with this cool tool. Take a few minutes and take this tool for a test drive. You might be surprised at the different ways you come up with to use this in your classroom.

- @TheNerdyTeacher

Dropbox: A Must For All Teachers

One of the biggest problems I have dealt with a a teacher is the inability to access information from my work computer when I'm at home or files on my home computer when I'm at work. I'm constantly emailing documents I create in one place so I can work on them more or use them in another place. Another way to transfer information is to use the Flash Drive. Sometimes I would forget it at home or leave it at work. I know I have talked to other teachers and they have said access to school files from home would be great. Well, I don't think the school will be opening up their servers to teachers anytime soon. Dropbox is the answer to all of our file sharing problems.

I've heard some of the teachers in my PLN talk about Dropbox, but I really didn't think twice about it.  Crawling around the web the other day, I stumbled upon Dropbox and finally decided to give it a look. I'm angry at myself for waiting this long to investigate. The days of Flash Drives and Emailing documents are over. All of my school documents are only a few clicks away. Below is a video you should watch to give you the ins and outs of the system. below I will give you some of the key points that have me excited and some thoughts about how I could use it in the classroom.

 

I hope you liked what you saw. Once you jump on their website, they have another great video walking users through the Dropbox process. Here are some of the things that really got me excited about using Dropbox as a teacher.

• I no longer have to worry about transferring documents from one computer to another. If I create a test at home, I only need to save it to the Dropbox Folder. Once I get to school, I only need to log-in to Dropbox.com to download the document and use in class. 
• Sharing is easier. We have shared folders in the district, but many of us do not use them for one reason or another. Most of what I do is created at home. Once I create it there, I email to school, make copies and that's that. With Dropbox, I can create folders for each unit I tech and share them with the teachers in my Department from the luxury of my home computer. There is no need for extra steps. Once a folder is shared with other people, they will be able to access it whenever they want. Again, teachers are no longer chained to their computer in the classroom and that is a huge plus. 
• I can create folders for work and for personal use. Sometimes I want to share a bunch of pictures from a trip. I can place the pictures in the folder and share it with family and friends. Too often, pictures are all over the internet for people to see, but this can allow people to actually keep copies of pictures taken at events. 
• iPhone access! I downloaded the Dropbox app and can have access to all of the same documents on my phone that I would see on the computer. I can double check to see what documents I have access to from anywhere in the world. If I decide to make a document accessible to the public, I do not have to wait to get to a computer to do so. I can also take pictures from my camera and post them in the shared folder. On a trip, family and friends could view pictures as I take them instead of having to wait until I get home to upload them to a site like Flickr. 
• I can share individual files with anyone I want. If I really don't want someone to look at my entire folder, I can store the document (Word Doc, Picture, Song, etc) in a public file and it will create a special URL link I can send to anyone I choose. Click here for an example.

The last point is very exciting to me. In theory, I could create public folders for each of my classes and share documents with my students from any computer I want. hey could be assignments, news articles, pictures, etc. Not only that, student could share documents with me through a public folder. This could be the last step in my attempt to create a paperless classroom. Now, any assignment I want, can be turned in to a public folder for me to grade. I'm sure there will be bugs to work out, but this could be a valuable tool as teachers look for ways to make important class information available to students no matter where they are. 

Lastly, Dropbox is not for teachers only. Any person that uses multiple computers will find this helpful. Think about the times yo have wanted to work on a document, but it was on the "other" computer. With Dropbox, those problems are now gone.

- @TheNerdyTeacher

Great Sites for Teachers and Students

I cut and pasted these items from my school blog. If you click the titles it will take you there. Thanks to all of the wonderful teachers that shared these resources with me. Let us all keep up the great work and share everything we find.  

Great Science Resources
 

Cell Biology Animation is a great site for 3D pictures of different aspects of Cellular Biology. Here is a great example of DNA Transcription. These are some great little pieces that could help the visual learners in the classroom.
Science Experiments - This site is filled with wonderful resources for science students and teachers. There are links to research sites, an experiment blog, science videos, and much much more. Take a look around and see what it has to offer.

Twitter in the Classroom

Here is a great article about using Twitter in the classroom. The article is geared more toward College education, but it could prove very useful in HS classrooms as well. Using technology to engage shy students is a great idea. I have found success in using Wallwisher in my classes to motivate and encourage the shy students to participate. I'm a Twitter advocate, as you may have noticed, and I really think it can help students. Maybe yelling at students to put their cell phones away is a thing of the past. What do you think?

Mashable Article

Writing Tools

Here is a link to a wiki called New Tools Workshop. You will find great videos on how and why you should use Google Docs in the classroom. You will also find many other great online writing tools to use in the classroom. There are some good sites on citation that English teachers should check out. There is a nice collection of Vocabulary sites that teachers of all grades could use. Explore the different sites and see if there is anything that works for you. I will take a deeper look at some of the sites and blog about them at a later date. 

Jeopardy Labs

I know I have spent plenty of hours on PowerPoint creating Jeopardy games for various units. Now, there is a site that can make Jeopardy games easy and fun to use. Jeopardy Labs allows you to create the games and store them on their website. You no longer have to worry about sending large files over email or carrying a flash drive around. This would be great to use with a IWB in the classroom.

Here is a great example of a Jeopardy Game of To Kill a Mockingbird. I have students that are using the site to create a game for The Great Gatsby. It is just another way to change up the learning environment for your students. See what great Jeopardy games are already there and considering adding your own and sharing with the rest of your department. Over time, a department could create a nice collection of review games to use in the classroom.

Foreign Language Sites

I feel bad that the I've excluded the Foreign Language Department from my Tech Posts. I sent some Tweets out yesterday and have a host of wonderful sites to offer you. Take a look at these sites and let me know if they are helpful.

Here is a great webpage from Sra. Bivens. She uses this with her class and has links to other helpful resources that students could use. Seeing how my Spanish Education stopped in 1994, I leave it to you to navigate the page and explore the contents. Warning, it does have music that plays when you enter the page. I was rocking to Shakira. :-) http://srabivens.webs.com/

Here is another great collection from Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman1). He has orgaized an entire directory with links for German, French, Chinese, and Spanish. He added the German section just for me and you. Please check out the rest of his blog for excellent resources. Since I'm not a master of these languages, please explore these sites and let me know what you think. If you find any that are helpful, let me know and I will give them a spot on the blog. Here is the page. http://cybraryman.com/foreign.html

Here is a blog post from What Ed Said that talks about making Foreign Language more engaging. It's a quick read with some very interesting ideas that may actually apply to other classes as well. 

I hope you found these sites useful. Drop me a line if there is anything you are looking for but can't seems to find. I might know a guy. :-)

- @TheNerdyTeacher

A Little Something for the Art Teachers

Here are some great art sites I found while reading a great blog by @2sparkley. It's called Bits and Pieces Place. It has a bunch of great resources for all subjects and grade levels. I wanted to point out one set of resources for the Art Teachers because they often get left out of the Teacher Tech stuff because good stuff is hard to come by. Fun Art Sites is a great post that lists some art sites that you can use with your SmartBoard.

• Learn from Cezanne
• A Pointilism Practice Page
• Surreal Painter
• Animal Mix-up (This looks like crazy fun!)

Those are just a few of the sites she has put together for Art Teachers to use in the classroom. Stop by her page and take a look around. Drop her a comment if you find anything useful. She would really appreciate it.

- @TheNerdyTeacher

Prezi Meets Gatsby

Here is a Prezi I put together about the themes, symbols and characters of The Great Gatsby. The kids liked the presentation format and it was a nice change of pace from the standard PowerPoint and SMART Notebook software. Take a look and tell me what you think. I think I will do one for each chapter of the book.

The Great Gatsby Themes and Symbols on Prezi

Here is a Prezi for Chapter 1. This does not contain all of the information for Chapter 1, but they are great starting points for conversations.

The Great Gatsby Notes on Prezi

Try it out at Prezi.com!

- @TheNerdyTeacher

99 Polls

99Polls is a quick and easy way to get information. In under five minutes I was able to create and post a poll to my blog about Twitter and Teachers. You sign up for free and get started. Your homepage collects all of the data from your poll. This is great if you have polls set up on your blog, school homepage and any other locations. I love to get feedback from my students about lessons that I have taught, but I always feel they hold back because they do not want to offend me. It is really important to assess your own lessons, but feedback from the students is something teachers should not shy away from. The harshest criticism can help create the best lessons.

Try using this simple site to gauge the learning of a particular lesson one day. You might be interested is the response you get from your students. This is just another great and easy way to make the classroom a better place.

- @TheNerdyTeacher

60Second Recap

I found this site today and I have to share it with everyone. As an English teacher, it is tough to get students to read "Classics". They complain about the language and want to know how this will ever be important. I spend countless hours coming up with lessons to intorduce the novel in a fun way in the hopes to hook some of the reluctant readers. 60Second Recap is a great site to use to really help students get a handle on what the story is about.

Here is their Mission Statement:

"60second Recap™ wants to make the great works of literature accessible, relevant, and, frankly, irresistible to today's teens. Through 60second Recap™ video albums, we seek to help teens engage with the best books out there ... not just to help them get better grades, but to help them build better lives."

I love this mission statement. It really expresses the goal of all literature teachers. I watched the first video on Hamlet, my favorite Shakespeare play, and was very happy with what I saw. Hamlet, played by Jenny Sawyer, is taking the online quiz, "Are you Mad?" It gives a nice bit of information about different aspects of the play. There are videos on Motif, Theme, Plot, Symbols, and the Characters in the play. It was a very well put together piece that I cannot wait to show to my students and the other teachers in my building.

60Second Recap currently offers recaps of some great pieces of Literature. Here are just a few:


Animal Farm
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451 (On my Top 5 All Time List)
The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn
The Catcher in the Rye (On my Top 5 All Time List)
The Great Gatsby (On my Top 5 All Time List)

There are many more great pieces of Literature that get the 60Second Recap treatment. I strongly encourage all Literature teachers to give this site a look over and use them with your students.

- @TheNerdyTeacher

Math Tools For SmartBoard Users!

Here is a link to Vanessa Cassie's blog. She blogs about great uses for the SmartBoard and here is one the Math Teachers should love. It's a tool bar for Math Teachers. Take a look at her blog and explore the different things you can do with a SmartBoard and the software. She's also on Twitter. @VanessaCassie Follow her and you can have some great conversations and learn some cool tips like I have.

- @TheNerdyTeacher

Creating Art Without The Mess!

I learned about this site from @Ktenkely on her website iLearntechnology. It's an interacitve site that allows you to create Jackson Pollock style paintings without any of the mess. This is great fun on the Smartboard. By clicking the mouse you change to a random color and splashes of paint appear as you move the mouse across the screen. JacksonPollock.org is a wonderful site that art teachers can use that will save you a big cleanup in the future.

I let my students play with the site on the IWB and they loved it. They loved the randomness of the colors and how there was no "wrong" way to create the painting. I recommend using this in any class where you might have some time to allow your students to explore their creative side without needing a smock. :-)

- @TheNerdyTeacher

Tech Integration Help

Tech Integration for Teachers is a great site for teachers that want to start including different types of technology into their classroom. Do not feel overwhelmed by all of the information. Scan through the different parts and pick and choose the tools that interest you most. You never know what you might find.
The page is for all skill levels, so even the techies will find something they never thought of using in the classroom. This site is just one of many out there designed to help teachers get comfortable integrating different forms of tech into their lessons.



-@TheNerdyTeacher

Have You Taken The Next Step?

I started The Nerdy Teacher because I wanted to share my thoughts and finds with the world around me. I couldn't be happier about the connections I've made and the things that I learned. I started using new strategies I picked up in class and I could see the results. I was happy, but I felt something was missing. I was sharing some of the new ideas from you great people with some like minded teachers, but the learning stopped there. We would share ideas and get excited about the success in the class we saw. I soon realized that I was leaving out the bulk of my school. I just assumed that they would not be interested because they never speak up about tech in the classroom. I realized that I was approaching the situation from the wrong direction. I needed to take the next step.

Some students do not ask questions because they know enough on the topic or don't care. Sometimes they do not know the right question to ask or they are so lost in the material they have no idea where to begin. The fear of being the only one with the question is always there as well. With that is mind, I decided to create a brand new blog geared specifically for my High School. We do not have anything like it in the district, so I saw a need and decided to fill it. I spent last weekend pulling some posts from here and creating some new one for the various subjects and launched it on Monday.

I was very nervous about how it was going to be received. I was afraid that some might see it as being a know-it-all or pushy tech teacher, but it was well received. I got compliments and good natured ribbing about the site and was hit with a few emails asking if I could focus on this topic or that topic. People offered to post their ideas as well. It had been great after only a few days. If I can get just a couple of teachers on board with what we do, they might be able to convince others to do the same. Teaching one Teacher can lead to Teaching many Teachers.

How are you using your blog to help the teachers in your building or district? Have you taken the next step?

Here is the link to my HS Blog

- @TheNerdyTeacher

"I Can't Find Any Information!"

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that from my students. Another one I love to hear is, "What do you mean I can't use Wikipedia as a source?" As an English Teacher, I have spent many long hours teaching students how to conduct proper searches on the internet.

Sometimes I just want my students to look at a few specific websites for a specific project. I have started using a great site I want to share with you great teachers. The site is called Diigo and it is a bookmarking site. By creating a free profile, you can add specific pages to your account and direct students or other teachers to look at them. That is not the only thing you can do with this great tool though.

Highlighting - You can highlight specific information before you bookmark the site. This can save people time when there is to much information to read through and all you want is a few lines.

Sticky Notes - You can places notes on the highlighted areas to remind you of their relevance. There have been too many times where I have bookmarked a site and I could not remember why I saved it a day or so later.

Groups - You can create specific groups and send pages you find to that group only. You can make the group a public group (anyone can join) or a private group (you select who can join). After some time, I will make the teacher's group a private group to keep nosy teenagers at bay.

Email - You can directly email any site yo find to yourself or other teachers. You can create an address book and send the site directly to students or to other teachers in your department.

Teacher Account - You can request to sign up for a Teacher Account from Diigo. This will allow you to sign up students to join your specific groups that you have created. I have a Teacher Account, but am not using it with my students yet. I'm just creating groups and keeping them open to the public. I put links to them on my website so they can view the groups without an account. It could come in handy if I want to email them sites to look at over the weekend.

Linking Accounts - Diigo allows you to link your blog and Twitter accounts to your Diigo account. This way, if you bookmark something, it can be posted to you blog and your Twitter. You can set up a your account to post all the bookmarks you have made to your blog. It can be set for a daily, twice daily or weekly. This is a great way to save you time. You can also link your iPhone to Diigo as well. Download the Diigo App and you will have access to anything that you have bookmarked. It migth be available for other phones, but you would have to check for that.

The best way to start bookmarking after you create your account is to download the toolbar. It will sit at the top of your browser and you just click the bookmark button when you want to share a website. There are many other great parts of Diigo that you can use. It's best to log on and play around a bit. Have fun!

-@TheNerdyTeacher

Caring is Sharing

There have been times when another teacher asked if I could send them an assignment I used last year because they would love to use it for their class. I'm usually a pretty organized person, but sometimes things get moved from one place to another. Slideshare is a great website where you can upload your PowerPoint presentations, word documents and PDFs for other teachers to use when they want them. You can even put certain documents directly on your website if you want your students to have access to the document.

Slideshare is a free website that is quick and easy to use. If you have some older handout that are not on your computer, it's still not a problem. Use one of the new copiers in the building, scan the document, email it to yourself, and then upload it to the site. After you upload a document, you can decide who can view the documents. As more teachers create profiles, we can create a network that will connect all of the teachers in the building across departments. Social Studies could be sharing with English, Science could share with Math and Art could share with...with... well, most department could share documents with each other.

I'm going to start slowly uploading many of my regular use documents and just send the link to all of my department members so they can pick and choose what they want for their class. It would be great if most departments would use this site because it could be a great resource for new teachers in the building. Give Slideshare a shot and see all of the different things you can do. Remember, Sharing is Caring.

-@TheNerdyTeacher