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

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

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

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

Are Study Guides Extinct?

Are Study Guides extinct? Has it gone the way of the Triceratops? Will the next generation of teachers look at old handouts and think, "Are these the 'Dittos' we learned about in our Educational History Class?" Do kids actually use them to study, or are they just filling in blanks to receive a few points. Here's my journey that ended up with the burial of Study Guide use in class. 


As a bright eyed teacher ready to change the world, I needed a way to ensure that students would read the assigned material and note important facts along the way. A set of questions designed to lead students to answers that will help them later on for the test. Now, I did not invent this concept. My teachers gave us study guides from time to time and I did what many students did, copy what my friends did or grab the answers from the Cliff Notes. As an English teacher now, it's a tad bit embarrassing. Like many English teachers, I was not counting down the days until I could teach To Kill a Mockingbird while cruising through high school. I thought I would outsmart some of my students by creating questions that had answers that could not be found in Cliff Notes or Spark Notes. I was trying so hard to make kids learn, that I was creating an environment in which no learning was happening. A game of Cat and Mouse would be played between students who do not want to read and a teacher that is trying to find ways to get kids to read. What to do?


My next step was to use more analysis based questions. Create longer study guides by having students discuss important aspects of the story and use literary terms they have learned to dissect the story. Well, it seemed like a great idea until I received the first batch of completed questions. Many students were completing the assignment, but they were all spitting out the exact same answers that we were discussing in class. It was nice to know they were paying attention in class, but they needed to start creating their own answers from the material read and the discussion we were having. Again, I was at a loss. I would try to create a balance with some fact based questions and more analysis based questions to split the difference. Last year, the game was about to change.


As time passed, I was still looking at ways for students to demonstrate knowledge of the text and analysis of ideas discovered in the text. Creative projects were used from time to time. I love having students create comics for stories they read because they have to place emphasis on the aspects of the story they decide to keep in and explain why they edited some parts out. It goes over well, but many of my students are not artistically inclined. Other forms of expression were attempted, but nothing seemed to be attractive to all of the students in my class. Two school years back, my school started to use Turnitin.com to check for Plagiarism. We already had a nice policy in place for Plagiarism (Read my last post for more info.), but technology had opened up a world of information to students that were starting to use in school, but not cite appropriately. The Plagiarism check is a wonderful program that I suggest to all schools to look into and I will talk about it in a later post, but they also a discussion board. This is what I was looking for.


I have used discussion boards for a few years in my college classes and on various web sites. I never really considered using it with high school students. The main reason was that I did not have the means to set up a Discussion Board for 150 students. However, now that I had the means, all I needed was the will, and I had plenty of that.


I started off slow and started to use the Discussion Board with my Honors students only. I placed a few questions for the students to answer and allowed them a week to answer. One of the requirements for each question I posted was that they answer my question in 5-6 sentences and that they respond to a fellow student in 3-4 sentences. The biggest problem I encountered was that many students waited to the last minute to respond to the question and forced the most proactive students to wait until other responded. To remedy this, I offered extra points to those first two students that would answer the question to encourage those to start early. That solved the problem quickly. The improvement in recall has been amazing. Students are taking the question I post and answering it fully, but the comments they are making on other students' remarks are incredible. The act of synthesis is a tough one for many students. DB's offer students a chance to create their own answers based on the answers of others. No longer to they feel compelled to spit out the same thing I talked about in class. Here is a great example,

Here is a comment from one student on another student's answer to the initial question. Below is a comment on the above comment. The discussion was growing before my eyes!

Not only were kids demonstrating that they were doing the reading, but they were creating their own questions for others to answer or forcing students who might not agree with them to support their counter argument. What more could a teacher want in a discussion. The exchange of ideas was happening outside of the classroom. One of the biggest surprises was still to come.


The thing that I noticed most after implementing DB's was the voice of the quiet student. The kids in class that normally have nothing to say and avoid eye contact when you ask a question were some of the most prolific DB participants. They seemed excited to offer their voice to the discussion. Perhaps the fear of ridicule was preventing them from answering. On the DB, they are free to answer and know they can do it safely from their computer. The middle of the road kids might be hesitant to challenge the "A" student in class, but have no problem taking aim over the computer. Not only that, the positive feedback they receive on their comments has started to translate in the classroom. The feel more confident that their peers will respect their answers. They no longer avoid eye contact, but strive to be in my line of sight. DB's have changed my class culture in a positive way.

One last positive about the use of DB's is the amount of paper that I have saved my school. An average Study Guide would be at least 3-5 pages long depending on the size of the novel. If I had 3 sections of a class reading the same book and an average of 30 students per class (No joke), then I'm looking at over 200 pages per study guide. Times that by the 5-6 novels we read in year and that's 1,200 pages per year for only 3 classes! That doesn't seem like very much, but you add the rest of my department that uses SG's and the other teachers in the school that use them as well, and the number of pages is astronomical. The Green aspect of DB's is another great reason to use them. 


I asked if Study Guides are extinct. Perhaps they are not extinct, but maybe they have evolved. They were great for a time when students needed to rely on the book and the book alone for all of the answers. With a world of information and short cuts available to them, it is important to use this new world to teach and be innovative.  DB's have brought a more complete learning to my students. They are creating new ideas and sharing them with each other outside of the classroom. As a teacher, these are the things you dream about. I have taken many lessons away from the road to the Discussion Board. It was a long journey, but it is not over. I hope the future educators will learn from these relics and create better tools for their students.

Let's Go Paperless

One of the things I decided to do this year was try and become as paperless as possible. Now, I understand "Going Green" is something many people are striving to do. I also think that saving the environment is something all people should do. However, the main reason for trying to go as paperless as possible is because I hate our copy machines. They are either broken or are occupied. I seem to have the exact same schedule as a few other teachers that need to copy their entire textbook all at once. Also, as many other teachers can agree, there is nothing more frustrating than having a student come to your desk asking for a handout from last week so they can complete the assignment due the next day. I stumbled upon a great website that allows people to upload webpages, photos, videos and pdfs. Welcome to Livebinders.com

Livebinders is a great site for a few reasons. First, it is a great way to keep any or all of the documents you have for a unit or an entire class. I have created a binder for my Graphic Novel Class. It's labeled as Pictorial Literature and it was a way from me to keep an organized binder of all of my new materials I wanted students to have access to. (Side Note: I will have more posts as time goes on about using Graphic Novels in class to teach core Language Arts concepts.) I was able to create individual units on each tab of the virtual binder and cut and paste my documents. Each assignment was clearly labeled and easily accessible for my students. As the Semester went on, I uploaded and linked more work to the binder. Each Binder has a 100MB capacity. I find it hard to believe that people are going to cross the 100MB mark, but you can always create another Binder. The Binders do not have to be teachers only though.

Students can use binders for projects. I hate having to carry around a bunch of different projects that students have created. They were frustrating in paper form and are a different type of frustrating if they are sent to my email or are burned to a disc. I use a Mac (Love it!) and might not be able to check the assignment at home if they used some weird program I don't have. Also, I just don't trust what kids put on their flash drives or email to open it at home. Livebinders allows anyone to create the binder and store on their website. With the ability to upload PDFs, Pictures, videos, etc, the students will be able to create a full presentation that a teacher can check from the comfort of home. For Social Studies teachers, I know you like to use binders for current events and other projects. A virtual binder would be a great way for students to link to current events and other important Social Studies materials that you can check at your leisure. Also, this is a free service, so it will not cost your students, or you, a dime.

Did you read that last sentence, it's freakin' free! That is another great part of Livebinders. Anything that can make a teacher's life easier and it's free is amazing. Now, it might take some time to upload all of the information you want, but once it's there, it's there. Send the link to students and they can access the information when they need it. Also, the Binder is available to the general public if you want to share the information with other teachers. You can protect your binder from general searches if you want, but that is up to each user.

Lastly, the biggest plus I can give Livebinders is their support services. I was using my binder and uploading a semesters worth of information 3 times and kept vanishing. I couldn't figure it out. I normally just assume it's a bad site and move on, but I saw the potential of this website and thought I would send the people an email to see what was going on. I sent them an email a couple of days before Thanksgiving and they hit me back in a day. The said I had stumbled upon one of their bugs that they are trying to fix. If you cut and paste too much information, the Binder you created would shut down. They apologized for the error and told me that they would work to retrieve my lost information and have it up and running after the Thanksgiving weekend. I thought that is really nice of them and I appreciated their quick response and I look forward to using the system. I received and email the weekend after Thanksgiving apologizing for the time it was taken to fix the bug in the system and offered to create the binder for me if I sent them my documents! They were going to do all of the work for me! I thanked them, but declined because I still wasn't sure about what I wanted to put in the binder. It is the best customer service I have ever received. Ever!

Livebinders is a great site that is still in the Beta phase, but it's a nice place for a teacher to start storing their handouts for students to access them when they need them. I actually had a student tell me it was nice to have access to the handouts because he is often to embarrassed to ask for a lost handout. That was reason enough for me to start storing more of my handouts on Livebinders.

Leave me a comment with your thoughts or experiences with this great site.