• As a 4th grade teacher, it was easier for me to incorporate Quia than Moodle. Since I don’t teach an online course or publish my students’ grades online, Quia suits my needs and I found it more simple to use.
• I didn’t have to create a “class” for my group of 20 students, but doing so assigns each student their own username and password. With a username and password, a student can track his or her own progress. I can see how this feature would be useful for teachers who work with several different groups of students or teach different sections of one subject area.
• When I was ready to release activities to my students, I copied the URL for the activity, survey, or quiz and sent it to my students via email–without usernames and passwords. Sometimes we would complete activities as a whole group on the SMARTboard.
• Teachers can assigned their activities a “secret word” that only their constituents know. This allows teachers to control who is taking a quiz or survey, for example.
• Teachers can create class calendars through Quia, posting upcoming assessments or assignments through each class homepage.
• I ran into some trouble at times when my entire class attempted to complete an activity wirelessly on the laptops. In one situation, each child took a survey, submitted his or her results, and then received an error message; I had to then re-administer the survey to each child using the hard-wired Desktop computer. It was time-consuming and frustrating for the children, but I’m wondering if it wasn’t just a wireless issue…
• When a teacher has finished administering a survey, results can be exported into Excel spreadsheets.
• When students have submitted their answers to a quiz, the results are tabulated and recorded for the teacher; teachers receive recommendations regarding those students who need to review the given concept based on their quiz scores. Quia also provides quiz score mean and median information.
• The “Shared Activities” feature in Quia is wonderful! There are so many useful resources out there that teachers can copy into their individual Quia accounts and make their own. Teachers can even limit their search by looking for specific types of activities (jeopardy-type games, quizzes, word finds, etc.)

Here is a cheat sheet for understanding the types of activities you can create through Quia and an explanation of what I call the “control column”:

Learn more about Quia here.

Quia FAQs here.

I spent a good deal of time the last two days experimenting with these two nings. First I watched the Elluminate Live! recording called “‘Tour of Web 2.0′ webcast video” that Steve Hargadon posted on the main page of the Classroom 2.0 ning. I highly recommend it for any ning newbies because Steve takes the time to go through each section of the Classroom 2.0 ning, from an individual user’s page to how one might tag a forum post. The most useful thing I learned from the webcast is that the Forum section/tab of the ning is organized chronologically by the latest post to any forum. In other words, if I find and leave a comment in a forum about using Google Docs in the classroom, that forum would show up at the top of the list back on the ning main page. I think this is a useful way to see what many people are currently thinking about. This type of organization ignites and reignites ideas in everyone’s minds. I find that when I visit and revisit the Classroom 2.0 main page, I go directly to the forum section.

As I experimented with the Ning in Education site I realized that it is really just an extension or arm of the Classroom 2.0 ning. The Ning in Education site was created for the purpose of linking people in the general educational platform, but I think that so much of that is Web related! It was funny, the fruits of my search on the Ning in Education site was membership in a Smartboard discussion group!

My experience signing up with the Classroom 2.0 ning was just as friendly as when I first signed up with Twitter. Just as it was with veteran twitter-ers, I received a few greetings from seasoned ning users right away. Thanks Anne, Hans, David, and Paul! Web 2.0 people are so encouraging! I recommend both sites…can’t wait to network some more!

Classroom 2.0

Ning in Education

Smartboard Revolution

The “advanced” search button on YouTube allowed me to filter my search so that unsuitable content was not delivered to me, and I was able to locate a video (see below) that taught me how to preserve the last remaining hydrangeas that are blooming in my yard right now. Useful video is not difficult to find through YouTube, and several times I found the list of “related videos” to be useful for expanding my search. As I watched various videos in search of the best ones for classroom and personal use, it became clear that if my students or I were to create and upload our own videos to YouTube we would need to use a microphone that produced high quality sound. It’s frustrating when you just can’t hear what is being said!

I also really liked learning more about TeacherTube, and once again I created a personalized account for this resource. My favorite feature of TeacherTube was the “Channels” tab. Under the channels tab, I was able to grab an rss feed for six different content areas, from math to history. I then added the feeds to a new Pageflakes page and then made the page public. Now I can check my Pageflakes account for video content applicable to my classroom teaching.

With my Google Reader and Pageflakes accounts, the ideas have truly been rolling in. I’ve been especially impressed with news related to Wordle and I’ve tried to keep up with ways people might use this online tool in their classrooms.  A post to the langwitches blog caught my attention in Pageflakes. The post, titled, “Digital Storytelling Part IX- Wordle” offered an excellent idea: use a word cloud to “showcase characteristics of a protagonist in a book.” I loved this idea! At my school we begin the year in reader’s workshop with a study of character; we dig into characters’ personalities, decision-making patterns, relationship histories, etc., and I think a Wordle project would be a fun, engaging way to share our thoughts about character and help students connect to the books that others read.

I just finished reading Bob Smith’s memoir, Hamlet’s Dresser, so quickly I created a sample word cloud using all the words I could think of that connect to my experience with the book:

I wonder if Library Thing would allow me (or my students) to upload a Wordle creation as part of a book review. That would be a great way to get a conversation around a book going on Library Thing…

Our assignment for “Thing 13” was to “attend” one of the archived K12 Online Conference sessions from 2006 or 2007 and then comment on it. Our fearless K12 Learning 2.0 course leader said we could have our PJs on while completing this one, so it’s Friday night, and I am snuggled up in an oversize t-shirt and PJ pants to listen to and read through Anne Davis’ presentation about the steps she follows when introducing blogging to 5th grade students.

9:48pm.

Who knew opportunities like this existed on the Web?! I loved having the chance to sit down and take part in this activity. I adopted the role of a student as my teacher (Anne) suggested, and I completed a WebQuest all about the questioning, writing, proofing, sharing, commenting, and reflecting processes involved in blogging. Everything I needed to know was spelled out on Anne’s wiki.

I like how Anne’s presentation included blogging tips from actual student bloggers: Alejandro and Angel, for example; I also thought that Derrick’s blog could be used as an example of how thinking about layout, design, and color-scheme is important for new student bloggers to consider. It was difficult to read.

This online session raised a question in my mind about whether or not I should keep future class blogs private: while viewing a page of Anne’s wiki I came across a comment posted by a “mystery person” on a child’s blog. It read, “You are the worst blogger in the whole world I will never come on this site again.” Hmmm…while this could be a potentially damaging comment, it would also provide the perfect opportunity for a teachable moment. Now I see why a blogging policy is an important, useful tool to develop with student and teacher bloggers. This session also got me thinking about my past experiences with student bloggers. I never went into the kind of detail or laid the kind of groundwork that Anne shared in her session with my students. Was I going about blogging in a rushed way? YES! I found this link to student bloggers’ reflections to be an eye-opening resource: would my past students write reflections like these? NO, because we jumped into blogging without the sense of purpose and direction that Anne’s students had.

I just finished Jerry Spinelli’s book Stargirl for the third time, and in a Q & A at the end, Spinelli says that he has many rules for when he sits down to write, but his number one rule is to always write about what he knows and cares about. In this online session, Anne interviewed a child about his thoughts on blogging and shared it online in audio form. When asked what he would blog about if he had his own weblog, Zachary’s response was that he would write about what he cares about: his life, how it’s going, and what’s going on in the world around him. I think Zachary’s blogging–and other students’ blogging about noticings, wonderings, analyses, evaluations, and understandings–would make Spinelli proud.

I can see myself using this tool with my fourth graders. The website offers them a way to track their reading–the thought of posting all the books they’ve finished reading will likely be a motivational tool in and of itself–review the books they’ve read, read the comments others have written about certain books, add to the “common knowledge” about a book (characters, setting, date of publish, etc.) To me this site has the same feel as a wiki; not that students can edit and change the actual LibraryThing site, but that they can contribute to the life of a book posting. Posting an opinion carries a feeling of importance and significance that we can all appreciate. Through LibraryThing, students can see how their ratings compare to the average rating for any given book, they can click on links that will allow them to view others’ libraries, and they can see how many other LibraryThing users have also read their books. As a teacher, I can create Book Clubs through what LibraryThing calls “groups” while my students are in the middle of their genre studies. To me, the group feature is an attractive component of LibraryThing because managing classroom book club discussion threads on one class blog can get kind of hairy.

One of the most interesting things I came across while learning about LibraryThing was a group called “Guess the book v3.0.” From what I gathered, one user posted a quote taken from a mystery book, and then other members of the group were challenged to name title and author. This might be a fun activity to start in a classroom (even as early as kindergarten) once a teacher has begun her classroom’s read-aloud life a little ways into the school year. I’m thinking of mystery quotes for the little ones such as “I do not like them Sam I Am.”

Lastly, I stumbled across #9. “Make a Photomosaic” under the LibraryThing “tools” tab. I clicked on the “see all your covers” link and navigated to a page that showed the covers of all the books I have added to my account at this point. So cool! It would make an awesome website background or Desktop image.

Now I’m anxious to compare this Web 2.0 tool to Google’s Book Search!

I like being able to add other delicious users to my account, and I can see how sharing accounts among grade levels, divisions, or schools could be very helpful. I’m thinking that as my team begins to revise and strengthen our social studies curriculum, we could use delicious to post and share links to websites that fit well with the content we’re teaching. If we are all searching and adding to delicious using the same tags, then we really are taking a ton of work off each others’ plates. Importing my Firefox bookmarks into delicious was quick and easy (I didn’t have many). Another thing I like about delicious is that I can embed a link to my account in facebook and on my blog. Convenient!

SpellingCity.com. I discovered it through Lucy Gray’s (elemenous) links. I created an account and was approved through the website administrator, and then practiced entering different vocabulary and spelling words. The site then helped me with pronunciations and definitions–the “teach me” option–and spelling practice–the “test me” option. The site also has numerous saved lists such as this list created for the 4th of July:

I love the auditory aspect of this site, and I think it can be incorporated into all types of word study programs: weekly, monthly, personalized, etc. I’m thinking that my students can use it create their own lists from books they read independently or as part of a book club. Teachers can create and save lists for their students and parents can help their children study for spelling and vocabulary quizzes during the week.

Take a look!