Wikis

These four friends are going on a camping trip. They need to bring the right supplies because they're backpacking. The group needs to plan and plan well, so coordination is key. They're all computer users, so they start planning with an email. It's start with one, but then becomes a barrage. Email is not good at coordinating and organizing a group's input. The important information is scattered across everyone's inbox. There is a better way. Most wikis work the same. The buttons are really important. Here are our camping friends and here is a wiki website. Once you're finished editing, you click save and the document becomes a webpage once again, and is ready for the next person to edit it - easy! Edit - Write - and Save. Mary signs up for a wiki site and then sees the new site for the first time. Now it's John's turn. Henry visits the wiki, clicks edit and he can edit the page. Frank saves the page and realizes something awesome. But wait!

Project Based Learning You remember what it was like in school. IT WAS BORING! You sat in class, memorized as much as you could and tried to pass a test at the end. But is that good enough? These days school can be more interesting and effective by focusing students on work that matters. Most adults live in a world of projects. Let’s take a look at this Project Based World. Claire came out of the project looking like a rock star and she learned a lot about green products. The world needs more Claires. The answer is Project Based Learning or PBL. Here’s what I mean. Mr. After dividing the class into teams, he got them started on the project. The project teams showed off their final work to an enthusiastic audience of parents and their children at a nearby elementary school. His students practiced critical thinking, collaboration and communication. I'm Lee LeFever, and this has been Project Based Learning Explained by Common Craft.

Social Networking Networks get things done. Whether it's sending a letter or lighting your home. Networks make it happen. To get from Chicago to Santa Fe, we need to see the network of roads that will get us there. We see that Chicago is connected to St Louis, which is connected to Dallas, which is connected to Santa Fe. Of course, people networks can help us with finding jobs, meeting new friends, and finding partners. The problem with social networks in the real world is that most of the connections between people are hidden. This problem is being solved by a type of web site called a social networking site. Here's how it works. When you find someone, you click a button that says, "Add as Friend". What's really cool, is that you can see who your friends know, and who your friends' friends know. This solves a real world problem because your network has hidden opportunities.

Portaportal Watching #flipclass videos: F.I.T.C.H. I made a short video for next year's students on how to get the most out of a "Flip Class" video. For their summer packet this year, they are going to be doing some "flip class-y" things... rather than just being given a packet of review problems to do, they are going to be given that packet, have videos to go along with each lesson, and then submit a reflection similar to a WSQ online. I'm hoping this will help ease my students in to next year's class. We will have six sections of Math Analysis in the fall, split between me and another teacher. You can see what I have set up for them at my student site (still under construction for next year) - kirchmathanalysis.blogspot.com You can see the letter that explains what I am having them do here. I decided to come up with an acronym (I love acronyms!) F - Focused, Serious Attitude. I - Involved in the process.

Social Bookmarking It's just too much. Did you know that there are over 15 billion web pages? To make sense of it all, we need to pluck out the best pages and save them for later. We have choices. We could bookmark or add to favorites in our web browser. Nah, it quickly becomes messy. There's a new way that doesn't use a browser. We'll focus on three things: How to get started with bookmarking, how bookmarks are organized by tags, and why this kind of bookmarking is social. First, go to delicious.com to sign up for a free account. Consider this example, you are a teacher who often uses the web to find math lessons for 8th graders. Here's what happens when you tag a site: a new window opens and asks for more information. When you save a page like this, two things happen. Let's fast forward two months to make our second point: Why tags are so important. To find all your sites about algebra, you click the algebra tag, and voila, one hundred becomes three. Think about your fellow teachers.

Wikispaces Edmodo Scavenger Hunt Video Playlist I finally decided to do something that I been putting off for too long - finishing my scavenger hunt videos (I only had three left to record, and it took me less than 5 minutes - shesh) and adding the last 8 mini-videos to my MentorMob playlist. So I did it today! I decided to do an edmodo scavenger hunt because some of my students will be familiar with edmodo (because I had them last year and we used it) and some of my students have most likely never heard of it (Some of my students last year did talk about it to students who weren't in my class). I decided to break the scavenger hunt into steps (18 to be exact) and include a checklist on paper so my students could check it off as they go and get a visual of their progress. Most of the videos are under 2 minutes (Step 12 or 13- can't remember which - is 5 minutes). Create your own Playlist on MentorMob! On a side note, I love mentor mob. I'm going to be working on Unit C - Pronouns and continuing to create my flipped class units.

Blogs You've seen the word, you've seen the web sites and you may even have one. But have you ever wondered: What's the big deal about blogs? To make sense of blogs, you have to think about the news and who makes it. We'll look at news in the 20th vs. the 21st century to make our point. In the 20th century, the news was produced professionally. The 21st century marked the point where news became both professional and personal. As blogs became popular, they created millions of news sources and gave everyone an audience for their own version of news. With a blog...A business owner can share news about his business A mother can share news about her family Or a sport star can share news with fans These people are all "bloggers". How did this happen? Blogs are websites that are organized by blog posts - these are individual news stories, like articles in the paper. Also, Each blog post can become a discussion through comments left by readers. Speaking of relationships, bloggers often work together.

Online Photo Sharing When asked what should be saved in a fire, along with family and pets, people often choose photos. If photos mean a lot to you, it's time to learn why keeping them on the web makes sense. As you know, cameras and photography have changed. What used to appear on paper, now appears on computers and phones. First, let's be practical. Now, because photos can be uploaded to a web site, all sorts of cool things are possible. You visit the Grand Canyon and take beautiful photos. Now, let's look at the new way with a popular service I use called Flickr. You visit the Grand Canyon and take beautiful photos with a digital camera. But it doesn't stop there. Now, once your photos are online and findable, it's time to look at another fun part of online photo sharing - the actual sharing. So, try sharing your online photos with the public. So, photo sharing sites like Flickr do two things really well: