Sharepoint discussion

Universal Design for Learning

This is a short presentation I put together for my masters on Universal Design for Learning. The concept is very simple: If we plan for all students from the very beginning, me just might be able to make sure that they all learn to the best of their abilities.

Technology can help differentiate for all students if it is used correctly...and UDL says that this starts from the beginning. Now, just so we are clear, technology can be simple - it does not have to be computers or hi-tech.

If you like the presentation, let me know.

Sean

Universal Design for Learning on Prezi

How to Use Prezi in the Classroom...

So, Colleen and I were asked to come up with a few different ways that Prezi could be used in the classroom. This is an initial shot at some ways to use this tool in your regular instruction. This is not an end-all, be-all list of the ways that Prezi could be used...but it is a start.




Please let us know what you think.

Blogging - 21st Century Method of Communication?

So the 21C PLC at my high school was tossing around some ideas about what should be offered for professional development and I jumped at the chance to put blogging on the list because of the flexibility of the platform. Then, I sat down and really started to think about the different reasons that a blog would be good for a classroom teacher to use and discovered that the very thing that makes blogging so powerful as a platform (the variety of ways that you can create and publish content online) made it difficult to really pin down just what kind of class I wanted to teach to my colleagues. I really started to think about the flexibility of the platform and the completely different uses that a teacher might have for running a blog. So, here are my thoughts about some different ways that a classroom teacher could use a blog, but they are not, by any means, the only ways. The rest of the post is going to be organized into three distinct categories of information sharing: Communication of classroom information, communication of content, and student engagement through blogging. They may seem like arbitrary designations, but they do accurately describe some of the uses of a blog.



What makes a blog work?

This is an RSS feed icon. When you see this kind of
icon it means that you can subscribe to the feed from
the page that you are on.

Blogs work by allowing What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editing of online content to the masses. Basically a blog is a way to publish content to the World Wide Web. The power of blogging comes partly from this, but what makes blogs an effective communication platform is the use of a Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feed that allows others to subscribe to the content that you have to share. The ability to subscribe to the feeds you want to keep track of allows the user to define what content they want and how often they want to get it. The publisher just posts their information and RSS Readers will search for the new posts and deliver them to the subscriber without the publisher having to do more than simply press the publish button.

So why would this be powerful for disseminating information about your class?

Stage 1 Blogging - Communication of Classroom Information:

Teachers are tasked with providing lots of information to the masses. A blog can be an effective way to distribute a lot of information very quickly to the masses through RSS feeds. By supplying parents and students with the RSS feed location and the website address, parents can subscribe to get updates about what is going on in class, students can subscribe to get announcements about classroom assignments, and resources can be shared very quickly without a lot of additional work on the teacher.

At the most basic level a blog can be used for these purposes. It can stand in the place of a fully fledged website for the teacher with minimal overhead and a lot of benefits when it comes to sharing out reminders for everyone. In addition, many blog services like Blogger, Wordpress, and Podbean offer the ability to use fairly nice looking templates to make your blog look professional and purposeful. Some sites like Podbean also offer the ability to post multimedia within the blog.

This kind of blogging is about sharing information with others and not really about engaging students in academic work through blogging. Engaging the students in interacting with the content on the blog is the next level of blogging where the blog becomes an interactive writing space used by the teacher as a content delivery platform.

Stage 2 Blogging - The Blog as Content Management System

So you want to move beyond simple information sharing about assignments and announcements to the meat of delivering content to your students through this platform? Well, first you have to think about why you are looking to do that. Are you looking for a way to have students interact with information from your class outside of the school day? Are you looking to provide extensions? Are you looking to provide students with a list of topics to study and links to outside resources you want them to read on their own? Are you thinking that you will post videos for them to watch and respond to? Are you expecting them to respond to your questions on the blog or on paper? In effect, you need to determine why you want to use this method of communication with them.


Things to remember about content management:


1. Set a purpose for the students.
2. Have clear expectations of how you want students to interact with the information on your blog. 
3. Have clear guidelines about internet safety. 
4. Have a clear expectation of how often you will post, how often your students will post, and how often your students should respond. 
5. Think about your grading ahead of time. 


Once you have answered these questions you are ready to begin posting...or are you? This is a hard question to answer. Before rolling out a blog for your students you might want to practice blogging on your own. By creating a blog and engaging in reflective writing, perhaps even blogging about how your are going to blog with your students, you begin to realize how blogging might transform some of your information sharing. Get a handle on this by reading through others' blogs and responding to them. Think about the ways that others are using blogs to interact with their students. Then, think about how you might do it too. This is something that Richardson talks about in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, a dainty book with lots of basic information on web tools and their application in the classroom. 


By managing content through a blog you can: 

• Post a list of activities for the day
• Post a lecture online
• Post a video or other resource you want responses to
• Post a question you want answered
• Ask a math problem
• Have students respond to a current event
• Have students build their own study guides over time
• and on and on and on...

Students can respond to your posts, and to each others', using the comment features on blogs. Many blogs will allow you to approve comments before they are shown allowing students to post their answers over a specified amount of time without seeing what other students have posted. This allows for the blog to hold students individually accountable as well as allow them to collaborate with each other asynchronously once comments are posted. In addition it allows them to interact with an authentic audience over time. 

Stage 3 Blogging - Putting the World in the Students' Hands

The biggest bang for the buck in terms of student learning comes when the students have their own blogs though. Requiring online posting can be a tricky thing to do, but it can also lead to an exponential payoff when students truly take on the task of posting to a blog on a regular basis. They can engage with the world and get authentic feedback to their ideas. They can participate. 

With the explosion of blogs on the web, it is increasingly important that our students learn how to be digitally aware and responsible online. Their digital footprints follow them throughout their lives; we want those footprints to represent the best parts of our students when the world chooses to look at them. 

Things to remember about student blogging:

1. Set a purpose for the students.

2. Have clear expectations of how you want students to interact on their blogs. 

3. Have clear guidelines about internet safety. 

4. Have a clear expectation of how often  your students will post, how often your students should respond to others, and how often you will check their writing. 

5. Think about how you will grade them when they post to their blogs. 

Student blogging can be a powerful exercise in reflection for students and can be used to have them synthesize information while demonstrating content knowledge to an authentic audience. Of course, if done improperly it can be nothing more than another thing on a teacher's plate and an the online equivalent of a kill and drill writing exercise for students. Blogs must be done with intentionality and guidance if they are to have a truly powerful impact on student achievement.

Blogs as part of a Personal Learning Network

Because blogs allow people to write for small authentic audiences they can create powerful personal learning networks that strengthen one's understanding of the topic being discussed, as well as providing the extensions needed to push one's understanding of the topic to a new level.

PLNs can be created through regular blogs as well as microblogs like Twitter. This ability to interact with a small group of people over a lifetime can make these kinds of tools very powerful if learned early in life.


Blogs to Look At For Personal/Professional Growth: 


Chris Lehman
Karl Fisch
Judy O'Connell
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

Mathematical Blogs:

ArsMathematica
MissCalcul8
Exponential Curves


Wondering how you would keep track of all the blogs you want to subscribe to? 
Check out Google Reader...