Twitter, Part II

Once you get on Twitter (to follow George's post), you will want to know who to follow.  If you want some suggestions, you can go to my account and then click on "following."  For each person you can see some of their recent Tweets and decide if you want to follow them.  If you want a really long list of social studies teachers, go here. 

How Twitter is Reinventing Collaboration Among Educators

Interesting article at MediaShift about how to use Twitter for collaboration. It includes lots of links to various education chats. There are, according to the article, over 150 Twitter chats on education-related topics. And Edutopia has a story about how to use Twitter to"grow your PLN."  Here is another interesting story about the value of Twitter in education from NovemberLearning.

To set up a Twitter account, here's all you have to do (fyi--I copied these instruction directly from the Edutopia story.)

1) Go to Twitter.com and click Get Started Now. Fill in the fields. Where they ask for your Full Name, we suggest using your real name if you want to use Twitter as a professional networking resource. This way, people can recognize you.

2) Once you've completed the registration process, click Create my account. It will ask you to enter some text to ensure you're not a robot.

Great Awakening

I am starting to teach my course next week on technology integration.  One of the things we will cover is creating webquests.  For example for the Great Awakening, one could use this site which has several links and affords the teacher a bunch of questions to answer. 

QR Codes for Homework

So I am starting a little experiment with QR codes.  While I had seen them before I was introduced to them in a big way this summer when I was working on apps for teachers and students. So now my students see the code below when they log into Blackboard.  Once they download a QR reader, they scan it and then every time they open the app they just click on my title and it will take them to the newly updated app where they can see the newest homework first. So if you scan the icon below, you will see how my homework looks for one of my classes.

To generate a QR code simply enter your page (Google Drive or web) here. There are many different QR readers, but here is one for Android and iPhone. 

Constitutional Convention

I feel like I am slowly starting to hit my groove now.  I have almost all of my students' names down, know something about a lot of them, am getting into the groove with our CLT meetings, the teaching is going well and finally getting lots more up on the blog.

Speaking of the blog, here is a site that has a ton of links, write-ups, pictures, etc. on the Constitutional Convention.  

Into the (Actual) Cloud

I have put up a cartoon of how the Internet works, but here is a short video of the actual cloud (re: data centers).  It discusses the costs and why it is very hard for it ever to go down.  

QR Codes for Homework

Probably today I am going to put three QR codes on a sheet of paper (people who know me will laugh at me using paper) and put it up in my room.  Each one of the codes will be tagged to a homework page for each one of my preps.  The students will have to download a QR reader once and then they will never have to write down their homework again. Then if they open the QR reader on their phone and go to the linked page they will see their new homework without having to do anything else.

One way to create the QR codes on a piece of paper is to use TagMyDoc which will put it on any document when you print it out.  I learned about the tagger at FreeTech4Teachers.

Dec of Independence Song

Play this to your students and I bet they will watch with rapt attention.  More to the point, have them write down the main points presented in the video and be able to tell you why it is too late to  apologize. 

History Simulations of WWI, WWII and the Cold War

I love it when history teachers come up with their own ideas and put them online (how could I not love it considering this blog's existence).  A fellow teacher, David Harms, who has almost as much teaching experience as me (at 20, he is just two shy of me!).  David has come up with some great simulations for teaching WWI, WWII and the Cold War.  As you know the more your students do, rather than hear, the better they will learn.  For that reason I would encourage you to check out David's simulations at History Simulation.com

Cuban Missile Crisis Website

This site has everything you would want on the Cuban Missile Crisis including lesson plans.  Thanks to fellow Hayfield teacher, Jeannine Cotner for the heads up on it. 

Qwiki Search Engine

View John Adams and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

If you follow this blog, you know I found out about Qwiki a couple of years ago.  They used to have a browser on their homepage, but after coupling with Bing, they took it down.  It though is a great tool for your student as it incorporates video, a written description and pictures for pretty much anything you will be discussing.  Since there is no longer a search engine, just type something you want to show your students in a browser and then add the word "Qwiki" and the search tool will appear.  If you want to create your own, go to the Qwiki site, create a free account and go to town.  Above is a Qwiki on Otzi the Iceman which we studied today.

Using Google Drive to Grade Assignments & Collaborate with Colleagues

Today two of the teachers in my department printed out essays that were turned in digitally and sheepishly said to me that they just could not grade them online.  About five or six years ago I was with them, but I am not one to give in easily.  I committed to a year of online grading.  My first foray was with my summer school students at George Mason University where I had a number of research papers to grade.   I still remember the first batch coming in and thinking I did not like grading them online and almost feeling as if I couldn't get ahold of their thesis digitally.  But I hung in there and of course now I find grading paper (as little as I do) inefficient as I can write so much more and more thoughtfully when I am typing.

So if you are game to have your students turn in work digitally then above is a video of how to have the kids turn it in and how you can grade.  In addition to your students you can always use it collaborate with your colleagues.  My department does all of our collaboration together and save oodles of time by doing it on Google Drive. 

Website for Tons of Video and Written How To Explanations

Thanks to Craig Perrier, who is our county's head of high school social studies curriculum for this one.  Here is a magazine like format called Educational Technology and Mobile Learning which has a ton of links to how to.  How to do Google Docs, Skype, use of the iPad, Evernote, QR codes, social learning and so much more.  It also has a bit of a news feed so it is certainly not a static webpage. 

Great Antietam Piece from NPR

Flipping and rising student scores

Technapex did a survey of some 453 flipped educators in June and found that (a) teachers (88%) reported that they were happier with their jobs because of flipping and (b) students (67%) performed better on tests as a result of flipping. These are the first statistics that I've seen about how much flipping actually improves scores.