YouTube Debates

The YouTube election is a great tool to bring into your classroom. I will be helping our AP Government class to upload their questions in hopes of getting them asked during the YouTube Republican debate. Questions need to be submitted by mid-September in order for them to be reviewed for the November 28th debate. The teacher has spent the last few weeks reviewing issues, reviewing the Democratic debate and introducing the students to the candidates. They will then sketch out their question and we will videotape and edit next week.

So why bother? One of the bigger jokes when the US invaded Iraq is, why are we pushing our democratic system on a different country when less than 1/3 of our citizens take full advantage of it? What YouTube, CNN and the candidates have done is find a medium (online video posting) that is appealing to a younger audience. The 2006 election started this by the introduction of candidates and their camps blogging. This election takes it one step further. It still won't make the majority of Americans more interested in the election, but it is slowly bringing more and more people in. You have to start somewhere.

Why an early post? A busy Monday and I didn't want to leave the MILLIONS of visitors with an empty fridge for two weeks. Who loves ya?

iMovie '08 Gets a Cold Review

When David Pogue came to the Nebraska Educational Technology Association's (NETA's) Conference last April, many of the "tech geeks" I know where oh so giddy to have him. Now, I had just become familiar with his work and hadn't watched a video, so I thought he may hand out pocket protectors as door prizes. He didn't, and actually, he turned me into an avid fan with his real-life down to earth humor. He is a great speaker and I can now look at him and his work with a smile and not a cringe. You don't lose coolness by visiting his NY Times blog.

Admittedly, he also had nice things to say about Apple computers, which you don't always hear a lot of. Naturally, it helped him to grow on me. However, in his latest review of iLife '08, he, for the most part, trashes the iMovie part. As he quotes the message boards, "What the [bleep]? What was Apple thinking?"

Now, I am NEVER one to see or review a new innovation first (although our office does have the newest and best collection of 100 calories snacks...well, new for our area of the world), so I don't have anything to add or debate on the iMovie review. But I will say that I have agreed with many of his reviews and attitudes. And if what he says is true about the new iMovie, Apple has definitely taken some backward steps in their quest to conquer the world, one project at a time.

Care Bears in Language...Really

If you are anything like the staff of the Technology Fridge, you are 1) cool; 2) old enough to know better...but not overly moldy; and, 3) about to start school. Today we are dishing up an old favorite that could be a great introductory lesson: Care Bears. Care Bears, you say? Oh yes.

At the end of last year, one of my students showed me the Care Bears website. She thought it was very cool, and we all got hooked on finding out which Care Bear we were most like. We even brought our principal in to give her the test. We were just as shocked as she to find out she was most like Cheer Bear.

So what in the world does this have to do with language? Simple, of course. Students LOVED figuring out which bear they were. In fact, we had them write a short story describing their bear and how it related to their own life. Even the "tough" boys wrote about how they were most like Funshine Bear (which was my bear, in case you were wondering). The "tougher" boys were allowed to come up with their own (never "ice down" creativity) bears as long as they could come up with criteria for that bear. This activity would be a great way to get to know your students, engage them in some online "research," and show them that not every part of this year will be assessments!

The Power of Buddies

We here at the Fridge are enjoying a nice, rainy Monday. Ideal? Well, since it is the first "real" day at work, it will do, in a mean-spirited sort of way. The only drawback is I forgot my lunch. I know, you'd think someone who has created a Technology Fridge would have food around. We have some snacks and I found a bagel in the lounge, but nothing like the hamburger I had planned on eating. Someone's trying to tell me I need to eat better, I guess. Luckily, my office buddies brought in some snacks today.
Speaking of buddies (a stretch transition), today I want to discuss buddy classes. Last year, my 5th graders buddied up with a Kindergarten class. Our goal was to help the younger buddy students learn their letter sounds through technology and to give them some exposure to how a computer works. At the Technology Fridge, we believe that educationally speaking, all students need to at the very least be exposed to technology through their elementary years. They don't need to be masters at the computer, but if you want them to be an asset to society, shouldn't they at the very least know how to turn it on? Whether you work at McDonald's or Microsoft, you will be exposed to technology.
We started out by creating power point slides that had each of the letters they had learned that week along with a corresponding picture. Eventually we moved ahead of what they were learning. So we used a couple of the following websites.
ABC Matching From the I Know That series of websites (which has already brought you Math Blox and Punctuation Paintball in previous posts), students get to experience letters, sounds and pictures in various activities. You can focus on specific sounds and phrases. Great for both review and introduction.
Curious George While Curious George isn't as popular as it once was, its still a monkey, which appeals to a younger audience. There isn't as much "educational" value, but it still entertains.
Starfall If you haven't heard of Starfall, you are either a new teacher or have been under a rock. One of the best websites ever for young kids, we used all aspects of it for our Kindergarten students.
Learning Planet The Learning Planet website is another great all around resource for all levels and most subjects. For buddy work, there are some very basic letter introduction activities for students.
With our buddies, I did my best to have the younger students run the computer and the older students only to guide. It was not easy with 5th graders who want to show what they can do. The other big problem is saving the power points. I need to do a better job of instructing my students on how to save all documents. We also used an online storage area (because it was "cooler" than using the server...although the server is the better option), which got filled up pretty quick with pictures and text. All in all, it was a great program that proved beneficial.

Yes, You Should iPods in Your Classroom

Like all things technology, the market king known as the iPod is, and should be, making its way into your classroom. Not so that you can download the latest Crash Test Dummies remake of "Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm", but to increase student achievement in reading and writing, as well as assisting those students with IEPs.
We all know that iPods are used to listen to audio (ground breaking, I know...next week we'll talk about how the sun rises in the east...stay tuned). How that translates to the classroom is simple. For many years there has been a push to create a more "comfortable" atmosphere in a classroom, including but not limited to playing "soothing" music. Like all things in education, it doesn't work well for all kids. So why not utilize headphones? Do you need an iPod for that? Of course not. But it could be simultaneously used as motivation to write more. "You know, that's a pretty bad writing piece. Do you think it's because the iPod distracted you?"
Apple released a story about 18 months ago about a school in Iowa that made audio recordings of their assessments and had their SPED students listen to that instead of being pulled out of the classroom. Trying it in my own classroom, I found the regular ed students became jealous of the SPED students. SPED students met or exceeded their previous test scores, without having the sometimes-persuasive teacher or para assisting them.
Another common use for the iPod is recording fluency passages. There are a number of different microphone adapters that have been made by third party companies that will allow you to record onto the iPod (search the Apple Store for more information). This also comes in handy if you are doing writing revisions. Students can read their passage into the iPod and revise as they listen to themselves.
In science, which would you rather do? Record observations on a piece of paper or into an iPod? You're more like your students then you thought, huh?
As the iPods become more popular, more uses are being discovered. You can search on the Apple Learning Interchange for more information and ideas.
Also, Apple put out a pdf "white paper" last year with the benefits of using iPods. I used much of the research during presentations.

Google for Educators

Last year, Google decided to dip their hands into the education world, launching Google for Educators. Very cool, as we like to say here in the Fridge. They have designed/are designing/suggesting already created programs to be used in education.
For example:
Google Calendar can be used in a variety of ways by staff and parents. Our school used a general Google Calendar log in so that we could check out our mobile lab, SMART Board and projectors (no, we don't have one per room). It has been suggested all over the Google world that it be used to show assignments, etc., for parents.
iGoogle, the new customizable homepage, offers users to choose from hundreds of different services to keep you in the know about EVERYTHING. Many bloggers and educators have suggested using iGoogle for student start up pages, and while I see how cool that would be, I did miss how that would be practical.
Another feature that I used in my classroom long before it was under the massive Google umbrellas was the feature you are using right now: Blogger. From test preparation to finding out what's going on in class, Blogger has endless possibilities.
My new favorite Google tool is Google Reader. Google Reader allows you to read what is new on your favorite websites (including this one) without actually having to go there. And, with iGoogle all I have to do is open up to my homepage to see if any of my favorite author's have made contributions to our world (including David Pogue, Edutopia and the Infinite Thinking Machine, Google's education blog).
While these suggestions are just scrapping the top of the barrel, these that I mentioned are some of my favorites and most used. Feel free to comment on how you are using any of these or other Google for Educator tools.