Adding Items in Your Favorites Folder in Outlook

Rationale: Quick, easy access to check important date on the Official School Calendar. Please listen to the mp3 file and then click the link to save the directions with screen shots!

Adding The Sullivans School Calendar to Your Favorites in Outlook

What is an RSS?

RSS in Plain English: Find out what an RSS feed is and why teachers should join certain RSS Feeds for professional growth!

Smartboard Version 10.0: Turn On That Smartboard! Mrs. Nickerson: Check out the latest tech-tip from TILT.  Are you interested in how you could benefit from your Smartboard? The Smartboard tech tip will teach you what your Smartboard has to offer!

Podcast from Ms. Maravilla: wikihow.com: This tech tip is about how easy it is to use wikiHow to find easy step-by-step instructions for doing something cool with technology such as converting YouTube videos. wikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Do you find it frustrating that all the educational, instructional videos are blocked at school? Go to http//www.wikihow.com and learn how to convert those instructional YouTube videos to your local hard drive at home and bring the converted YouTube video to school on a pin drive, cd or dvd to show your students.

Finale and WebBlender: Dr. Elliott and D Corley Do you want to learn more about Finale and WebBlender- Student Web Authoring Software? Click the podcast to listen to ideas of ways to collaborate with the Music Teacher and the ET. Click the link to visit the WebBlender Tutorial web site on Dolphinet!

Internet Crime Against Children Statistics

“It’s not primarily having a social networking profile or giving out personal information that puts kids at risk. What puts kids at risk are things like having a lot of conflict with your parents, being depressed and socially isolated, being hyper, communicating with a lot of people online who you don’t know, being willing to talk about sex online with people that you don’t know.”

- David Finkelhor: Crimes Against Children Research Center

This movie is about internet crimes against children. It contains statistics regarding the number of children who are targeted by internet pedophiles. It also highlights incidents that parents are unaware of regarding their children on the internet.

What’s the Difference?

The key difference between a blog and a web site is that a blog’s main function is being a web log or online diary. As the term “online diary” suggests, this is where a blogger can generate interesting personal content and information about a particular subject or topic that they have chosen to cover. Blogs are quick, free, and easy to set up.

A web site, on the other hand, can be expensive and tedious as well as static. Websites usually are static and have a webmaster. Maintaining a website requires some knowledge of html. The non-techie person may become frustrated. A website is more product and company-focused. Whereas, a blog allows individuals to interact with their intended audience by posting comments to the blog.

Educators now recognize the potential of using blogs with students. The article, “Reflecting, Writing, and Responding: Reasons Students Blog” written by Carie Windham describes blogging’s learning potential, including the chance to practice writing, reflect on others’ thinking, and respond to critical analyses of one’s own work. (Go to the article on Educause.)

In the words of Ferdig and Trammell, there are four main benefits of student blogging (p.16):

1. The use of blogs helps students become subject-matter expert.
2. The use of blogs increases student interest and ownership in learning.
3. The use of blogs gives students legitimate chances to participate.
4. The use of blogs provides opportunities for diverse perspectives, both within and outside of the classroom.

Content Delivery in the ‘Blogosphere.’ T.H.E. Journal. February 2004. Online: http://www.thejournal.com.

Other benefits of blogs for students include the following:

1. Authentic audience for writing and sharing thoughts
2. Increases motivation for reading
3. Improves confidence levels
4. Fosters a feeling of pride in their work
5. Allows text, multimedia, widgets, audio and images
6. Increases proofreading and validation skills
7. Improves awareness of possible dangers in the real world
8. Provides opportunities to share
9. Provides opportunities for mutual learning between students and teachers
10. Allows for parents with internet access to view their child’s work and writings
11. Provides a means of maintaining Digital Portfolios for students
12. Prepares students for digital citizenship as they learn cyber-safety and netiquette

Most importantly, blogging is a natural element of students being “digital natives.” (Read the article, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants written by Marc Prensky.)

TPACK Theme

In my TPACK, I will use Dreamweaver to design the main page of my TPACK project. I will embed the code to my TPACK project within the Dreamweaver page. I plan to explore Voicethread technology to complete the TPACK, because I would like the opportunity to learn more about VoiceThread and its potential use in education. However, I understand the benefits of using blogs and other web 2.0 technologies to create multimedia presentations as well as a venue of expressing ideas and concepts in a new, creative way.