Would You Like to See This Happen at Noel?

Karl Fisch's blog The Fischbowl is a regular stop for me since he covers things that interest me. For the past four years he has posted video on his blog of his school's faculty dancing. Here are the links:

2007

2008

2009

2010

#Comments4Kids: January 25-29

Here are this weeks sites for you to visit and leave a comment on. Now that internet access has been fixed we will be able to create our own blog posts on Friday at our Ning. Tuesday we will set aside some time for getting gmail addresses. Wednesday we will get you added to the ning. Friday you will write a post on your experiences with #comments4kids. This means you must comment on each of these posts!

Post #1:
Residential Watercolor at 3W
Pick your favorite water color and leave the artist a positive comment. Tell him or her why it is your favorite.

Post #2:
Japati Likes Samoan Food at Little Voices, Little Scholars
Japati is in a class that is similar to our kindergarten. He is reading a story he wrote himself. Notice the confidence in his reading and his clear speaking voice. Leave a comment congratulating him on being a confident reader.

Post #3
Sand Not Pebbles at Rachel's World of Awesomeness
Rachel is one of my friends from China. She has been blogging for a couple years now. I chose this post because she had to explain how she created the artwork. Leave her a positive comment.

Post #4
I Love This Video at Tiffany
Tiffany is another friend from China. She found this video on her school portal. Does the video have a message? Leave a comment about the video.

Post #5
Podcast Episode 6-Math at Ms. Deyenberg's Class Blog
This class creates podcasts. Listen to this one (you will need headphones) and leave a comment. Is this an effective way to show how to do math? Who would learn the math better, the students that created the podcast or the students that listen to it?

Website Review: Poptropica

"Poptropica is a massively multiplayer online game and virtual world, targeted at children ages 6 to 15, where players can travel, play games, compete in head-to-head competition, and communicate safely with each other. There is a role-playing component as players are encouraged to finish "island missions" and get medallions."
Wikipedia.com

Your job is to check out the site Poptropica. You will write a review of the site. You will address these three things:

1. What ages is this appropriate for?
2. How safe is this game for children?
3. How fun is the site?

Finally, you will either recommend this site or not recommend it.

I plan to introduce this site to our fourth grade in April if you find it meets our requirements.

Getting a Gmail Account

You need to get a gmail account. This will allow you to join the 7th grade Ning as well as use the many Google tools I plan to introduce you to.

Here is a link to a video that shows you how to create a Gmail account. Make sure your gmail user name is appropriate for school!

Comments 4 Kids January 18-22

Students, welcome to the activity I call Comments4Kids. Here is a link to the post that started the activity. Here is a link to Robert explaining why commenting is important for both the student that wrote the post as well as you, the commenter.

You will be expected to leave comments

Here are the rules for commenting on others blogs:

1. Keep the commenting positive.
2. Keep the comments relevant to the post.
3. Link back to the class blog.

Here are the posts you will be commenting on this week:

Mrs. Goerned teaches 6th grade students in Iowa. Her students have written poetry and would like some comments. Remember, poetry is very personal so be careful with your comments. Pick one (or more) post on each page to leave a comment.
Link 1 Mrs. Goerend's Students Page 1
Link 2 Mrs. Goerend's Students Page 2

Ms. Pohanka is teaching 6th grade geometry to students in Virginia. Note her class blog looks much different from Mrs. Goerend's blog (or our blog for that matter!) You may want to spend some time looking around the blog and see how it is different. Choose two (or more) posts to leave a comment on. (You can find more posts by clicking on the page numbers at the bottom.)

Link 3 Flattening the World

Since you have expressed how much you have missed Mr. McClung (I can't imagine why ;), I have included his class blog this week. This time your comment does not have to be relevant to the post.

Mr. McClung's World: Lessons Learned

On Friday you will be writing about your experience commenting on blog posts this week. I may even have a few of you record your experiences to post on the class blog. Make sure you can explain what you commented on and how the experience has changed you as a writer!

Lot's To Do (Where Do I Start?)

As you can see from the pictures my classroom (lab) is full of promise. I have computers that need to be networked in classrooms throughout the building. Unfortunately there are so many I don't have a clue where to begin. I know, this is a good problem to have!

Retelling To Build a Fire by Jack London

To Build a Fire is a short story by Jack London. London liked to show the conflict between man and nature. Read the story and think about what point London is trying to make.

After you have read the story, I want you to choose a new way to retell the story. Pick a digital tool we have used before and freshen up the tale. Make sure the plot remains, we don't want to write a new story.

A Digital Christmas Gift to You: Nintendo8.com and 8Bit Christmas Music

Picture from Wikimedia Commons

Nintendo8.com is an old school gamer's dream, it hosts emulations of some of the best early console games of my generation including the Sega Master System, the original 8-bit Nintendo, and even some Commodore 64 games. If you have never experienced these early games, I would suggest you take a look and appreciate the evolution of gaming. This will make you appreciate your now generation consoles!

Here is a link to the top games played on the site. This is a good place to start your adventures!

As an added bonus here is the link to the 8Bit Christmas music all you OG's (Old Gamers) have to have for Christmas. You can listen to the songs or download them and play them on your MP3 player.

A special thanks goes to Dusty our WebMaster for showing me the game site. Thanks!

Build Your Own Snowman from Yahoo

Here is a fun little site that lets you build your own snowman. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of different choices you can make with the snowman and the ways they have for you to share your creation are extremely limited. To save your picture you will have to do a screen capture!

My Recomendations for the Edublog Awards 2009

Here are my votes for this year's Edublog Awards. While I realize I am not influential enough to lead any of these suggestions to a victory, I hope my explanations for why I chose these will be appreciated.

If you would like to vote for any or all of these, simply click on the badge and it will take you to the appropriate site.

Best individual blog Learning Is Messy
This blog is one of my favorite blogs to read. The reason I enjoy it so much is because the author, Brian Crosby, shares his successes and failures from his classroom. I love being able to look into his thoughts and see what he sees.

Best new blog East Dragon Den
I chose this blog for the Best New Blog because of the amazing experimentation that is taking place here. Mr. Moore and Mrs. Vander Velde have incorporated back channeling throughout their curriculum. If I were still a regular ed teacher I would "borrow" their great ideas regularly.

Best class blog Mr. McClung's World
Yes, this blog has been nominated for this award, but I chose Mr. McClung's World as my choice for best class blog. He is consistently blogging about what his class is doing and is incorporating those posts in his daily work with his students. An amazing example of what class blogs should look like.

Best student blog Tiffany
Tiffany is a student at the Shanghai American School in China. Her blog posts are top notch. When many students would write as little as possible, Tiffany does much, much more. This student blog should be used as an example of what we should expect out of our students.

Most influential blog post This, This, That
This post started what became a very important part of the education of two different schools. It started a series of events that connected Jabiz Raisdana, Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class at University of South Alabama, and my class. To completely understand what happened, I suggest you read these two posts: Singing Hearts, and Kai and Room 10

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion #edchat
Edchat allows me to vent about what is happening in education today.

Digital Media Reflections

Here is the link to the spreadsheet with your answers.

Make Your Own Winter JibJab

JibJab is a fun site where you can take pictures and insert them into movies. I have picked two movies you can use Elf Snowball Fight and ElfYourself. There are many JibJabs you can make, but most of them require you to purchase a membership.

Here is the link to our eighth grade picture set on Flickr. You will have to download pictures and then upload them to create your movie. Just click on the the pictures you want to download. Right click on the picture and save as: name of person to your desktop. Then you will have them to upload.

When you have created your JibJab, download the video and upload it to the video section of the 8th Grade Ning. Don't forget to log in first.

Bomomo: Create a Visual Masterpiece

There really is no way to explain the beauty and simplicity of this creative art site. I would suggest you go and check it out immediately. If this doesn't make you happy, you need to get a head check! Here is the link to Bomomo.

I found a link to this site and several others I will be sharing at East Dragon Den, which has been nominated for Best Class Blog in the Edublog awards.

Snow Ball Fight

Justin's Part Time Job

Here is what Justin does on his day off. I was as surprised as you!

Create A Graph: Explore and Learn

Create a Graph is a wonderful tool for creating graphs (especially if your students don't know how to create spreadsheets). You can use the program to create bar, line, pie, and other types of graphs and you can print them or save them as a pdf or jpeg.

I want you to explore the site. Find three neat things you can share with the class. Create a graph using made up data and then save them to the desktop of your computer as a jpeg. Then upload the picture to the class Ning.

This is the site you will be using to graph your data for your science fair project (unless you want to use a spreadsheet.)

Cool Site: Grammar Ninja

Grammar Ninja is a grammar game where you identify parts of speech by throwing shurikens.

There are three difficulty levels in the game. It tests your ability to find adjectives, adverbs, nouns, verbs, conjunctions, articles and more. This is a pretty fun way to drill yourself over the parts of speech!

My Nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards

Here are my nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards:

Best individual blog Learning Is Messy
Best new blog East Dragon Den
Best class blog Mr. McClung's World
Best student blog Tiffany
Most influential blog post This, This, That
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion #edchat
Best educational use of video / visual Little Voices, Little Scholars

I want to encourage you to nominate your favorites as well. While not everyone can win, being nominated is an honor. It is a small thing that can make someone else very happy!

Here is a link to my nominating post from last year.

MAP Rewards Assembly, November 24

Noel Lady Tigers vs. White Rock Lady Roosters

Here is the link to tonight's program. If you right click and open in a new tab you can view it without losing the stream.