Hello all!
We are excited that you enrolled in our sessions for the 2013-14 school year. You can always contact us through our RPS accounts or gmail for more information.
- Liz Davis: edavis@rps.k12.ar.us or RHS.OCFD@gmail.com
- Casey Greene: cgreene@rps.k12.ar.us or cheriegreene@gmail.com
With a Little Help From My Friends: Online Collaboration and Publishing seeks to produce and
publish writing and/or materials as well as interact and collaborate with others. Our target audience includes
teachers of grades 6-12 for literacy, social studies, and foreign
language.
Thank you for your participation and focus during our first session (agenda). Technology in the classroom presents some opportunities and challenges that we ill be able to explore in our four sessions together.
In our first session, we focused on the following six online tools: Chrome, Drive, Glogster, Prezi, Pinterest, and Padlet. We wanted to provide a recap and reflection of each resource.
Chrome
- Type Chrome Launchy if it's not installed on your computer.
- All of the tools that we will present should be used in Google Chrome. Make sure that your students use Google Chrome always. They do not need to download Google Chrome at home. An updated browser should work just fine.
Drive
- drive.google.com
- To use, I suggest requiring a Gmail account of all students.
- It functions much like Microsoft Word; however, everything is stored online instead of on a hard drive. Options for students to collaborate: Document, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Drawing. Options to collect data for teachers and students: Forms.
- If you are in Gmail, there are tabs at the top of the window under the
address (URL) bar. You can get to Drive that way, or you can type in
the address above.
- Documents can be used for collaborative writing. Students can share their documents with others to allow them to edit, comment, or view a document. Several students can work on the same document at one time. Make sure that they also share their document with you. This way, you can view what they are working on and any side comments in their Chat.
- Presentations can be used as an alternative to PowerPoint. Several students can collaborate and edit this style of document at the same time. Students can divide the work load and assign slides for any form of a speech or discussion. They can also use this document as an alternative assessment; instead of requiring an essay, perhaps allow a presentation with nonlinguistic representations.
- Forms can be used to collect data, determine objectives and reflect on progress. You can share your form (survey) with your students through email, or you can embed the survey in a blog. In the past, I have had some issues with emailing all of my students at once. I think the system doesn't like all of the emails in a short amount of time. I would suggest giving your students a link or embedding it to a blog.
- Blogger we did not discuss in our first session. This is a great tool for teachers, students, and their parents. I use it regularly in my classrooms, and you can see my examples here: Oral Comm., Debate, Forensics, and Theatre Dance. If you would like, we can cover this in a future session. Blogger is super user friendly, and you can get to Blogger by clicking on More in the top bar under the address bar.
Glogster
- www.glogster.com
- Glogster is an online poster board for students to incorporate photos, video, text, and more into one page. This is a great tool for students to present information to a class or as an alternative assignment to a writing project.
- We didn't spend much time on Glogster in our first session, but please let us know if that is of interest to you.
Prezi
- www.prezi.com
- This presentation tool is an alternative to PowerPoint. This tool can be shared with multiple people, so that they can all work on the same document. Prezis are great for linear and nonlinear topics or discussions.
- During our first session, we used a Prezi to organize our time together and provide visuals. The prezi is embedded below. If you would like focus on this tool in a future session, please let us know.
Pinterest
- www.pinterest.com
- This tool can be used to make bulletin type boards for a class or concept. Students can organize images and videos to great an alternative to PowerPoint or a great discussion starter.
Padlet
- www.padlet.com
- Padlet is a brainstorming type of tool. Teachers create a login and are able to create boards for students to post thoughts, comments, or questions about a topic. Teachers can use this in the classroom with students using a smart device. Teachers can change the privacy of a padlet so that a comment is screened before it appears on the wall.
Here is our prezi from yesterday
