Did You Know 2.0
October 10, 2009 — mariewestmanMade in 2006, it is a big old but has some good thoughts.
President Obama’s Address To Congress
February 24, 2009 — mariewestmanA Wordle of President Obama’s, our first African-American president, first address to Congress.
You can notice that the most used words that President Obama used are “American” and “new”.
Jing- How Can I Use It?
February 24, 2009 — mariewestman
Jing is a useful tool to use on the internet. It allows the user to take snapshots and videos of what they are doing on their computer screen. It is simple to download and the website gives you step-by-step instructions on using Jing.
How can Jing be useful to an educator? Here is a list that I came up with. Feel free to leave a post with ways Jing can be helpful in the classroom.
- Teacher can show give step-by-step directions to navigate a website. Since Jing images and videos can be saved, the teacher can post the image/video on a wiki or blog for the students to access 24/7.
- Students can take images and video for instructions to navigate a website, then write an instructional story/powerpoint/essay, etc.
- Students can work outside the classroom and email the teacher images/video as evidence of their work.
- When researching, students and teachers can take images or videos of the sites they visit so that they can later easily find the sites they found most useful.
- When creating blogs, students and teachers can upload images and videos as a visual aid to writings.
- When working on a group project, a student can take a video of the sites they are visiting and then email the video to another group member. Then, all the members will have the information.
- Students can go to Google Earth and make a video of a journey. (For example, follow the travel of a storybook character, design a trip for a story, follow the travel of a historical figure, etc.)
- Teacher can go to a map website and take a video of a travel in history. If this video is saved on a wiki or blog, students can access this information 24/7.
- When a student has a problem of question regarding the internet, they can record a video or image as a visual aid to send along with their question to the teacher. When the teacher can see the page the student is at and what the student is doing, the teacher can then better understand the problem the student is having.
Ideas from others:
rkiker: I screen capture adobe (photoshop, dreamwever, etc) techniques to share with my students. Jing is great software. (via twitter)
Wordle in the Classroom!
February 13, 2009 — mariewestman
The above image is a Wordle of a research paper I wrote for my Special Education and the General Classroom Teacher class. To create this Wordle, I simply copied and pasted my paper on to the website, and then the website generated an image. I was able to modify the font, color, and design of the image untill it became what you see here. Not only does wordles look impressive, they can also be a useful tool in the classroom.
Students can use Wordle to help them revise their writing. They can copy papers, stories, paragraphs, etc, on to the Wordle website and then have a word image generated for them. Since the words that are displayed the largest on the Wordle have been used the most in the given text, students can see what words they are using the most in their text. Do they use the word “the” too many times? Is “he”, “she”, or “it” written too often? Wordle can help students identify this!
Wordle could also be used as a form of art. Thoughts, ideas, and opinions can be presented through words by using Wordle. For me, sometimes my thoughts become trapped inside my head because I cannot come up with the correct sentences or sentence structure to fully communicate my meaning. By using Wordle, I could get out the words that I want to say and let their font size speak for their importanct.
I googled Wordle use in education, and these are some other uses I discovered for using Wordle (Technology In Education Know-How):
- Students can use it to analyze news articles. (What is the article about? What is the gist of the article? Check out this assignment!)
- Field trip reviews! (Have students write a list of what they see, notice, discover. Generate all the students’ lists into a Wordle. Instant ‘What’s important list’ from the trip!)
- Find out what is important to your school. (Do a wordle from your school newspaper, mission statement, articles written by school staff, etc.)
Here’s a Wordle of this blog post!
Websites and ADHD
February 13, 2009 — mariewestmanFor the past few months I have enjoyed learning to how to work with students who have ADHD. Having seen loved ones who have ADHD struggle in school, it is my personal challenge to learn and impliment the best teaching practices so that students with ADHD, and any student for that matter, can be successful in school.
I have learned that students who have ADHD do not have a problem with paying attention, the problem is that they pay attention to many things. It can be hard to keep the focus on one thing for a period of time. I kept this thought in mind when working with one student. This student and I were reading a science book together to learn about genetics. I was completely engaged in the subject as I love the study of genetics, but my student seemed to be completely bored. Realizing that reading the book to this student could have been just as impactful if I had been reading it in French….. I turned my attention to the computer.
I took my student to this website to learn about Medel and his work with pea plants. The website has a great diagram that helped my student understand the genotypes and phenotypes of Mendel’s breeding. Also, my student was really interested in the diagram of the pea plant’s flower. What I found was most helpful was the hyperlinks this website had that my student and I followed when he wanted to learn more information about a topic.
In my case, I found that using a website, rather than a book, kept my student interested, engaged, and hungry to learn. I think that websites and the internet can be a helpful when working with students who have ADHD because their intrest level will help them pay better attention to the subject that they are learning. I play to look for more websites to incorporate into future lessons. Next week we are going to check out Learn.Genetics.
Have any interesting websites about genetics? What to share comments about working with students who have ADHD? I would love to hear from you!
