In the spirit of my previous post Tutorial Designers, Guides, Step-by-Step Instructions: Amplification & Imagination, we are getting into the habit of "creating" by articulating our learning create documentation of learning in various media learn to take the extra step to share that learning online for others to learn from us What About Avatars? from langwitches on Vimeo. Note: I decided what section I wanted to address in this video clip I filmed this video on my iPad I edited the video with iMovie Now, that we have this example… students are excited to see themselves in the movie, it is IMPERATIVE for students to take over the idea… storyboarding.. .filming…. editing… reflecting… presenting… Related posts: Putting Your Best Face Forward

If you are working with young learners, and if you are looking for an option to create stories online, you can try Seussville Story Maker.  It’s a cool story maker that is featuring the characters from Horton. You don’t need to sign up or download anything to use this tool.  Simply go to the website, write your name and title, then choose your scene, music, characters and write your dialogues for each scene. When you are done, you can watch your customized story. The only problem with this tool is that, unfortunately you can’t get a link to share or download it! So what I suggest is that you can use this tool for teacher produced materials. Or you can work together in the classroom and make a whole class story. And then, maybe we can record the screen using Jing or Camtasia. A nice tool with a missing sharing button.  

This summer, I facilitated quite a few workshops about iPads in the classroom. I wanted to make sure that the sessions went BEYOND using apps to play games, replace worksheets and kill & drill activities, but that the focus was transformative and pedagogical use. I am especially thrilled with the slides from the following slide deck… I took my own advice from Presentation Makeover and took all the images used myself…no stock images…the model guiding us through the presentation is my 8 year old niece, Sophia, who was so patient with me as I asked her to model with the iPad. Many times she became engrossed in playing on the iPad that she even forgot that I was taking photos of her. Transformative iPad Use in Early Elementary School from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano The App Evaluation Guide broken down iPad App Evaluation Guide from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano Emphasis on iPads and Pedagogy iPads in Education- Transformative Use and Pedagogy from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano Skip ahead to slide 39 to see examples from the classroom. iPads in Education- Examples from the Classroom from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

MyStoryBook is another web tool to create stories and publish them. MyStoryBook gives you blank pages that you can create your story on. For each page, you can write your text, add pictures from your computer or from the tool’s gallery. You can also draw and add items on your pages. You can add as many pages as you like or delete them. When you are done, you can share the link with others. Our students can create their stories on different topics, teachers can create the stories that students can read and answer some questions or do some role-play activities. Students can create a traditional story using the pictures that they have drawn or with the pictures from the gallery. We can use this tool as a story starter and we can build a story together with our students.  Enjoy!

integratED- Improving eduction with technology will be held next month, October 14-15, 2012, in San Francisco, CA. Registration is open with a 10% & 20% discounts for teams. I will be facilitating two hands-on workshop sessions. See the two session trailers below.

 Spell Up is a cool voice-activated spelling game that is powered by Google. After choosing your level, you start spelling the words that you hear by telling it correctly using your microphone. Each time you correctly spell a world, the words will visually stack on top of each other to form a word tower,  and you will try to build a higher stack at each time you play the game. If you can not hear a word, you can listen to it again, listen to the translation of the word in different languages, hear the pronunciation of the letters or hear the meaning of the word that you are spelling. With each correct spelling, the difficulty level will ramp up. With each level, you will be able to unlock different achievement and earn bonuses and coins to level up faster. If you fail at any of the challenges, your tower will crash down. You can view all your achievements by clicking the trophy icon in the top right corner. You can also download the app from Google Store to play on your smart phones. This game is so much fun to play in the classroom and a great way to practice spelling! Do give it a try with your students!   

After receiving so many positive comments and Re-Tweets of my previous Twitter Policy & Rationale, I am making a more visual pdf file available for download. Twitter Policy & Rationale

If you are interested in digital storytelling, here is a web tool that you can give a try with your students this year.  Story Wars gives you the chance to start writing a story and then share it with others to collaborate on writing it. After signing up, you simply click to start writing your story, when you finish, you can invite your others to contribute to your story. If you want, you can invite people from Facebook and Twitter too. Once another person has added to your story, it has to be approved by you or the others who has contributes to the story before it is added to the story.  With this tool, students can start writing their stories and adding chapters to each others stories as well. Or we can start the story and ask students to add onto it. We can also ask students to contribute to the stories that has been started. Like that, we will make them read and then write on the stories. Great way to practice reading and writing, also a great way to facilitate creativity of our students.

Most teachers at our school assign summer reading to their incoming students. It is a way to remind students of learning, avoid students experiencing the summer slide, prepare them and give background knowledge for a unit of study or let them use the "not so hectic" summer time to read. Our Middle School Language Arts teacher, Deb Kuhr,  reflected on our Faculty Ning about the benefits of summer reading.  She lists the following as the objectives: What Are the Objectives of Summer Reading? To aid your child in becoming a lifelong reader. To provide the opportunity to expand and enrich your child’s reading repertoire. To develop the habit of reading. To challenge students to explore ideas outside their usual experiences. To foster a love for reading. We are walking the walk at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School. We will not ask our students to do something as learners, that we are not willing to do ourselves. Summer reading is one of those thing. We gave our teachers the choice to select one of the following books. 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn by James Bellanca The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Who Owns the Learning by Alan November Daily5 by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser The assignment was to create a "product" in any shape or form that will demonstrate "evidence of learning". What were the take-aways from the book? How would you implement what you learned from the reading in the classroom this upcoming year? During post-planning we brainstormed a few "products" teacher usually assigned students to create after having read the summer book(s) and added a few more ideas. Reflection/ Book Review VoiceThread PowerPoint Trailers Poster Trading Cards Book Covers Compare Contrast/ Graphic Organizers Chronicle Chapter Challenges (Check out Susan B.’s Blog) Techtastic/etc. Prezi MindMap Shelfari Review Newspaper article Timeline Comic Strip Teachers were absolutely free to pick ANY form to demonstrate their learning from summer reading. The only requirement was that they needed to be able to share it. Summer is over…we are all settling into our school routines, and I wanted to share, in one place, all the different creative ways our teachers chose to give evidence of their learning. What makes it so remarkable is very few chose to create the same type of product. It makes me think, why do we then ask  a one-size-fits-all assignment of our students to demonstrate that they read the book(?) or what they learned from the book? Don’t believe me? Just google the term "Summer Reading Assignment". Students will complete a poster of their book read… Students wlll make a video trailer as a book recommendation… Students will write a book review… "In September, all English teachers will assign an essential question essay which will ask you to write about your chosen summer reading texts." " Students are expected to complete assigned summer reading for their English class and level. These books will be discussed and tested in the opening days of the new school year." "Students will choose one of the following books, and write 3 blog entries over the summer." Our teachers created QR codes, SmartBoard files, Wordles, PowerPoint presentations, they wrote blog posts, created a Flickr slideshow, created infographics and info-flyers, they prepared student activities, launched their own professional learning blog, reflected via blog posts, shared a movie and created a prezi, etc… Take a look how our faculty shared their learning over the summer… and remember them as you are making a commitment to upgrade one of your own assignments by giving students the freedom of creating their own evidence of learning…you will be surprised by the creativity and the array of products, styles and colors Who owns the Learning? by Alan November Shelly created a book cover with QR Codes pointing to an audio file of her thoughts… Deb wrote a reflective blog post… Who Owns the Learning? Reflections When teaching characterization as an element of literature, a good deal of class discussion focuses on motivation. It is, after all, what drives a character’s actions. Rarely explicit, motivation is inferred by studying a character’s actions and reactions. Based on conflicts, needs, or possible fears, motivation reveals a character’s personality. So it is with our students.  In today’s session with Dr. Mae Barker, we learned that when addressing the barriers to successful inclusion we must consider motivation. I consciously recalled the many times I have referred to a student’s lack of motivation as an explanation for problem behaviors. Upon reflection, I realize that there is no such thing as a lack of motivation.   Motivation exists; it is the nature of the motivation that causes less than desirable results. And the correlation between my epiphany and Alan November’s book is …? Just as pedagogy evolves and paradigms shift, the climate of learning changes. Today, our students approach learning as task specific and assessment driven; knowledge for knowledge’s sake is no more.  Once an assignment is completed and a grade earned, it is dismissed.  How can there be enlightenment without reflection? Substance without cultivation?  Quality without caring?  It is time to transform the climate, and Alan November proffers a plan in Who Owns the Learning?. [...] Silvia shared an info-flyer summarizing the six roles to empower student learners. 21st Century Learning by James Bellanca Karin wrote a a reflection and created an infographic: For my summer reading assignment, I decided to focus on "The Role of Professional Learning Communities in Advancing 21st Century Skills" by Dufour and Dufour. It nicely continues where I left off during my post-planning presentation on my vision for our library (library-classroom collaboration on lessons/units). However, in their chapter, the authors take the collaboration idea even further by calling for the implementation of permanent/ongoing Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). The authors argue that the "most appropriate environment for teaching 21st century skills" are PLCs as they allow us to model those skills (inquiry, critical thinking, problem solving) for our students. PLC implementation requires a change in school culture. Yes, school culture can only change if educator behavior changes. Key phrases mentioned throughout the chapter are common goals, working interdependently, and mutual accountability — all indicators of behavior change. Please see my infographic to find out about the concept, necessary environment, and benefits of PLCs as stated by Dufour and Dufour. Arlene created a slideshow on Flickr , titled "Then and Now" with images she took. Susan created a "TechTastic" activity for her students to complete. I used the chapter "Teach Less, Learn More", added some of  another text I read, "Reforming Secondary Science Instruction", and a bit of Bloom’s Taxonomy to inspire me to create new Chapter Challenges for the year.  My newest creation, "Appsolutely Techifying" involves the student creating 3 new apps to solve problems related to the particular chapter we’re studying.  The text simply reinforced the idea that students who create (and extend) from the original information benefit in long term and more in-depth ways.  The technological requirements involved in completing the project occur on an individual level and remain open to be tailored to each student’s needs and choices.  To me, this reflects the perfect marriage of technology use AND a number of diverse other skills! Judy chose to test Alan November’s web literacy strategies      As a social studies teacher I was especially impacted by a section in Alan November’s book Who Owns the Learning? and how it could directly be applied to our study of current events/history.  Even in past years when our students searched news stories using international new sources like BBC and Al-Jazeera, we still always found the information to be fairly Americanized-in one November chapter I learned why!  First, google uses our own laptops and their previous searches-even buying habits!- to inform our searches.  My search and your search will elicit a different order of responses based on our previous search history!  Second, if you want to gain a real non-American perspective on a news story…one can enter the prefix of the root zone data base and it will tell you how a country or area reacts to an issue.  To test that hypothesis I researched the subject of the events in Syria-bringing up the top news story on that topic in Syria itself, the U. S., and in Israel.  To create a common context on actually different stories, I then created a wordle for each of the top Syria stories of Israel, the U. S., and Syria on that day.  By examining the emphasized words of each story, it was extremely interesting to note the differing perspective of each country on the topic of Syria for that day.  I plan to make regular use of this type of search in all types of current and historical research in all my classes to enhance our global perspective in all we do. Russian Newspaper   Israeli Newspaper USA Newspaper Edith created a PowerPoint summarizing and reflecting on what she learned from the book: While many ideas in the book 21st Century Learning were relevant and interesting to me two  concepts that really resonated with me were actually in the introduction. "A  21st century education must be tied to outcomes, in terms of proficiency in core subject knowledge and 21st century skills that are expected and highly valued in school, work, and community settings.’ 21st century skills can not  and should no replace core subject knowledge, rather they expand and enhance students knowledge of these core concepts. Without basic writing skills,  a student can not express themselves on a blog. Without basic math skills, a student can not create a graph. 21st Century learning skills involve critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity. These skills may be 21st century but they are also rooted in the most basic Jewish learning. Torah study is based on the ability to question and problem solve. [...] Pamela and Jeanine created a Prezi with their main take-aways from the book Copy of 21st Century Skills on Prezi Robin created her first PowerPoint Presentation Lauren created a Wordle for my book club project. I did the Alan November chapter about Technology Rich, Information Poor. This was all about how to use the technology that we have in an authentic, self-directed way that makes the users responsible for the learning. We want to make the assignments worthwhile and try to have global communication. It is a different way to start thinking. The quote that stood out to me was teach less, learn more. Technology should be redefining the learner and the teacher. Don’t be afraid of change. Daily 5 by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser Andrea blogged on her professional blog, created a visual below, summarizing the Foundations of the Daily 5 and created a Pinterest Board to curate Daily 5 resources visually.   I think that what I most appreciate about the Daily 5 is summarized in this image. I look at those children, so engaged and content to be sharing a book. This is what I most hope to create and encourage for and in each of our students- a deep, personal love of all that is literacy- reading, writing, learning, sharing ideas, enjoying words and languages. To my way of thinking, this also embodies the best of what we have been calling "21st century learning." We repeat the phrase "it’s not about the tool, it’s about the learning" in some form or another, again and again. But I think the Daily 5 provides a great breaking-off point. You could easily do the Daily 5 without using any tech tools or you could use lots of tech tools to provide great enhancements. The foundations of the Daily 5, are the same as the best examples of tech-infused learning: simply "purpose + choice = motivation." [...] Liat created a SmartBoard Notebook for her Hebrew class , so they can keep track of each student. After reading the Daily 5, I decided to create (with the help of Silvia) a chart to keep up with each student’s progress.  This chart will help me assess at any time which activity of the Daily 5 were completed by the student.  I plan to duplicate this chart for each week so there is a record of their activities.  This is a Notebook file in which each student clicks on each cell (going across) as they complete each activity. Stephanie took the plunge and started her on professional learning blog, Teach, Blog and Tweet,  where she intends to document the process, trials and errors of implementing what she has learned from the Daily5. Amy reflected on her blog and added visuals to illustrate the point. The authors of The Daily Five, Gail and Joan, feel that it’s essential to spend focused classroom time teaching kids how to choose books that are a "good fit" for them. They realized that a good-fit book meant more than the student simply being able to read most of the words correctly. So they created the "I PICK" strategy. To teach this strategy, Gail and Joan developed the following demonstration: Choosing the right book is like choosing the right pair of shoes. "Each pair of shoes has its purpose." This is where they show and discuss different types of shoes (high heels, winter boots, flip flops, etc). The purpose for choosing a book could be to learn about a certain topic or just to read for fun. [...] Stephanie wrote a series of blog posts, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Jo-Ann blogged  extensively on the Ning: In chapter one, Gladwell states that Outliers are defined by the values of the world they inhabit and the people that surround them. This will profoundly determine their future sense of self and identity. He ends the book by simplifying this idea into the fact that Outliers are products of history and community, combined with opportunity and legacy. Some of his ideas are easy and clear-cut to understand (chapters 1 through 3). I found chapter 4 intriguing, chapters 5 and 6 not very relevant to "cultural legacy" and chapters 7 through 9 were great. The epilogue explores his ancestry and ties all his ideas together by examining five generations of his family and how external situations provided positive opportunities for personal growth through higher education. [...] Seth created a video reflection Outliers- 21st Century Book Club Presentation from MJGDS Classrooms on Vimeo.

There are many apps and web tools that you can share your voice with. I like using Vocaroo web tool, it’s pretty easy to record and share your voice with a link, you can also use your smart phone to record and share it via mail. And Clyp is another web tool and app that you can share your voice with others. After signing up using your Facebook account which I think is the only drawback of this tool, you can record your voice as long as you like and then share it with others with a link. You can also download it as well. Clyp is also offering free app on Google Play and AppStore.   This tool can be used for getting feedback from the students or for evaluating speaking. We can ask students to interview their parents on certain topics, retell a story or answer certain questions that we have asked. There are so many other possibilities to use this tool. Just give it a try. 

Why and how to use  Twitter in the Classroom has been occupying me for a while now. I have written about my thoughts in  Twitter Policy and Rational and  Guide to Twitter in the K-8 Classroom. A post for Twitter in K-2 is also in the making (stay tuned). As I am on a Twitter adventure with our 4th and 5th graders and their teachers @teitelbaumsteph & @shellyzavon, I am breaking down steps to tweeting and the process of learning during Tweeting as a classroom.  Ryan Bretag’s post Twitter for Thinking Publicly echoed beautifully my thoughts about the "use of Twitter beyond the usual lower level posting assignments, message blasting, or basic discussion forum-like uses." Terry Heick came up with a fabulous Twitter Spectrum on Edudemic to include Higher Order Thinking Skills. He divided tweets up into three sections: watch talk produce While many of his 25 ways to use Twitter in the classroom in the Talk and Produce section are geared towards Middle and High School, I believe that all the "Watch" examples are stepping stones for our younger students who are tweeting as a class.  In the "Talk" and "Produce" sections, I can also see ways that the examples can be tweaked and adapted for elementary grades. Mark Sample published in 2009 (!) a Twitter Adoption Matrix from the use of Twitter by his University students. What I like about the matrix is the process students go through, as they move from passive tweeting to active tweeting and from monologic to dialogic tweeting. Mark gives examples of each stage, that I can see also adaptable to tweeting with K-8 Classrooms. For my own understanding of the Tweeting process for Elementary & Middle School students, I  created another image in the series "It’s NOT About the Tools. It’s About the Skills. What are the skills and literacies, I want my students to be exposed to and develop? From this graphic, my mind wandered to breaking the steps down even further. Below you can see me visualization of a Twitter routine we are trying to establish in our elementary and Middle School classrooms (a time when our students are too young to have their own Twitter accounts). By tweeting with our students, we expose them to: social networking strategies support their growth as global digital citizens model focused, clear writing What routines have you established if you are tweeting with your students as a class? What are some of your tweetable moments that go beyond a "We went to Art today and drew a picture" tweet?  

If you are looking for a web tool that will help you to summarize what is on a website or on an article, here is Skim.it.  After signing up, Skim.it will hep you to get a 100 word of summary of the website. You simply copy and paste the link on the web tool and the tool creates the summary for you and pastes on your canvas. You can create different canvas to save your summaries to read them later or share them with others. You can also download the Chrome extension and use it on your browser. I like this tool as it is very user friendly  and a great way to skim websites for a better view. This tool can be suggested students to get an idea of a website before spending too much on if it is useful or not. Also great way to summarize articles online.

If you are working on spelling or if you are hosting a spelling competition with your students, here is a cool website that you can work on spelling with your students: SpellingBeetheGame   The spelling game asks you to choose one of the real pictured characters and then you can play the game by writing the words that you hear on your keyboard.  To hear the word, you simply to click on the hear word, you can also listen the definition of the word or you can listen the word in a sentence. With your each correct spelling, you can advance to the next round to win the game.  A cool game that you can offer your students to play at home or you can play it in the classroom in a competitive way!      

Andrea Hernandez, known as edtechworkshop in the blogger- and Twittersphere has written a thought provoking blogpost about Where’s The Authentic Audience?  She takes a closer look at the buzz word circulating among blogging educators and classrooms and asks tough questions. What happens when there is no audience coming to your or your students’ blogs? She elaborates her point by reflecting on the importance of quality work, connected teachers, give and take, writing with an audience in mind, digital literacy and humility. I am honored that she has allowed me to cross post her article here on Langwitches ( I do not have many guest posts on Langwitches). I encourage you to head over to her blog EdTechWorkshop and chime into the conversation already pouring into the comment section. While you are there, subscribe to Andrea’s RSS feed. If you have never commented on  a blog post, but her words resonate with you, take that extra step to put YOUR response into words and join the conversation to answer WHERE is the authentic audience? Have you seen the "buzzword bingo" games that go around at conferences? According to Wikipedia, a buzzword has the characteristics of: Intentional vagueness. Their positive connotations prevents questioning of intent.  A desire to impress a judge, an examiner, an audience, or a readership, or to win an argument, through name-dropping of esoteric and poorly understood terms in an attempt to inflate trivial ideas to something of importance.  http://www.techwithintent.com/2012/06/iste-bingo-edtech-buzzwords/ One of these concepts, that is starting to feel like a buzzword to me,  is "authentic audience." You’ve heard it. I’ve said it. Students used to turn in work to the teacher, the audience of one. But blogs, wikis and other tools have changed all that. Now our students can share their work with (say it with me) "an authentic global audience." Really? There is no doubt that student’s work MUST be authentic and that writing for real communication is highly motivating. Take blogging for example.  Bloggers write to communicate, share and flesh out ideas. If the communication is one-way, learning may still occur. But without feedback and conversation, blogging is only slightly different than writing in a journal. If only the teacher reads and comments, how is blogging different than the "audience of one?" What does this mean for student bloggers? What does it take to make the process truly authentic and truly interactive? I asked on Twitter but got no response…ironic? Or case in point? Quality Work- There are only so many people "out there" who want to read poorly written, lacking-in-passion posts with titles like "Journal #5." This poses a problem for teachers who are trying to embrace tools, but also looking for ways to structure writing assignments. Posting to a blog does not guarantee either student motivation or high quality work. How much choice are students given in the assignment? How much teacher guidance goes into the final product? I don’t propose a canned solution. Like most dilemmas in education, every teacher has to figure this out by asking, "What will work for each individual student in my class?" Connected Teachers- As teachers, we know the power of modeling. If we don’t know or understand something, how can we teach it? Those teachers who, themselves,  have the strongest networks are the most successful with connecting their students in all kinds of ways. In my role, as teacher of teachers, it is not enough for me to set up blogs and teach the students and teachers to use them. If the teachers who assign the blog posts don’t understand blogging in a deep, experiential way, the assignment is just that- a homework assignment. Give and Take- In a conversation we talk and listen. We ask questions and care about the answers. Talking to myself is not a conversation. In the edublogosphere are we guilty of talking too much and interacting too little? How many bloggers leave regular comments for others? How many teachers who tweet and share the work of their own students, seeking comments and feedback from others, take the time to respond when someone else asks? Are we teaching our students to read the posts of other students? Are we taking the time to model and teach quality commenting? Are we assigning students to interact with others or just to write their own posts? Are we, as teachers, taking responsibility to mentor and interact with students other than our own? Writing with the Audience in Mind- One thing that I have noticed over and over again, with students of all ages is the way they end a story or video or other project with the words, "I hope you like it" or "I hope you enjoy my story." They ARE innately creating with an audience in mind. And they want the audience to connect with their work. But we know that it’s not enough to hope. We have to learn to use our words and images in ways that draw the attention we seek. We need to teach our students good writing, and good writing has a purpose and an audience in mind. Digital Literacy- Digital writing is different. I am still learning this myself, as I know I am too wordy. In high school and college I wasn’t wordy enough and had to force myself to say more to fill x pages or words to fulfill the assignment. The jury is still out on whether the Internet is making us shallower, but there is little doubt that our eyes are not drawn to endless lines of text on the digital page. Are we teaching students to use bullet points, subtitles and images? Are we teaching them to write succinctly and powerfully? Humility- One of the parents at our school brought up the issue of humility. I thought it was an astute observation- that so much of online behavior is attention-seeking. We post something on Facebook because we hope it will be liked. We are excited for the "success" of a video gone viral. Is this the right measuring stick for work of meaning and depth, work that shows quality and growth?  How do we help students develop positive character values, such as patience and humility, in this instant, connected world? These are just a few points to consider. What have I forgotten?

Here is an amazing resource for young learners who are learning to read: It is Teach Your Monster to Read. This is an online program where kids create their own monsters and play fun games to play with it. As a teacher, you can create accounts for your students to play games. Children can learn letters and sounds and the games help children to combine the sound into the words as the kids play the games. As the children play games, they can earn some prizes such as hats, underwear, cakes etc. Like that, the students work on fixing their monster’s spaceships to go home at the end.  This game is a great way to teach and assess basic reading skills in a fun way. The game is fun, colorful and enchanting to play!      

State of our School Address (regarding Blogging) 3 years ago, we created blogs (WordPress platform) for ALL classroom teachers and resources. There was an expectation for teachers to be at least on the first step of the blogging ladder, illustrated in the image below. Their classroom blog needed to be, as a minimum,  a replacement of a weekly folder filled with parent-school communication and homework assignments. Teachers were expected to learn how to update their blogs (at least on a weekly basis), insert images and videos and categorize their blog posts. (Getting to Know your Blog- A Beginner’s How To Guide) This was a steep learning curve for some teachers. In addition,  it was extra time consuming, as it was taking teachers longer time to learn and be comfortable with uploading and inserting images, creating photo galleries, creating links, posting, etc. Then the question shifted from How to We Did it… We Built It…Will They Come? Some teachers continued to email parents weekly, pointing them to the blog to look at images and news, others resorted to "bribing" students with extra credit if their parents went on the blog, yet another class created a  Blog Tutorial for Parents & Grandparents video. In preparation for our students to become actively involved in contributing on the classroom blogs, as a school, we needed to Update & Upgrade Our School’s Media & Publishing Release in order to reflect the shift from students as consumers to students as producers. Some teachers felt ready sooner than others, to climb the next step on the ladder. They opened their classroom blog up for comments to their students. They started to shift from merely pushing out information to parents and students to see the opportunity for a conversation. Teachers were learning to, not only post information, but posing questions for students, encouraging them to think and to participate in a virtual conversation. - Preparing Students for Commenting with Wall Blogging. Once students were well on their way to begin. They were comfortable in logging into their accounts, reading posts and submitting a commenting, the next step was to focus on the QUALITY of their writing. What constitutes a quality comment? One class answered this question by creating a newscast- Quality Commenting Video by Third Graders The next step on the classroom blogging ladder was for not only the teacher to produce content/posts, but for students to take ownership. For one teacher, it meant the realization that her classroom job list was in need of a 21st century update What is… What Will Be Obsolete…in Second Grade? Some teachers: had daily  student "bloggers",  who were in charge of updating the classroom blog, being the Official Scribe of the day. had students take (handwritten notes) summarizing the daily learning during each subject area, to be then typed and uploaded on Friday to the blog (younger grades). highlighted best work from students as it was produced. put students in charge of photographing classroom/resource activities and learning taking place during the day, the class discussed and voted on the final images to be uploaded at the end of the day and write a short blurb to each image. - Let’s Ask the Kids: 2nd Grade Bloggers Some classroom blogs were growing beyond homework assignment, as teachers found opportunities to amplify the use of their virtual spaces to get kids involved and engaged in conversation Do Killer Whaler belong in Captivity? (7th Grade) Centimeters and Meters (3rd Grade) As commenting and posting to the classroom blog became the routine, especially in the upper elementary grades, students were eager to "earn" their own blogs. It was up to the teacher to set the criteria for students to earn them (ex.5 quality posts moderated and published on the classroom blog). Once having earned that promotion, students became administrators of their own blogfolio , a combination of an online portfolio and a learning blog. Students were able to choose their own theme from a variety of pre-approved themes available. They chose their own title and tagline, and wrote their About Page. It takes time for the faculty to see that the students’ blogfolios are NOT a project from/for the Language Arts class. We are not there yet.Teachers, still need to take advantage of pulling in resource teachers and student experiences. Non-Language Arts teachers still need to realize that the blog is a platform for learning for THEIR students too. All this is a process for teachers and students to work through. We had Professional Development workshops helping teachers subscribe to RSS feeds (Subscribing via RSS & Google Reader to Classroom Blogs) in order to streamline the process of reading AND giving feedback to all their students. This is a daunting task for many teachers, as they are feeling overwhelmed. I have met too many teachers (at other schools) who, precisely for that reason, gave up blogging with their students. It was simply too much work to read and sift through all the writing and commenting (!!). We are committed to working through this at our school though. We are concentrating on finding new ways to embed the reading, the writing, the commenting, the conversation into the "way we do things", not something we do in addition. I created the following infographic to demonstrate the flow of blogging in the classroom. The hope is to deflect from the emphasis on technology and the "translation" from analog work to digital work during the blogging process. You can download the infographic as a pdf file. There is so much to consider when blogging with your students. You will be able to read about some, some you will hear from teaches who are already blogging and some things you will just have to experience and go through for yourself in order to make it work for you and your students. What we do know, is that no teacher can attend a 3 hour workshop on blogging and is ready to blog with their students the following Monday. I wrote extensively about the process for Stepping it Up- Learning About Blogs FOR your Student as a guide for teachers who want to see blogging as a platform for their own professional development and as a medium for student learning. Ann Davis, on her blog wrote a post titled "Rationale for Educational Blogging", an article (and the following comments) worth reading! David Jakes responds in the comment section speaking directly to the teachers "who have kids write for the refrigerator". Ann Davis’ quote of "It is not just a matter of transferring classroom writing into digital spaces", resonates deeply with me. It is a challenge, that we are continuously reflecting on in school, as learning and literacy coaches, but need to do a better job in helping faculty work through this as well. Tough questions need to bubble up  to the surface:  Where it the Authentic Audience?  by Andrea Hernandez What does it mean when students, teachers, parents feel "blogged out"? How do we prevent student blogfolios from becoming an accumulation of "Homework for Thursday", "Homework for Friday" posts? Where do we go from here? We will continue to seek the following through our blogs: quality writing and commenting documentation of the learning process hub for learning artifacts reflections meaningful discussion metacognition authentic feedback global awareness and connectedness We will encourage, support and participate in activities that will foster the above goals. Examples: quad-blogging commenting mentor program blogging buddies professional blogs for our educators to build reflective teaching practices, connections to a global network of educators and building a personal brand What are some goals for your blogging program at school? What are some of your tough issues and questions you are working through?

If you would like to toss a coin and if you don’t have one, you may want to use these three cool tools to virtually decide who to start. JustFlipaCoin immediately tosses a coin for you to see if it is heads or tails. Simply go to the website and click on the coin. It’s pretty simple. Facade gives us another way to toss a coin. You can also write what to do or not to do if it is heads or tails. The last one is Ken White’s Coin Flipping website. Here, you can toss more than 1 coins which is cool! Enjoy!

image licensed under Creative Commons by Darren Kuropatwa What a powerful quote by Chris Lehmann! What a stunning image by Darren Kuropatwa! It speaks directly to the urgency in education to make SHARING part of the literacy fluency (think>experience >reflect>create>share> ) The heart of the quote connects me to Dean Shareski’s K-12 Online conference keynote titled "Sharing, the Moral Imperative" [ as Educators]. When I first started teaching, I was accused of bragging to my colleagues as I shared a "Mock Application for a Foreign Exchange Year" package that I had created for my 8th grade Spanish students. I was told by a colleague, that "this is NOT done here at the school. Teachers keep their material to themselves in order not to brag". I was told to keep that in mind before I ever thought of bringing something I had created up again. If I would have followed her advice, Langwitches Blog would have never existed! So, please don’t take the following as "bragging". It is truly not meant as such, but to illustrate a point: The power of a network and the reach it can have. In preparation to a workshop, I will be facilitating about Twitter at the integratED conference in San Francisco, I uploaded a slide deck to SlideShare. I then tweeted the link to the slides. I watched in amazement, as the views climbed from 3000 to 6000 in the first few hours after the upload. Then 12000, 20000 and now after 48 hours over 30000 views. These numbers sound insane to me. Here I am working in my home office, taking pictures of a blue little bird in my backyard… and a few hours later thousands and thousands of people have seen them. The power of sharing and the amplified reach of sharing is real! Let’s connect this "feeling of amplified reach" back to Chris Lehmann’s quote from above: It is no longer enough to do powerful work if no one sees it. What if I would have not uploaded the slides? What if I would not have tweeted it out? What if I would have "limited the slides" to the people attending my workshop in San Francisco next week? Sharing does not seem to come natural to many. Sharing is even a "cultural thing". The existence or  comfort level of sharing varies according to countries, cultures, even among generations. How do we promote a culture of sharing in education? How do we make it the "natural thing" to do next? How do we bring the ones on board, who feel they have nothing to share? How do we approach the "relatively new" subject of amplified sharing? So many questions… If the power of collaboration and sharing as an educator is of interest to you, take a look at Alec Couros‘ blog post "The Story of an Idea" and several blog posts here on Langwitches linked from "What Do You Have to Lose?". I am "sharing" the Twitter workshop slide deck below. R U Ready 4TwitterII from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

We teachers, from time to time, assign students to keep a diary specially when it is holiday time. Although my favorite is Penzu as an online diary, Diary web tool seems promising as well.  After signing up, Diary gives you an online board where you can immediately start taking notes and attaching images. To add more pages to your diary, you simply click on the + button. Your diary will be private but you can share it with others on social sharing websites. Give it a try to explore the possibilities. 

As teachers, we all know that we should create time to reflect on our professional practices… we need to experience the process of reflecting, in order to be able to guide our students… ….but what get’s cut the easiest from our schedule if there is little time available? How can we see reflection as a high priority item on our never ending list of things to do? How can we get into the habit of making reflection time?   After two intense days at a recent conference, with most participants probably on information overload, Darren Hudgins (the conference organizer and leader) wanted to make a point and encouraged the attendees, not only to experience the conference (which was very hands on), but also to take the time to reflect. As the organizer, he built time in the schedule to reflect on our experience! Darren gave us 10 minutes of UNINTERRUPTED time to reflect, to write…He called it "Content Vomit" (yes…very graphic). He reminded us, that we could clean it up later… It was genius of him to remind the teachers to focus on writing and NOT to check their emails, their twitter stream… He challenged everyone to concentrate to reflect during that time. My initial goals were to take a closer look at how conference attendees learn for sustainable change. I took the given time to reflect on what I knew and wanted to learn about reflecting as an educator. Here are some of my unedited thoughts during these 10 minutes of reflection time: Don’t let audience leave without having made a commitment to "one thing they will implement" when they get back to their routine, to their school, to their lives. Do people know how to reflect?…. give them samples of reflection… prompts…. practice to just let go and just write… ok to clean it up later…. Feels weird  to write and not able to cross link…to not being able to open up new tab to look for other resources to bring into my writing… I admit , that my fingers automatically wanted to switch to my Tweetdeck (just quick to check) How can you help to make this exercise a quality reflection for attendees? How can you help them see that sharing is a vital new part/natural sequence / part of fluency in education : experience >reflect > share What new dimension does shared reflection bring to the table? Can anyone reflect in writing? Are some people better/more natural at reflecting than others? Why do people have an aversion to reflecting ?or to reflecting publicly? Is 10 minutes of uninterrupted time to write too much? too little? What will the feedback from other participants be? The math teachers? The ones who do not write much in their everyday lives? How sustainable is this reflection? How many will go back and integrate it in their own learning? Do teachers need to know how to reflect and be in the habit of reflecting for themselves in order to encourage a reflective culture in their classroom? Darren uses the above quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "A goal without a plan is a wish". Making reflecting a priority is allowing ourselves the time to make a plan with the goal of being and growing as a professional educator! We were given three choices of "roadmaps" to use for our reflection: Choice 1: Four Dimensions of Reflective Learning by Karen Barnstable I.  Thinking Back II. Thinking Forward III. Thinking Inward IV. Thinking Outward Choice Two: What? So What? What? Describe the experience; outline what happened that compelled you to think about and change your behavior (i.e. learn). So What? Describe what difference it makes; outline what impact or meaning it has for you (or why it should matter to others). Now What? Describe what’s in store for the future now that you’ve learned from this experience; outline what you are going to do to continue your professional development in light of this learning. Choice 3- Peter Pappas Taxonomy of Reflection Bloom’s Remembering - Reflection: What did I do? Bloom’s Understanding - Reflection: What was important about what I did? Did I meet my goals? Bloom’s Applying - Reflection: When did I do this before? Where could I use this again? Bloom’s Analyzing - Reflection: Do I see any patterns or relationships in what I did? Bloom’s Evaluating - Reflection: How well did I do? What worked? What do I need to improve? Bloom’s Creating - Reflection: What should I do next? What’s my plan / design? OK, now I am switching gear and moving from the importance of reflection for us as professional educators and life long learners to embedding reflective practices in student learning.  I am following in Peter Pappas’ footsteps, when I want to distinguish between reflections for teachers and reflections for students. How can we prepare our students to become life long reflective learners? What are the benchmarks for each grade level to grow as a reflective learner? Chrissy Hellyer used the following prompts for her fifth grade students. I am working with our Kindergarten teacher on creating a starting point to expose, model, coach, guide and document (type for them, record them with audio/video, etc.) their reflection. We are looking for collaboration partners in the lower elementary school to create a guide for reflective practices in connection with their blogs or portfolios. If interested please tweet @langwitches or contact me via the blog. Further resources about reflection: A Taxonomy of Reflection: Critical Thinking For Students, Teachers, and Principals by Peter Pappas Reflection for Learning: Why Reflect? by Helen Barrett Knowing ourselves enables us to teach others by Rhonda Bondie VoiceThread as Digital Portfolio by Chrissy Hellyer Reflection Toolkit (PDF), Northwest Service Academy, Metro Center, Portland, OR Prezi by Peter Pappas The Reflective School by Peter Pappas on Prezi

If you are looking for a cool website that you would like to recommend your students to practice listening in a nice way, here is Just Books Read ALoud. The website has many read aloud books that you can choose from. As you listen to the books, you can see the pictures of the stories and sometimes the text that goes along with it. The stories have been read by native speakers and many of them has great talent in telling the stories. You can search books by length, age, narrator, level and author. This site can be recommended to parents who would like to help their children to practice English at home. Students can be assigned to listen to one of the books and retell it at home or can be given some questions to answer. Loved this website and hope you enjoy this too!

In a post, titled It’s All About Sharing and Collaborating, I wrote about a Russian educator who had translated material from Langwitches into his language in order to SHARE the content with his colleagues who spoke no English.  Alec Couros, told the Amazing Story of Openness  and his diagram of the Networked Teacher as it has been translated into many languages now. It am tremendously honored, when my work gets AMPLIFIED into other languages, reaching educators, I would not have reached otherwise. Dico Krommenhoek  contacted me a few days ago via Twitter. I was thrilled to give permission, without hesitation, when he asked to translate the iPad App Evaluation checklist into Dutch. It gives me a sense of COLLABORATION across time, space and language, when I can "teach" via my work and materials without ever speaking the same language or meeting these teachers face to face. This is a beauty of CREATIVE COMMONS and an amazing story of openness (as Alec Couros puts it). That is why my work gives me satisfaction… You can download the pdf file of the checklist in Dutch here.  

Here is a cool tool that I have learnt from my dear friend, Berna. If you are looking for an app that will help you to learn and practice vocabulary, Biscuit can be a great tool for that and it’s free, at least for now! With this app, you can create your own vocabulary list and it will give you the definitions immediately. You can keep that list and you can get notifications on your smart phones that will remind you the word and show you the definition. You can also take a picture and Biscuit app will list all the words on that picture. You can save this list, also you can delete the words that you don’t want from the same list. You can also use this app as a dictionary, simply write the word and it will give you the definition.  Biscuit has been designed as an extension of Evernote. So it’s not a surprise that Biscuit app is great!!  This app is available both on AppStore and Google Play. It is just very useful and fun for our learners and this is something that we can suggest actually anyone who is learning a new language.     

Our third graders are learning about different communities.They have spoken via Skype with classes from a suburb of Los Angeles, CA , an rural community in Missouri and a city, Weatherford, TX. The latest connection was with Anna Faridaku, a teacher and children’s book author from Indonesia.  Students took turns speaking with Anna, who was just amazing in connecting (via the screen) to the kids, answering and asking questions. She engaged them  and pushed them to deeper thinking about similarities and differences about our communities. Will Richardson talks about Three starting points to think differently about "Learning. In addition to "Thinning the Classroom Wall" and "Being Transparent", he lists "Talking to Strangers" as one of the starting point! Being able to connect and learn with strangers is an important skill for all of us, and especially for a generation that will be learning online for the rest of their lives. The above image visualizes how we are taking learning about a country from only looking at a map and reading about it in a book to talking to a "stranger "who lives in that country. We still used the map and books for background knowledge and preparation, but information is amplified: Information comes from a primary source Information is fluid, not rigid, it will adjust to the questions the students have  (a book will only hold the information that editors have decided on including and will not magically switch in front of your eyes ) Information can take on directions, tailored to your students’ interests Information can "Talking to Strangers" is a critical skill to possess. It contributes to information fluency. It so dramatically contrasts the drill we heard over and over again from our parents. We used to be taught "DON’T talk to strangers" and now need the skills to do precisely that. Disclaimer: I am not talking about talking to a stranger in a dark alley at night!