Cartoons in the Classroom!

Found a wonder blog that features lots of lovely tools for technology in education. Not sure how I happened upon Creating Comics Online, but I'm glad I did: cartooning makes teaching storyboard design relevant, and the online tools are much easier than demonstrating my stick figure storyboards and having students draw on sheets of paper.

He ends the article with 20 Ways to Use Comics in Your Classroom and More than 100 Editorial Cartoon Lesson Plans which makes cartooning immediately relevant to the classroom.

Embedding Blogger into Google Sites

I wanted to embed my Blogger into my Google Site without reinventing the wheel...this article provided the code to make it happen.

Single feed from Blogger

1. Insert> More Gadgets > Search for "Generic Feed Reader"
2. insert "your blog url"/atom.xml ---> Blogger's built-in RSS feed

Feeds from Multiple  blogs

1. Insert > More Gadgets > Search for "RSS News Feed Scoller"
2. add blogs to gadget

Include gadget for Google Sites

I've been using [free] Google Sites for years to organize my lessons, present to students, and have students access resources and lessons. Google Pages, the precursor to Google Sites, was more flexible in formatting different pages: I had 1 site but could change the design of individual pages. Because Google Sites does not have this functionality (I really needed to differentiate between my regular site and pages for a Computer Science Education Week), I built a new site just for CS Ed Week. The problem was how to direct students to the site without too much interference in the normal procedure (ie. going to the regular website).

Solutions

• refresh the homepage to the new website: functionality not available
• embed the new site: embed did not work but ....
• Solution: Include gadget: embeds a URL like an iframe

Not as elegant as a dynamic refresh, but it kept the interface familiar and I could direct students to working from that website.

Update: Robotics are the new programming

I read somewhere [link coming] that there is grant money for student robotics competitions to prepare the next generation of computer scientists.

Robotics are the new programming

At the Grace Hopper Conference 2010 I attended a workshop on getting girls in grades 4-12 excited about computing, and 2 of the 4 technologies featured used robotics of some sort.

Scratch & Alice are programming languages, and allow students to make incredible animations (2D and 3D respectively) limited only by their imaginations.There are lots of programming challenges for students to participate in throughout the year to really flex their programming muscles.

Pico Cricket & Pleo Dinosaur kits were passed around for us to program and play with...total fun! During a meeting with my peer computer teachers I also learned about Pico Boards, which are like Pico Cricket connections but powered by Scratch...totally awesome...gotta get a few!!!

Then this article about a robotics lesson plan came in my e-mail and I now know that robotics are the next big thing in student computing. Of course it makes sense: artificial intelligence has remained behind the scenes in computing, we have a number of domestic robots (the vacuumers and floor cleaners, and toys) that make us more comfortable with independently operating machines. So the next wave of computers is to develop programmers who are comfortable and familiar with robotics. This means we technology teachers have to step our game up!

Google Bookmarks

I've been using Google Bookmarks to organize my classroom bookmarks. I like that Google Bookmarks (G.Books) allows me to create folders instead of insisting on using it's search box to find what I've categorized: that used to drive me crazy with Gmail so I label important messages and only search using the iPod Touch.

I used del.icio.us (aka delicious.com), but did not separate work and personal bookmarks.

Adding Interactive Internet Safety Lessons

I now have to practice what I preach: I have a severely learning disabled student in my class for whom I CANNOT give text-based lessons. In addition we read an article in our staff meeting about the purpose of homework and types and length of assignments we should give students. All of this coalesced in my looking for interactive lessons on cyber safety.

• BBC WonderWebWorld
  Impressed by Dance Mat Typing I Google'd "bbc internet safety" and found this site.
• TEA - Internet Safety - Activities and Lessons
  Texas once again leading the way with links to really great resources
• Teachers First
  Haven't reviewed because the first few were already on TEA site
• DMOZ
  Really came through on interactive sites
  
  

We increasingly discuss students who grew up in a multimedia, multi-modal world, yet because we teachers grew up in the text age and are comfortable in the text age, we tend to give students...text. The test will be if students retain the internet safety lessons better through an interactive module than with reading through.