Incorporate Classmates' Strategies

In attempts to increase traffic to this blog, I have tried 2 new strategies that where shared to me.

One was "Ping-o-matic". This is a service that will update different search engines that your blog has been updated.

Another strategy that I tried was using Classroom 2.0 to spread my blog through commenting on relevant discussions.

This project was somewhat helpful to my professional development. It has caused me to read and become more interested in education blogs. I have found many resources and articles that where interesting to me and I have gone back to visit them again in my own free time. But I this this project would be much more helpful to me if I was in a long term position where I could post my findings of how technology has effected my classroom.

Printer Restrictions?

Today in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classroom, the students where doing a research project. I noticed something that they where doing way too much of:

Printing

Not to mention that most of the pages where not needed. They where either blank or didn't have the information that was needed.

What I would suggest is to have a short mini lesson on how to get the information they want without wasting too much paper.

The lesson would include how to copy and paste text from the site to a word document. Also what is important to copy and paste such as the site you got it from, pictures that will be helpful, paragraphs that contain your information and perhaps some surrounding paragraphs as well.

This would be a great mini lesson for earth day for the important of not being wasteful.

Seek out $$$

For anyone looking for a way to fund raise money or obtain grants for their school, this could be a great resource.

Listed are sites that vary in how they give grants and fund raise. Some depends on votes, while others rely on families and teachers shopping at Target.

Other helpful resources such as how to write a grant can also be seen at this web page.

Another Example of Twitter in the Classroom

This is a great study of how Twitter has enhanced the learning experience in the college setting. How can this benefit high school or younger students? I think the constant updates and tutoring can help any student. Watch this video which was taken from this article.

What's Up with Me & Wordies

School is out for my students for spring break, which gives me plenty of time to jump from blog to blog!

This week I noticed I have no visitors to my page :( so I'm chosen to start commenting on the blogs I read.
Normally, I am an anonymous reader: reading and then passing on to the next post. But I thought if I gave more input on the post and signing it with my blog address, I could get more hits.

We'll have to see!

In other news, I read about something called Wordies on a peer's blog, and its cute!

Wordies are "word clouds" are a selection of individual words that are used to convey meaning or intent. See the above example of my blog as a Wordie.


I can see this as a great tool to introduce a unit of study. It can help students see the big picture and the important terms of the course. Its visual, spacial, and interesting to look at.