Fantastic Fridays: November 19
1. Classroom Spotlight Project: 8th Grade "Respect Life" Multimedia Projects
8th Grade students are adapting their formal essays to digital media! Sterling S. has planned an opportunity for students to extend the written word into a new media of their choosing. Students are creating PowerPoints, Keynotes, and iMovies to present their work. Formal writing is the foundation of the project, and this chance for differentiation (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-definition-strategies-alber ) encourages students to think about the most appropriate and convincing product for their work.
2. Student Websites: Research Strategies
Internet research often becomes synonymous with the new term "Google It!" for our students. How can we avoid the distractions of inappropriate, inapplicable, or low-quality websites in their research practice? Just like all good lessons, it takes planning. Encouraging students to use the internet for research is extremely important, and your role as a teacher is to help them find websites or search terms to guide their work. Keep in mind, also, that Wikipedia is not considered to be a reliable source for academic work (http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/wikipedia-founder-discourages-academic-use-of-his-creation/2305 )
Strategy One: Consider the following resources as starting points for internet research with your students
- Yahoo Reference Library: http://kids.yahoo.com/reference
- CIA World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
- Time for Kids: http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/kids/hh/rr
- Internet Public Library: http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/
Strategy Two: Teach students to add search terms for more specific results
- Instead of searching for "planets" , try searching for "planet facts for kids"
- Instead of searching for "quotes" (which will yield stock market data), try searching for "quotes not stock". This is called "adding a modifier"
- Instead of looking for "interrogate" when searching for a definition of the work, try "definition: interrogate". Google will automatically find definitions of the word.
Strategy Three: Create a link list! See below...
3. Teacher Productivity Tools: Creating a Link List
One of my favorite 5th grade teachers regularly did a project about Civil War Biographies. The students spent hours research their assigned person, but got bogged down with all of the genealogy resources and were often plagued by biased websites. For example, the first search result when "googling" "Civil War Biographies" is run by an individual who openly states his Pro-South bias. A solution to this is to pre-select a list of links which will be useful for your students.
Here's an example of a "link list": https://sites.google.com/site/olgtech/civil-war-biographies-1. I intentionally made it very plain to illustrate how quickly a teacher can make one! Please let me know if I can help you create a link list for your class.
For your video this week, please visit http://edutecher.net/tv.php . There are some well-done tutorials on teaching with technology, and you will have fun choosing one which would work with your classroom!
