Ellyse's Blog

The more I play around with this website, the more I love it!  I came across Edu Glogster, which is very similar to the regular Glogster but it has more of a focus on education and allowing students to creatively represent the knowledge and information they are learning in class.  Click here to see a students Glog about Radioactivity.

Edu Glogster allows for more interactive and dynamic learning between students and it gets away from those conventional “paper posters that you hang up on the walls in the classroom”.  Are you able to embed video onto conventional paper posters?  NO!  But you are able to embed video into your Edu Glogs which is another benefit to online glogging! 

Did you know that more than 1 000 000 students use Edu Glogster! Here are some more benefits of using Edu Glogster for teachers and learners.

Some other interesting benefits that come with using Glogster which I never really thought of before is that it is environmentally friendly!  You are not wasting trees by using paper for your posters.  There is a picture on the main page of the Edu Glogster website of a girl with a speech bubbles outlining why you should use Edu Glogster.  Here are some of her reasons!

Recycle – share your glogster projects today!

Go On! Go Green – Go Glog!

Save a tree – Glog today!

I am beginning to see the potential that Edu Glogster can have in the classroom.  From doing glogs on historical events to doing glogs on your own cultures, there are endless possibilities when incorporating this technology into the classroom.  I am getting really excited to be able to use it in my own teaching!

EPEARL is an online electronic portfolio that allows students to track their language and reading accuracy, comprehension and fluency. EPEARL stands for electronic portfolio encouraging active reflective learning. 

I had the opportunity to play around with EPEARL in my internship and along with my co-op teacher, set up accounts for all of the grade ones as well as the grade 6′s.  The Grade 6′s and Grade Ones then collaborated together to record their own readings in their portfolios.  The grade 6′s would help the grade ones get set up.  The amazing thing about this is that the Grade Ones will then get to track their reading all throughout grade one and if continued in other grades, they would be able to track their reading all the way to grade 12! 

Here is a snip-it of the importance of porfolios in students educational experiences. 

  EPEARL allows you to access your account as a student or as a parent to track your students progress.  It is an aesthetically pleasing website which easily guides you as to where you need to go.  There are endless help videos that you can access if you are having trouble. 

P.S.  This website is also offered in french!

My show and tell lesson is about some of the biggest passions in my life.  Click on the link to see what they are!

Click on the link to view my screenr.  http://screenr.com/pyx

You can also go onto my Twitter to see my video. 

I am having trouble uploading video’s that are not from youtube on to my wordpress.  Does anyone know how to do that?  I have seemed to try everything.  Leave me a comment if you can help!  Thanks!!

I first was going to use Glogster as my “Show and Tell” lesson for February, but after talking to Dean, I realized that our February lesson had to be about one of our passions.  I still wanted to share with you though this really cool website because there was a few people that left comments about it.  Enjoy the Jing and play around with Glogster!  There are so many cool things you can do with it!

Click here to view my Jing!

Lately, I have been thinking about the effectiveness of classroom blogs in schools today.  I got the opportunity to facilitate a classroom blog for my grade ones during my internship which was fun, but lots of work!  My co-op teacher had started a classroom blog but was not updating posts as often as she would have liked, so I made it my mission during my full-time teaching to put a post up everyday about what we were learning about.  I sent a note home to my students parents explaining how I will be using the blog as a means of communication between home and school which I feel is vital.  When parents are able to see what their students are doing in school, they are more connected to them and are part of their educational process.  I also encouraged the parents to leave comments (which surprisingly we got a lot of!).  The students and I would check our blog every morning during calendar time (since I did the morning routine on the smartboard, I was able to make a link to our blog), and we would be so excited to read the comments from parents/family across the country!  I really loved how we were able to be connected using our blog and technology and how people could see exactly what we are doing in the classroom so that my students were accountable for their learning. 

But with all these great benefits came a lot of hard realities.  Taking the time every day to put up a blog entry was lots of work because you had to use some sort of technology (like the digital camera, flip video, etc.) during the day so that you would have something to post.  And we all know how it is like in the classroom, things could get chaotic or else we would get really into our lesson and I would totally forget to take pictures!  Thank goodness I had an amazing EA in my classroom that managed to grab the camera and snap shots at great times.  Also, there is the big ‘privacy issue’ with having students pictures on the internet.  We had to make sure to talk to every one of the parents privately to get permission for their children’s pictures to be on the internet. 

I have some mixed feelings about this issue.  Having a classroom blog is something that I definitely want to do, but is it worth the time and hassle when parents are worried about privacy issues.  What if I make a blog and parents don’t go and look at it/comment on it? 

What are your thoughts on classroom blogs? 

P.S. I found a great site that was sharing good examples of classroom blogs.  Check it out!

In my EPSY 322 class, we have been discussing the importance of inclusive education in the classroom.  I feel that this term is something that I have struggled with for a long time.  I feel like I am being torn apart by two different views on how students with disabilities should be taught. 

One side says how inclusive education is vital when teaching students with special needs.  Having them feel like they are part of the classroom and everyone is equal is how we are suppose to teach.  What bothers me about this though is that aren’t we suppose to celebrate the differences in our classroom?  If we are trying to say how everyone is equal, it is like we are saying that being different is a bad thing. 

The other side (which is how students with disabilities were treated in the school system years ago), says that exclusive education is the way we are suppose to go.  Having them learning along side students that have the same needs as them is better then putting them in a classroom where they won’t succeed.  I know exclusive education is something that schools are steering away from, but then why when I was in highschool, were there modified programs for students with learning disabilities and there were special needs classrooms?  Are we not trying for inclusive education?  I remember how some of my friends who had learning disabilties (socially they were absolutely fine) were embarrassed to say they were part of the modified class and got teased for that. 

I don’t know, I guess I just feel real confused.  I believe I am for inclusive education but I still think that we should celebrate being different too because if everyone in this world was the same, how boring would that be.  My EPSY 322 prof showed a really amazing video about students with down syndrome and the dreams that they aspire for. 

Since technology is such a large part of society as a whole, I have been searching for fun tools that will help to integrate technology into the classroom.  During my internship I used a program called  Glogster which is the fun, interactive tool that I will be teaching about in February.  Glogster is a website that allows you to make interactive posters and share them with everyone! 

I used Glogster when I was doing my ‘All About Me’ unit  in social.  I created a Glog that helped to show the class who I was.  We then created  a classroom Glog together.  This is a great tool to get away from the traditional paper and pencil posters.  I will share the Glog that I used during my internship when I do my mini-teaching.  I also found another YouTube video about using  Glogster in the classroom .  There are endless ways that teachers are able to encorporate using Glogster in their teacher.  Here are a few Glog possibilities

• Anti-smoking Glogs
• All About Me Glogs (this will help show students creativity)
• Holiday Glogs
• Pretty much any other topic that you can do posters on!  The possibilities are endless!

Check out Glogster.  Make a Glog!  I know that you will have a fun time!

I had the pleasure of interning at Davison School in Melville Saskatchewan.  Davison school is a Smart Showcase school meaning that teachers from across the province would come and observe how SMART interactive whiteboards were being integrated into classroom instruction.  It was amazing to be part of a school that made technology a very big prority.  It was mandatory for teachers to integrate technology ino 50% of their teaching instruction.  That doesn’t mean using the SMARTboard as a regular white board to write on or going on the computers to type, that means using technology to supplement your teaching.  There was a SMARTboard in every room of the school (including the artroom and even the principals office!).

I was able to use the SMART board for almost every one of my lessons which made my teaching very interactive and hands on.  The morning routine was all done on the SMART board, math games, science lessons and health lessons were done on the SMART board as well.  I also got to use really amazing tools called Senteos which are hand-held clickers (something like ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’) that students are able to answer questions off the smartboard on.  All of the results are stored onto a file on the computer and are easily accessable for the teacher after the assessment is done.  I used the Senteos a several times in my Science and English classes.  Here are a few pictures from my lessons!

It seems like lately, I have been having the same conversations with my Dad about my future.  He starts by saying, “Well you know Ellyse, you are going to be done university for good in a couple of months and then you will be starting your career, so where do you want to teach?  What grades do you want to teach?  Are you going to teach around home?  Are you going to teach in the city?” and so on and so forth.  I usually end the situation by saying, “I think I am going to go where the wind takes me.”  Then my Dad usually has some kind of remark saying, “Well you should find out soon where the wind will be taking you because you don’t have too much time.” 

These kind of conversations have really got me to think though.  I do have to start making some serious decisions about my future and that scares me a little.  I decided to make a Wordle (www.wordle.com), which is a web tool that generates word clouds from the text that you provide.  Here are my thoughts that come to mind when I think about my future in education!

Click on the Wordle below to see it larger. 

When I think about the term “reflective blogger” something resonates inside of me. I feel like being reflective of your teaching practices not only allows you to build upon those practises, but it gives you that critical eye that is fundamental when you are teaching. Personally, I sometimes find it difficult to be critical of my teaching . I felt before like I have to do the best and be the best and there is no room for mistakes. Internship has shown me that as a teacher, you are always continuously learning, whether you have been teaching for 1 year or 20 years. Being reflective helps you to grow as an educator. During my internship, I kept sticky notes in my day book that reflected how my lessons went on that particular day. I would write if I needed to make changes or if the lesson went great or if it absolutely bombed. I believe that reflective blogging would be to take that one step further and be analytical of my teaching practises. Why did this not work out good? or how could I have taught this differently? Our school also was part of a ning network where we were able to be reflective or give feedback on certain issues in the school. This helped to not only integrate technology into education (which, lets be serious, our day and age is moving towards), but we could all give our different viewpoints without having to sit in a formal meeting.

I believe that blogging and technology in a whole is very new for a lot of people. As Steven King said during the presentation, he said that a lot of the time he didn’t know what he was doing because there was so much new technology out there to discover. I really liked how he used video blogs for his reflections and I know this would work for a lot of people because their typing skills may not be up to par and they may feel better just talking than typing.

I believe that my own blogging has evolved throughout my school experience. My first entries consisted of ‘this is how my day went’ or ‘i did this at school and it was good’. I now use different tools to reflect on my blog (though I havn’t thought of using a video blog!). When I was doing my grade one blog during my internship, I used web tools like voicethread, smilebox, rock-you and my flip video to put entries up on the web for the parents to see. I never thought about using the flip video for myself to reflect on my teaching practises. This is maybe something I would like to work towards.

The presentation mostly has shown me the importance of collaboration among other educators. You can get some really great ideas from people that are half-way across the country or world! Sue Waters was talking about the use of edublogs and I have had the pleasure of using edublogs in my internship experience. She made some great points about how you have to be patient with them when first starting out. When I first blogged with my kids, It took over a half an hour for them to write a couple words about their favorite animal. By the end of December though, they were logging on by themselves and their grammar and spelling was improving immensely. The great thing about blogging is that you are able to actually see their growth!