Moreganize It!

If there is one thing I really love about the internet, it's free stuff.  I heard about the Moreganize site from a colleague and I can't wait to check it out.

With the advent of GoogleDocs and wikis, schools are heading more and more towards collaborative creation and online communication.  Moreganize allows you to set up a free account, then it offers several tools for communicating in a group.

Using Moreganize, you can conduct surveys, anonymous opinion polls, or create a shareable to do list or schedule that is open to others.  In my mind, the applications for this service are countless, but may be best suited for the students themselves. 

Given that ours is a private school, the population of students draws from all over the Philadelphia area.  It can be difficult for students to get together for group projects outside of school.  With Moreganize, groups could work together on a to do list or survey each other for ideas. 

Recently, all teachers at our school had to complete reflective essays based on feedback from student surveys.  We are even surveying students to create our groups for an upcoming amusement park field trip.  Maybe next year, we can generate this type of data electronically with a service like Moreganize!

It's a Phone, It's a Mouse, It's Mobile Mouse Pro!

Imagine this scene for a moment.  You have a classroom equipped with a SMARTBoard and a tablet laptop.  You are trying to use as much technology as possible and as seamlessly as possible.  If you are like me, however, you move around while you speak to the kids and you are constantly circulating the room. 
If you want to control the whiteboard, you must either be standing next to it or the computer.  If you do all of your controlling with the SMARTBoard, you will spend half of the time with your back to the kids.  If you use the computer, you are stuck behind your desk (or wherever the AV hook-up is.)

Admittedly, this is a pretty minor problem and I am certainly happy to have all of this technology at all, but what if the solution was really simple and really affordable?

As I have mentioned before, my husband and I were lucky enough to acquire a free iPad recently and I have been experimenting with it quite a bit.  While reading an article about the best iPad and iPhone apps for education, my jaw dropped when I read about Mobile Mouse Pro.

The downloadable app for iPad, iPhone and Android devices allows you to control virtually any media device like a remote control.  Instead of running sprints back and forth between the SMARTBoard and the laptop, I immediately imagined walking around the room as I like to do, but with an iPad in hand that is quickly and easily operating the board. 

After watching the video above, I am definitely experimenting with this one over the summer!  If I can walk around the room and maintain contact and engagement with the students, it's definitely worth a $2.99 investment...

Big Museum, Big Ideas

The Smithsonian Institute consists of nineteen museums, 168 affiliates, two magazine publications, nine research centers and its own police force.  Needless to say, its a dream field trip for teachers everywhere, but its not accessible to everyone.

Thankfully, the Smithsonian runs a website with hundreds of resources on countless topics related to the sciences, nature, culture and history.  Each individual museum has its own website packed with videos, lessons and resources for teachers. 

If you are like me, it may have never occurred to you to check out the website of a museum that you have no intention of visiting.  The Smithsonian sites, however, can be incredibly helpful even without a trip to D.C.!

Cognition and "The Ball"

If you are planning to attend a dinner party and want an interesting conversation starter or if you are just looking for a good read, just tune into your local NPR station.  As you may have noticed, several posts and much inspiration has sprung from interesting stories I heard on Philadelphia's public radio station, WHYY.

Today's post and inspiration are no exception.  While listening to Marketplace on my way home from school, I heard an interview with John Fox, author of the new book The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game.  Through historical narratives and personal anecdotes, Fox describes the cultural significance of play and games, as well as the cognitive importance of such physical activity.

According to recent research, even tuning into a ball game on TV excites particular neurons in the brain and may have positive effects on cognition.  Even better, these neurons are five times more stimulated when a person physically participates in sport.  There are also countless social and health benefits for developing minds in playing both organized and disorganized active games.

This generation of children are participating in these kinds of physical activities and pick-up ball games less and less and many studies show this may be to their detriment both in overall health and cognition.  Fox even discusses the seemingly innate nature in all mammals to play, particularly with the universal plaything for which the book is named - the ball. 

I haven't yet read this book, but it is downloading onto my Kindle as I type this.  It sounds like a great read, but I am particularly interested in the research about play and the social, emotional and cognitive development of children's minds.  Check it out!

SMART Exchange

One of the reasons that I started this blog was to be able to participate in the online community of teachers sharing great ideas.  In my first few years of teaching, I often found inspiration and resources on websites and blogs of other teachers.  I didn't want to just "take," so I decided last year to start sharing what worked for me in my classes.

This is precisely the idea behind SMART Technology's SMART Exchange.  All over the nation, classrooms are equipped with interactive whiteboards and related technologies and many teachers are intimidated by these devices.  I freely admit that in my first few years of student and career teaching, I had only seen a SMARTBoard one time in graduate school and I stared at it as if it were some kind of ghostly apparition.  I was dumbfounded, yet intrigued. 

When I began my current position, I was somewhat reluctant to embrace the SMARTBoard in my own classroom.  I quietly observed while our Metacognition teacher zipped around in the SMART Notebook software with text boxes, interactive questions and timers.  I experimented with some of these function on my own laptop and slowly built up my confidence.

As I walk through our building, however, it seems that many of us (myself included) are still using the SMARTBoard primarily as a way to project Word documents, webpages, videos and animations to the class, but little else.  During our school-wide professional development activities, teachers are consistently asking for more training on how to use them. 

Enter SMART Exchange.  SMART Technologies, makers of the SMARTBoard and the accompanying Notebook software and document cameras, maintain a site for teachers to share their own Notebook creations and interactive activities.  There are SMARTBoard-specific lessons using the Notebook software that are available for free download.  It is a free, one-time sign-up and the site automatically sends updates via email.

While it is convenient and helpful to find lessons on the site, I found that the sample lessons were actually better for teaching me how to use the software.  Go ahead and download one lesson like I did.  Explore the functions in the sample.  There are embedded timers, click-and-drag word banks for fill-in-the-blank questions, and jump-to tools for skipping slides. 

Here are some samples of just what you can do with Notebook:

Below is a slide from a presentation about Newton's first law of motion.  The "x" mark and the check can be clicked and dragged to the boxes next to each statement.  Once the students have finished responding, another button reveals the correct answers.

In this drag-and-drop activity, the words in the word bank can be moved and placed on the correct blank.  This slide also has a function for checking the answers, as well as an embedded timer.

The answers to the questions below have been typed in by the teacher, but they are covered with the paint tool.  When a student responds, he or she can use the erase function to clear the paint and reveal the correct response.





If you experiment with these templates and master the Notebook software, I think it also important to give back to online community that supported you.  The beauty of these lessons is that they are interactive, engaging, paperless and they can be saved and shared.  No matter where you are on your teaching journey, you have some unique and meaningful experience to share, so jump into the digital age and get your ideas out there!

Forces in Everyday Motions

Earlier this week, I asked the students to bring in an object so that they could act out some kind of everyday motion.  Students brought in tennis rackets, yo-yos, carts, dodgeballs, and even inhalers to act out motions. 

In the past, I printed simple clip-art images of people pushing carts, hitting baseballs and kicking soccer balls.  I gave them sheets of arrows labeled with the words "contact force," "gravity" and "friction," then allowed them to glue the arrows onto the image based on the direction of each force.  This year, I thought it would be more fun to have the students plan and act out their own motions instead of those clip-art images.

I pulled the students out into the hallway in small groups of 2-3, then had each student perform their motion.  I snapped a quick photo of each student, then sent them back to the classroom to work on a pre-planned activity.  Later on, I pasted the images onto a Word document and printed a picture for each student. 

The following day, students first cut out the contact force, friction and gravity arrows, shown above.  I handed out the printed photographs from the previous day and they placed the arrows onto the posters according to the direction of each force.  In this way, students could actually remember back to their experience with the activity and could recall exactly where they were providing force.  Once they were checked for accuracy, the students glued the arrows to the posters. 

This one is always a quick, but fun activity that shows the relationships between forces in a way that the students can actually feel and experience.

edX Revolution

Over the past few months, the internet community has been buzzing about the enormous potential of the new edX initiative launched by MIT and Harvard. 

edX allows individuals from anywhere in the world to take free or low-cost courses on the web.  The initiative was launched a few months ago by MIT and recently Harvard University has signed on to provide content.  Currently, MIT is offering an enormously popular course in circuitry and electronics for individuals with a strong base in physics.  They plan, however, to launch at least five more courses in the fall.

Even more promising, both institutions have allocated over $30 million to the initiative and it is likely that other higher learning institutions will sign on in the future.  You can read more about it here in a recent feature in Forbes magazine.

In this period of job shortages and increasingly competitive hiring, the edX program sounds particularly promising.  Many employers are requiring higher credentials than ever before despite the fact that students are graduating with enormous student loans and fewer employment opportunities.  If a student can show their drive and initiative in taking a free, yet demanding edX course and show a certificate from an institution such as MIT or Harvard, that could really increase their appeal to employers and build important workplace skills without piling on more student debt. 

Teachers in particular may be interested in the potential of this initiative, as well.  Teachers are required to maintain their certifications with Act 48 continuing education credits.  While schools often provide much of the credit through professional development activities, teachers frequently have to supplement these offerings with workshops and courses, often at their own expense.  Free, yet rigorous and useful courses through edX could be an exciting opportunity.