The Village Green » Edubloggers

Edublog Award Voting Starts Now

Matthew Woolums — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:53:51 +0000

Edublog Award voting is now open, and there are a lot of new blogs, wikis, and other online communities for me to explore. This should be fun.

One item bothers me a bit. The final Edublog Award Category is for “Lifetime Achievement”. Don’t get me wrong, those nominated are all certainly deserving of recognition for their contributions to the read/write/web/literacy discussion, and I look forward to many more years of their participation and direction. What bothers me is that lifetime awards are usually conferred to those toward the end of their careers. I certainly hope that is not the case for this distinguished group of educators.

Now get out there and vote!

The Edublog Awards

10 + 1 School Web Tools

Matthew Woolums — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 01:10:40 +0000

Just in case you missed getting that present you had your heart set on this year, here is a consolation present in the form of a list of 10+1 web tools for use in school. Note taking, bibliography, and even specialized paper tools are available, including one on how to delay turning in an assignment by turning in a file that won’t open. I found this collection from Lucy Gray’s delicious links.

10+ Web Tools To Save Your Butt In School | MakeUseOf.com

Best of 2008 Collections

Matthew Woolums — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 01:29:55 +0000

This is the time of year for reflection and the ‘best of 2008′ posts are popping up all over. Here are a few worth checking out:

The Best Posts Of 2008 | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… Larry Ferlazzo’s collections of classroom tools are always worth a visit.
The Top Gadgets of 2008 Just in case you were looking for a new cool gadget, here is a ‘best of’ collection from Wired.
CrunchGear’s Best of 2008 plus the People’s Choice Best of 2008 Gala Awards Ceremony, and People’s Choice awards. The readers have spoken!
Most Influential Edublog Post 2008 The Edublog Awards This is the list of Edublogs posts nominated as most influential for 2008.

Edublogs 2008 Awards

Matthew Woolums — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 22:06:01 +0000

Edublogs has posted their 2008 award winners. This is an outstanding group of blogs in this year’s collection, a great place to look for bloggers of note to follow. Be sure to check them out.

http://edublogawards.com/and-the-2008-winners-are/

Pageflakes as Public Aggregator

Matthew Woolums — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:28:11 +0000

I’ve tried setting up a Pageflakes page as an aggregator for all of the edu-bloggers for the two sections of the class I’m teaching, and I have to say I like it a lot better than other tools I’ve used. It was very easy to set up, and the page looks nice too!

http://www.pageflakes.com/mwoolums

Destination Mars

Matthew Woolums — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:40:59 +0000

Brian Crosby is taking his kids to Mars on Wednesday, May 7th, and if all goes well, you’ll be able to go along with them as he has plans to Ustream the event.

Here is the Ustream link: Marsopolis 2008 Reno, Nevada, Ustream.TV: 350 fourth grade through eighth grade students participating in. Education

Here is the Learning Is Messy blog post link: Learning Is Messy – Blog » Blog Archive » Marsopolis … Messy Learning … And I’ll Ustream It?

Happy Birthday Cool Cat Teacher – We Get the Presents!

Matthew Woolums — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:01:33 +0000

Cool Cat Teacher is celebrating her 38th birthday, and we are the ones who get the presents! Vicki Davis has decided to post 38 great tools to celebrate her birthday, and the list looks like a terrific ‘best-of’ collection. The list is linked and annotated, so it would be a terrific list to pass along to anyone interested in getting started.

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/04/38-birthday-presents-from.html

Baby Steps for Beginners

Matthew Woolums — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:18:14 +0000

Vicki Davis, the Cool Cat Teacher, has started a series of articles for web 2.0 beginners. In the first installment, she provides best practices resources by making very effective use of tagging in del.icio.us and encourages others to set up their own accounts. This is a terrific list of links. She also suggests listening to podcasts while working on other things. I actually got my own start this way, listening to Bud the Teacher, EdTechTalk, Bob Sprankle, and others. Vicki also recommends setting 3 goals for yourself for the coming week to help focus on next steps. This probably would have helped save me many months of just trying to soak it all in without knowing what to do about it. Great resources and I hope Vicki follows up with many more parts to this series.

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/03/baby-steps-for-beginners-part-1.html#links

Colorado Conversation: Roundtable With Barbara and Clarence

Matthew Woolums — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:13:31 +0000

This conversation is run through http://www.mebeam.com/alpharoom.php?room=colearning

Barbara Barreda – K-8 principal from Los Angeles, CA.

Clarence Fisher – 7th and 8th grade teacher from Snowlake, Manitoba

B- our students have a limited view of the world. Working with C’s students has expanded their horizons.

C- B and I met over the Internet, through blogs, through Skype

C- we wanted ‘Thin Walls’ to go beyond an online project. A lot of it was experimental. We started off with VoiceThreads. We went from there to blogs. We did a novel study together. We’re learning to be facilitators, to get out of the way, to develop the tools as they are needed.

B- my students live below the porverty level, but in a private school, our parents make a lot of sacrifices. We work to get computers donated, we use open source solutions.

C- we’ve found that the open source and web based solutions lend themselves to collaboration better than the commercial tools.

C- we’ve worked on common rubrics, some common grading standards. It is difficult to assess (through existing standards) manners and collaboration. We’ve had to develop many of the tools ourselves.

B- some of our teachers have shifted to assessing skills.

B- we’re going to be working on that global understanding through the rest of the year.

Are you seeing a change in the writing skills of students who are collaborating online? C- they become writers of their own account. They learn the authentic voices of that are their own. They learn about voice and audience. We live in a world where experts are going away and everyone has an equal voice. B- we have a better idea of students’ thinking than we would in regular classroom interactions because we have the whole conversation. C- the ability to access and review the transcript provides a window we don’t have otherwise.

C- students are IM-ing each other, but we haven’t see much social networking. B- I have a MySpace account and haven’t seen much interaction on the part of the students.

B- we’re trying to show that these are learning spaces, not just games. C- active mornitoring on the part of the teacher helps students learn to be good digital citizens.

C- the Asus eeepc’s we got were flying off the shelves for sustained silent reading. To me reading is reading.

B- give them (teachers) permission to make mistakes and time to try new things. (I think this applies to students too!)

http://colearning.wikispaces.com/Thin+Walls

Edubloggers Directory

Matthew Woolums — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:46:21 +0000

By way of Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog, I’m adding information to the Associations page of this blog to include the International Edubloggers Directory.

http://edubloggerdir.blogspot.com/

Great Lists of Publishing Resources

Matthew Woolums — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:53:18 +0000

Langwitches has posted a great list of student resources for the classroom. Her list is inspired by the work of Larry Ferlazzo, who has his own collection of student resources for publishing. Both are linked below.

Langwitches classroom resources: http://www.langwitches.org/blog/2008/02/17/inspired-by-larry-ferlazzo-the-listmaster/

Larry Ferlazzo’s ‘best way to create online content’: http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/?s=best+ways+to+create+online+content+easily%2C+quickly

My own short list of publishing links on del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/mwoolums/publishing

2008 Education Blogosphere Survey

Matthew Woolums — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:52:19 +0000

The title kind of says it all. If you are an edublogger, take a survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6StV_2bQlONrIuhBYx3O3cEA_3d_3d