A Week's Worth of Wow 9-8-09

Welcome to a new school year. How many of you have ever had writers block not because you have nothing to say, but because you have way too much to say? That is definitely my case as we start this new year. I have so many new tools and resources I have learned about over the summer that I would love to share with you, but I realize that small doses are better than big dumps when you are a busy teacher. So, I will try to restrain myself and only share a few gems a week.

In addition to sharing on my blog each week, there will be other opportunities for learning about Tech Integration and 21st Century Skills.

Digital Literacy Workshops: An open lab at the district office. The lab will be open from 2:30 - 5:00 for you to come and get help and questions answered, collaborate with others and learn about new resources. You can come when you can and stay as long as you would like. I will do a mini lesson at 3:15 introducing a new tool or resource. The rest of the time, will be yours to get the help you need and work collaboratively with others. Clock hours will be available.

Moodle.MVWeb.org: As the year progresses, I will be presenting classes both in person and online on a variety of topics. The online portion of the classes will be on MoodleMVWeb.org. These classes will be interactive, allowing you to join in on the conversation and share your own ideas and resources.

Atomic Learning: Atomic Learning is an online tool for just in time tutorials. Hopefully this won't replace the need for me, (I like to be needed. :) ) but this is a great resource for staff, students and parents.

Web 2.0 Wednesday Challenges: I also plan to resurrect Web 2.0 Wednesday Challenges (maybe in a less frequent format). These are fun challenges that introduce you to new tools and help you get your feet wet in the Web 2.0 world. So stay tuned for the fun. For now, if you missed the fun last year, go take a look at all the great resources and ideas shared last year.

And now, for this week's WOWS.

The Week in Rap: Check out this weekly contribution to current events from Flocabulary. Each Friday, Flocabulary raps about the events of the week. A transcript is included. Lots of fun ideas about how this could be used. You could just use it for class discussion. Have students pick a story and research and write about it. Or even more fun, have kids create their own raps about current events, school events or what they are learning in class.




Guess the Wordle: I love this idea created by California teacher Jen Wagner. Wordle.net is a wonderful tool to use to analyze text, create word art and share ideas. (See my Web 2.0 Wednesday Challenge from last year.) Each school day, Jen will post a new Wordle for you and your students to explore. Each day is a different category. I especially love Thursdays which are Wordles from famous books. Again, this is a great activity to use for student discussion, but as with so many Web 2.0 tools, it opens up the door to lots of great ideas for creating your own activities in your classroom.

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