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V O L U M E 3 , I S S U E 1 O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9

• EarthCam
webcams
There are links throughout this quickletter to the mentioned teacher activities.
If you are interested in doing something similar to these things,
around the
please contact me and we’ll get started!
world

Book Club Collaboration

• Caldecott
Connections
lessons and
activities for
these award Imagine reading a book having a from our interactions
winning class discussion about the book with others, why not
books and then maybe some shared let our students do
activities such as illustrating, writ- the same instead of
• HM Reading ing and reflecting on the book. being forced to have
Tech Inte- Not hard to imagine, right! It is the same audience all
gration ideas done everyday. Now picture year long. Mrs. Don-
for your this, you do all that you normally ald’s class recently
Houghton do and another class in a differ- read recently read
Mifflin Read- ent part of the country does it The Hundred Dresses
ing series too! If we want our discussion and now are about to
to grow and become richer we embark on sharing their learning our activities. We will keep you
can open our work and talk to in collaboration with a school in up to date on how it goes. I
that other class by sharing our New Jersey who also read the have contacts with many educa-
illustrations, our writings, and book. The medium they will be tors around the country and
INSIDE THIS our reflections with that same using is Voicethread (a web tool world that are ready to do book
ISSUE:
class who did the same thing in that allows classes to load pic- club activities like this one.
Flashcards 2 the other part of the country. tures, video, text, etc. and com- Would you like to know more?
Talk about perspectives! We ment on work using voices/text/
learn so much and grow so much video) to share and comment on
Parent 2
Conferences

Look Inside a
Book
2
Study Sessions
Ms. Moses is knocking down the
walls of her classroom, virtually!
Each week she sets aside time at
home, (an hour) to help her
students with homework or
answer questions about upcom-
ing g quizzes or tests. Does she
have all her students call her or
email her and then she responds
back? No! She uses CoverItLive!
A web-based program that al-
lows teachers to create an event
for students to join her in a dis-
cussion room where they can
freely ask questions and post
answers using text. The teacher
can have images, ppt slides, we-
blinks, video, audio, and poll
questions inserted in the live
conversation. The conversation
is monitored by the teacher so
no unwanted comments are
seen. Imagine have a discussion
about Explorers for example and
inviting a professor from a uni-
versity to join in the discussion.
Use it as a tool to improve writ-
ing!
 Digital Flashcards
PAGE 2
Flashcards have been
taken to the next level.
Not only can one create
flashcards on the com-
puter with text, pictures
and audio, but you can
quiz yourself, challenge
others, and access them
at anytime.
Use flashcards for
A wonderful way to take
advantage of this technol-
Vocabulary and
ogy is to utilize it to in-
Core Knowledge crease student vocabulary,
help them memorize spe-
“...all learning
involves
Parent Conferences
Parents conference occur
conversation. every year, but when was the
last time you had a parent
That conversation conference where you were
able to allow the parents to
may be with
hear their child read and listen
ourselves, with to the way you assist their
child and your discussion with
others, with them during a math, reading or
writing conference? Now is
colleagues, with
the time. With a digital re-
students…” corder or Audacity (free audio
Look Inside a Book
Mrs.
Get a Flip camera or a
Weaver’s
webcam, an inspiring
Embedr book, some time to
playlist share and you have
using what Mrs. Weaver,
edublogs.tv guidance counselor,
has to create a book
talk. Each month she
selects a book to
share with parents.
CONSIDER THIS...
cialized words used in sci-
ence or history for exam-
ple, or even world lan-
guages.
“Vocabulary knowl-
edge correlates strongly
with reading (and oral)
comprehension.”-Ed
Hirsch
We know how important
vocabulary is to the success
of our students. Flashcards
in this style allow teachers
to continue to add core
editing software) you can re-
cord conversations in class,
individual conferences, and
student work digitally to have
ready for parents at confer-
ence. After you record,
download the audio file to the
student folder on your com-
puter. Mrs. Cartledge, 4th
grade teacher, records her
reading and writing conference
as well as a sample of the stu-
After recording her talk, she
loads the video to edublogs.tv..
Then she copies the link from
her video stored on the school
edublog.tv account and pastes
it to a playlist made using em-
bedr (a free flash player that
allows user to create video
playlist and post them on their
own website.) Next, the play-
knowledge to students so
they are prepared for con-
versations and reading in all
future settings. There are a
couple of websites I like
that teachers can use for
creating these flashcards.
Quizlet, ProProfs, and Edis-
cio. Try one of these out
for your next unit of study
or word list.
See Mrs. Mundo’s site for
her Spanish flashcards using
SpanishDict.com.
dent reading to share with parents.
This opens so many doors of con-
versation and helps the parents
realize what you, the educator, are
seeing and hearing. Don’t stop with
audio, think about every project,
presentation, etc that parents never
get to actually see. Use a flip cam-
era to record those and store in
the student folder. At the end of
the year, you have a nice portfolio!
list automatically updates and
the new video is instantly on
her school website. Initially
she had to copy the embed
code from the video player site
before this could happen.
Sharing books using video
book talks is a great way to
expose others to new books
and stir up conversations.