News @215

Hello and welcome to each of our room 215 families! This blog is a new project that I learned how to do this summer at USM. Boy-oh-boy is this new (to me)  technology an exciting thing, and the way of our world! My instructor said that people come in two technological categories: Natives and Immigrants. I am a newly arrived immigrant just learning the language and ways of this huge new world, our children are the natives. It is my hope that  this blog grows as we grow together as learners, and that our children become the breath that breaths life into this ever-changing place where you can come to find out about our class and what we are up to. Join us on our journey in this new land, and to those of you are already familiar with this world, hop on board! Mrs. Walling

Welcome to 4th grade! This is where you will all post class news articles after you write them, so that your families can read up on all the exciting things we are doing!

Deep Breath and Heavy Sigh! Elin and I have accomplished a great deal for newly arrived digital immigrants; In this week alone we have seen the new world from the deck of the ship, pulled along side the pier, and now we both feel that we have stepped foot in our new country. “See” sickness had abated with many widgets! We collaboratively created a 4th grade wiki (which includes our third teaching partner) called, The 4th Grade Bookshelf. http://fourthgradebookshelf.wikispaces.com/. It is linked from both of our class blogs, and is a place for all of our students to share all the great books they read this year. The greatest beauty of of this wiki is that, even though we each have a page, all three are accessible to all of our kids. After each book is finished the kids will work on their responses, find the cover of their book, upload it to the wiki page, find pictures they want to go along with their voice thread, and create a voice thread book review. They will be able to use images from the web, take digital photographs to begin. We have no doubt that eventually, our kids will take off with this and it will become a living entity without us. We chose to use a wiki, because we did not want to force the conversational piece yet, and knew that if conversation was a piece of it, some kids would be very sad never being commented to. In addition, I have begun to change my blog from “my Blog” to a class blog where news is shared with parents that my students will write as the year goes on. The class blog that Bob shared by Maria, http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=51141, re-sparked my original vision of a class site. I was swayed by the idea that a blog needs to be conversational to be worthwhile. If I start it, they will blog.

Elin and I are two 4th grade teachers on a team of three, and have decided to work together on a wiki project that will connect all three of our classrooms in book responses and discussions,  alowing for more access to all of our books and to hear from more friends about favorite books.   The plan is a wiki site (working name: The 4th Grade Book Shelf) linked from our school web site where students in all three classes willmake voice threads of favorite books after writing their ideas in their journals (so they speak fluently) and so parents can access them too. We know that authentic audiences mean the world to our kids and make all the difference in the quality of work they do. In addition, this project is intended to be a starting point; we fully anticipate this project to take on a life of itself as our students quickly become much more savvy than us! To describe this project, I must write it as I think:

The steps—

• School website 
• classroom teachers   
• 4th grade  

• The 4th Grade BookShelf: a single page with the 3 following wiki links:
• Ms. P.’s shelf
• Ms. G.’s shelf
• Mrs. W.’s shelf
• From each of these wiki pages, students will create a voice thread of favorite books, but all students will be able to access all three bookshelves.
• A link to librarything will be included somewhere to allow each student to get the cover of the book they are responding to.
• Students will make comments to others about their book responses.

Momma always said that anything that seems to good to be true probably is, however, in this case, really simple really does really simplify! In his article, The Technology of Reading and Writing in the Digital Space: Why RSS is crucial for a Blogging Classroom, (which can be found at)blogsforlearning.msu.edu/articles/view.php?id=6 I love the way David Parry explains how RSS works to  newly arrived immigrants like myself. The idea that my favorite quality educational and personal  websites, blogs, etc., (which I have already given over entire weekends to find) fed to me as they are updated truly does seem too good to be true! Having already subscribed to a few, I look forward to adding to my reader, and experiencing what to me (I hate searching the web) will blisfully be a dream come true!

After three full days of inputting all this new information, technology, and “skills” – into my head-  I am honestly near tears; I have forgotten what I learned two days ago! Although I am very excited by so much technology and I know my students live in this world,  I am very frustrated by too much information. Among the silly things that frustrate me: I keep loosing tabs, I begin to post and then go back to another blog to link and loose what I have written, I am on overload and can’t remember how to do one simple thing that we have been doing all week; it frustrates me that all this is so organic to my own children, but not me. I am an immigrant who is still on the ship looking at the new world. I do not use my computer for entertainment, or general information. I use it for school, and to keep in contact with my family. So after looking over two, “must see” blogs: mscofino.edublogs.org/ and weblogg-ed.com/, although interesting to a point, it seemed like reading any other website, but with personal information added.  Then I  looked at a blog from classblogmeister.com/  via sprankleblog.edublogs.org/ . This blog reaffirmed my belief that a class blog could work, and it does not have to have a lot of conversation connected to it. I have agian have faith  that I can begin! All that said, when I compare blogs with the wiki from, Pennsylvania, jabernethy.wikispaces.com/ I really believe that, keeping in mind my grade level,  wikis are the better starting place for me and for my class, which has done nothing beyond computer lab once a week. 

Well to begin with, I discovered that keeping the  site name really simple really matters! My thought was to send my del.ic.ious account to our computer lab wonder -woman, and she could have that site up on the smart-board; then it would be a simple matter for me to direct my students to a particular site(s). In the past, I would find a site, send it to myself via email, then send it on to her and she would add the link to our 4th grade site. Now, she could still add it, but I really like the idea of having students “test” the sites for usability, interest, and validity; does the site really teach what it says it does?

In addition, it would be great to have students contribute sites they have found as well. There would obviously have to be some parameters to abide by, but in the long  run,  I can easily imagine my kids start a delicious account of their favorite sites at home as well as their parents. Also, in the teacher realm, I already see how easy it will be to look at sites critically simply by checking how many others have linked the site too.

Finally, I can’t wait to introduce del.ic.ious to my husband! We really do still have the stagnant bookmarks that don’t get out of the house!

you must have the ability to take a picture, then remember all the steps: write, add media, file, browse, pictures, choose, upload, and then add. Finally to add text, you have to click into this post box, and then click the picture and the “tree” icon to align the text.

What kind of books do you like to read, and explain why.