I NEED WEBSITE HELP!

Yes, this is one of the important moments in the early planning stages of someone or something's life. My classroom website for next year is nearing its completion and quite frankly, I'm not sure if it is good enough! Well, that was a lie. I am not concerned with whether it is "good" or not - I don't make website for a living, I don't expect myself to make an amazing website. I want to make sure that it is simple, educational, and resourceful for my students next year.

If you have not seen the website and would like to help me out, I would absolutely LOVE your feedback. Here is the link: Mr. Stag's English Class.

Now, like I said the main things that I would to provide for my students are simplicity, educational information, and educational resources. So, here is what I am asking you (who ever you happen to be - if you are even real!):

1. Is is simple enough? Does the layout of the NJ Standards, Classroom Info, and Web 2.0 tools lend itself to easy exploration? Or, are there too many link and too many places to get too?
2. Obviously, I plan to update the educational resources as the school year goes on, but as you may have noticed I have three main areas for the students to retrieve educational information: class announcements, popular news, and reading lists. Do you think this is enough? Or, should I add a section solely for the purpose of supplementary information for the various topics that we will study throughout the year?
3. My resources - I chose a few Web 2.0 tools that I thought would help the students in various situations. Sometimes the tools serve to educationally entertain the students if they get done an assignment early, other times they are used as a tool in the strictest sense of the word (Cramberry, Citation Machine), and sometimes they are used to enhance creativity in an innovative way (Wordle.) But, my question to you is this: are these tools too much or not enough? Or, is there any tools that you would add or take off my list?

If you do feel inclined to respond, please respond with specific feedback, so that I am able to take it into account and make some effective changes. Or, feel free to send an email or give me a call!

Snag-Ems!

"Snagit," for those of you that don't know, is an amazing tool by the ingenious people over at TechSmith (<-- NOTE: If you would like to download Snagit, click there!) The tool is similar to Jing - once again, if you don't know what Jing is or how to use, it is an amazing powerful tool that educators can use to manipulate images they find online - in that it allows users to take images from their computers and then edit the images, but it takes the functionalities of Jing MUCH farther.

Snagit is the tool that I used to create my entire American Pop Culture Project: Video Games. It allows you to an image, a portion of an image, or a series of images and add anything from various texts, arrows, shadows, shading effects, and more. As Educators we can use this to highlight important aspects of a picture or to point out to the students how they should view images.

Snagit also serves as a great way for students to CREATE images based on the work of others. I could not begin to count the times that I have trouble with encouraging student creativity. Often times, I hear responses like "I dont know how to draw," "I'm not creative," or "if I do that it will look stupid;" snagit has the potential to eliminate that feeling amongst students! Snagit allows the students to take work and then use a program to add their own, scaffolded artistic twists to the images. Assuming I have more computer access for my students next year, I am going to get them to use snagit. This gig is going to get great! (see what I did there? oh yea, thats the good stuff.)

Tweeting on Twitter???

I have been experimenting with twitter over the past couple of days and I must say that is has been pretty interesting so far. Its so interesting to me because I have almost NO idea what is going on when I am the website. There is a ton of symbols - have notices quite a few RT's and @'s and #'s - which are indecipherable to me. Many people that I have am close with (colleagues and friends alike) absolutely rave about twitter, and to be honest: I want to rave about it too! However, at this point I just do not get it.

Aside from the whole "language of twitter" I also remain confused on what is the purpose of twitter.

What does twitter want from me?!

For Chris-sake this question keeps me up at night! Am I supposed to be sharing my thoughts about random occurrences in my life like some people do? Does twitter want to know my thoughts on the rain, the sun, the sewage goes away on my street, my favorite cracker? Or is it more serious: I often feel like I am supposed to wait until I have some thing incredibly profound to say. Something that will shock the world! However, the problem with that is that these thoughts rarely occur for me. So, what is a boy who is trying to tweet do? Maybe I should tweet about it??????

(Warning: This next part has NOTHING to do with twitter.) Also, I have been impressed with the amount of emails I am receiving from AP students for their summer reading assignments. The large majority of the students seem to love the challenge of a summer reading assignment. So, my fellow teacher brethren, why are we not assigning more summer reading?! Next year??? Whose in?

The Trouble with Technology

The trouble with technology is that it is too new sometimes!

Summer Summer Sometime

So, this summer - the summer after my first year teaching - has been mighty interesting so far. Unfortunately, I feel like I have been slacking big time as far as my school work is concern. Maybe its because I do not have too much to do, or maybe its because I am enjoying the city too much.

This week my goal is to really start working on my plans for next year. As far as technology in the classroom is concern, I plan to make a serious effort to infuse technology in to the teaching of many traditional ELA concepts. I want my students to to be comfortable with all new technological advances, yet I cannot focus on teaching the technology. This could present a small challenge. However, if I stop being so lazy I know I can make it work!

This is my major dilemma: how do I fill all this time?? I want to do so many different things that I end up doing nothing! From here on out, I am going to focus on small tasks and get back into the swing of things. I will let you know how it goes.

The End? The Beginning?

Well, it is officially the end of our class, but I believe that it is also the beginning of a new chapter in my attempt to educate young minds. Many people know that we have been working with educators from across the world; I am extremely excited to get my students involved with this collaboration next year. I am thinking quite a bit about "where" we will be. I am curios where will be in our materials, but also where in the world we will be working with other students.

I have been seriously considering the possibility of creating an online learning community in the school. What I mean by this is creating a series of blog, websites, and online social networks that ALL junior teachers will manage. This will help to relate all the subjects that the students are being taught to each other. Its just a thought still; we shall see what happens.

Now what is really on my mind the most: where to go from here? It is important for ALL of us to remember that we can't simply forget everything we have learned during our first two class of Stockton's MAIT program. I can't help but think of Robert Frost's famous words, "Two roads diverged in a wood...And that has made all the difference." Hopefully, our roads will make a difference for our students....

The Importance of Connectivity

I'll start this week off by discussing the major change in my daily life: my move to Philadelphia. Despite the heat, the move went very well. Amy and I got everything in to the new place in just over two days - we felt like that was good time. However, it was not until after we were all moved in that I began to realize the importance of connectivity.

It is no secret that the internet has been an integral part of my life, especially my adult life. Sometimes, I realize now, that I take the ability to connect, create, and work with others through the touch of a button for granted, big time. That was never more apparent to me until this weekend, when Amy and I had NO INTERNET! I had forgotten what it was like to have to wait to talk to friends, get updates, and even get work done. It is amazing how important the role that the internet plays in my daily life, and, it got me thinking about the future. Scary thoughts!

Not only was the lack of the internet an interesting update this week, but I also have made major break throughs with our Siberian contact, Ekat. I heard from her on Monday morning; she is going to evaluate our Digital Stories AND possibly skype with our class on June 17th. This was a major breakthrough as far as I was concerned. It really is amazing how connected the world educators can be. This was an amazing break through for me. I hope am really hoping that we all get to experience working with and talking to educators from Siberia!! I will keep you posted on how it goes!!

One more note about connectivity: this whole idea of Video Conferencing is completely new to me and I could not be more interested in it. I have been researching different tools to maximize the overall outcome of a technologically induced video conference, and the three best tools that I have found so far are skype, tokbox, and oovoo. I suggest you check out all three, they all have different positives and negatives. Well, on second thought, isn't the point of technology to make things easier? Maybe I will post a video comparison of the three for next week.

Until then.... do svidaniya? Peace!