Get more out of your students' internet searches.

We all know that when our students need an answer, they usually simply "google it". What am I saying... I do it all the time too. But don't discount your students' (or your) google searches as meaningless. A lot of great, meaningful research can be had on google.

Below are some great tips and tools for you and your students to BETTER your google searches and get more out of Google!. Print it out and post it in your room as a handy reference, or just remember that it's on your helpful PLN!

If you want to take it a step further, here's a lesson plan from the New York Times Learning Network devoted entirely to developing internet research skills, titled "Google It". It might be a good idea to check it out before you embark on a project with your students that involves some internet research.

Created by: HackCollege

Kony 2012: A lesson of justice

Back at the beginning of the semester, my English 9 students learned of the Invisible Children organization in a TED Talks video (another great resource for the classroom!) and of Joseph Kony. Last week a student sent me an email with this link and insisted I watch it. So I did. And then I showed it to my students....

If you listen to the news or have Facebook or Twitter, you've probably heard about Kony 2012. The video went viral shortly after it was posted on YouTube. It's extremely compelling and explains the movement in a way that a four year old can understand. My students watched it today and were engaged. We're studying social change and injustice/justice right now, so it fit in perfectly with our unit. But I also used it as a way to teach writing tips. The video is compelling for many reasons, but we talked today about how it's compelling because it's honest, it's current, and it includes what we call in room 116 'power lines.' These all happen to be marks of good writing, too!

I noticed today that the New York Times Learning Network also created a blog post about a few different ways to include this video in your lessons. It's probably not appropriate for elementary aged students (though....I don't see a problem with a parent showing this to his/her own elementary aged child), but it's definitely appropriate for upper middle school and high school students.

Check out the video and the NYTimes blog to inform yourself and your students!

Featured Blog: Film English

I stumbled across this blog tonight: Film English via Richard Byrne's blog. The Film English blog won a 2011 EduBlog award for Best Individual Blog, so I had to check it out. Let me tell you, it's incredible! The blog boasts a diverse amount of short films that all teach unique ideas: critical thinking, developing passions, creativity, social justice, human rights, writing, empathy, grammar, vocabulary, conservation, ecology...I could go on and on. Not only does each post contain multiple short video clips and images, each post contains step by step lesson plans for how to utilize this in the classroom. Posts are labeled by age appropriateness and difficulty. This teacher is committed to using film creatively to promote critical thinking and language acquisition. I can't wait to use a few of these in my own classes!

Book Reviews: For Students, By Students

Looking for a way to spark enthusiasm in middle-high school readers? Check out this blog of book reviews written by Logan High School students in Logan, West Virginia. I'm looking forward to having my students get on and read reviews to help them find books that interest them. I've had the great privilege of meeting their teacher, Laura Baisden who is also the director of the Coalfield Writer's Satellite and co-director of the Marshall University Writing Project, at a few conferences I attended last school year. She is an incredible teacher who is always willing to share resources---thanks Laura!

Educational Documentaries

Some of you might be interested in perusing this educational site I came across, Snag Learning. I was looking for some good, educational films or documentary snippets I could show my World Cultures class for Hispanic Heritage Month and stumbled on to this site.

You can search by subject, and I've added the links here to make it easier for you, (arts & music, foreign language, history, math & science, political science & civics, world culture & geography) or search by grade level, or by specific channel (your choices are PBS, National Geographic, Explore, and Sundance). The few I checked out were really good. There are some full-length films, as well as some shorter 10-15 minute films that you might be able to work into your lessons if you need an extra "boost" to show your students something and not just talk about it. Let me know what you think...

Google Docs

I feel blessed to teach in a district that holds a Google Apps for Education license (GAFE). I can do so much more in my classroom with Google Docs. Rather than writing about it in a boring blog post, I'll let you check out a boring presentation! Here's a portion of my presentation that I created for last year's NETA conference. It contains how I use Google Docs in my classroom and some student work and feedback about the tool. If you haven't used Google Docs yet...don't wait another day!

Tween/Teen Tribune

Tween/Teen Tribune is a fantastic news website specifically geared for junior high-high school students that presents high interest news stories arranged into categories so it's easy for students to find a story that interests them. Teachers and students can comment on stories, publish their own stories (and we all know that writing for an audience causes students to invest more!), and take quizzes over the news stories.

How it works: Teachers create classrooms and students add themselves to the classroom. Then when a student adds a comment to a story, the comment is sent to the teacher's approval queue for the teacher to approve or delete. It's a great way to immerse students in non-fiction at an accessible reading level.

I'd like to give a shout out to Pam Abbott from Progress Elementary who sent me an email regarding a sweet feature in Tween/Teen Tribune: parents can be added as readers to teachers' classrooms. They only have to be added once, and then they can read all comments posted by students in the class. What a great way for parents to stay informed and be a part of their child's education!

If you're interested, check out Tween Tribune--specifically, their Top 10 Lesson Plans page.

Backchanneling in the classroom

At NETA this spring, backchanneling was all the rave. So, when I got back to my classroom---I tried it. The verdict: love. it. I've been using TodaysMeet to set up my temporary chat rooms for my students ever since. I create a new chat room for each section of my English 9 classes, leave it open for a week for absent students to participate when they return, and then open it up to students for one class period. I pull the chat up on my projector and jump in with the kids. It's a great way to start a class period and jog students' memories about a reading assignment. Students generally love this activity because it has that familiarity of an instant message but allows for multiple people to be chatting at once.

Application: Could be used in almost any high school/junior high classroom with internet access---also works on iPods! It's also a great tool to use when presenting at conferences. When I presented at NETA this spring, I opened up a TodaysMeet chat specifically for my presentation so attendees could chat about my session with one another in real time. It was a really effective way to share ideas right in the moment.

Benefits: TodaysMeet only allows posts to be 140 characters long (similar to Twitter), so students must be concise. Great virtual discussion tool to ease students into a larger class discussion; very excellent for shy students who don't participate much in a class discussion. Great way to start or end class and check for comprehension.