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!

Professional Development: Nebraska Writing Project Summer Courses

The semester is nearing an end; that means it's time to start thinking about summer professional development opportunities!

Hands down, the best professional development opportunity I've had as a teacher is through the Nebraska Writing Project (NeWP). The NeWP instilled in me the importance of professional inquiry, gave me a network of quality teachers around the state and country to consult with and learn from, helped me to improve my teaching skills in a way that puts students first, and has helped develop my leadership and writing skills. The NeWP has two courses this summer that are open to K-16 teachers in ANY content area:

1. The Lincoln Summer Institute will be held on UNL's campus from June 4-June 29. Participants may qualify for up to a $750 stipend to offset the cost of 6 UNL grad. credits in the Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education or English department.

2. The Humanities Institute (which has a focus on social justice this year) will also be held on UNL's campus from June 4-June 22. This course counts for 3 UNL grad. credits in the Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education or English department.

Interested in learning more? Check out this link or send me an email. Below is information about the Nebraska Writing Project.

About the NeWP:
The Nebraska Writing Project (NeWP) is in its 34th year of existence and is under the direction of Dr. Robert Brooke of UNL who is assisted by three co-directors: Mary Birky of Papillion La-Vista High School, Dan Boster of Ralston High School, and Beverly Hoisted of Pyrtle Elementary in Lincoln. The NeWP is the state affiliate of the National Writing Project, a federally funded network of teachers that works to improve students' writing abilities by promoting teacher development through summer institutes, year-long continuity and school in-service programs. (more about the National Writing Project)

Mission Statement of the NeWP:
The Nebraska Writing Project, a network of professional educators and affiliated writers, provides opportunities to improve, enhance and celebrate writing for classrooms and communities across Nebraska.

Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus

ESU 16 has signed its schools up for a subscription to a wonderful new resource, http://www.visualthesaurus.com.

The site is difficult to describe- it's a dynamic combination of blogs, word maps, "Word of the Day," teacher topics, lesson plans, headlines and much, much more. As long as you are using the site on the school network, you will not need to log into the web page. If you- or your students- need to use the site from home, please contact Susan Krab to see about setting up an account.

If you love words and language, you owe it to yourself to take a moment and check out this website!

Great for Students AND your own Kids

At times I tend to be an NPR (National Public Radio) junkie (exciting I know), and I often get great ideas from their programs. Yesterday at lunch I came across a new program NPR created to celebrate kids' books. As I investigated further, I thought to myself, "This would be great for grade school and middle school reading, but also for those of us with kids at home!" So I thought I'd share.

It's called The Back-Seat Book Club. Starting in October on the PBS show All Things Considered, a new children's book and author will be featured each month. You can choose to read the book with your class or child/children, or you can go the NPR.org website for a link to the author's site where you can listen to the book online for free. You then have the option to join in the conversation with that book's author. Students can write the author and tell him or her what they thought about the book or ask the author questions about the book - a great way to get students and kids thinking and talking about what they've read.

I'm going to try to incorporate this into my daily Drop and Read time with my students. Perhaps you could try this in your classroom, or give it a go at home with your own kiddos. Just turn off the TV, sit, and listen together for 10 or 15 minutes in the evening. Give it a try!

Trying Twitter?

I was slow to come to love Twitter. A constant stream of everyday babble and gossip?
No thanks- I get enough of that in the high school's hallways.

But then Roger Adkins at ESU 16 taught me the first rule of Twitter- It's all about who you follow. I’m sure following Lady Gaga or Ellen DeGeneres can be rewarding, but I’ve benefited daily from following national tech leaders like rushtonh, dwarlick or megormi. You can also follow “threads,” which are designated by a hashmark (#); K12, edchat or even "3^rd grade science" are just a few examples. Instantly, you have access to like minds across the globe.

The only (and I do mean only) reason I have not pushed Twitter more as a staff development tool for the district is because of filtering issues. Unfortunately, we have students who have learned to use social networks to cheat. I’m hopeful we will soon be able to open up Twitter to staff during the school day. In the meantime, check out Twitter at home some night, search for skrab, dmhelzer and ogschools, and give us a follow.

You don’t even need to actually Tweet to benefit from Twitter; just get an account, sit back and dip your toes into the stream of knowledge as it rushes by!

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!

Creating Your Own How-To Videos

Tired of explaining how to use some piece of technology over and over again? Here's a simple fix: record a tutorial video demonstrating how to complete a task using Jing.

Jing is an easy, free downloadable program that allows you to record a tutorial type video on your computer. The program takes a video of what you are doing on your computer---so you can demonstrate where to click, what to open, etc. At the same time, it records your verbal instructions creating a pretty slick tutorial video that can be easily shared with others. Here's a sample video I created to teach my 9th graders how to create a Google Site.

Applications:

• Use it to explain how to complete a technology task
  
• Teachers can pull up an essay or other assignment on their computer screen and record their oral feedback while pointing to specific portions of the assignments and then send the link back to the student
• When you're sick or can't be at school, use it to explain what you want your students to do and send it to them so there are no confusions what they are to be doing