A blog on a log

The little spider said to me,

What are the student blogs going to be?

When will they start and what will they do?
Will you and the teacher follow through?

Blogs are perhaps one of the easiest yet powerful Web 2.0 tools to engage in. Will Richardson suggests that:

"the true potential of blogs in schools come when students and teachers use them as publishing tools. . . the best way to fully understand the potential of Weblogs as a teaching and learning tool is to become a blogger" (p. 43).

Well, that is exactly what I have done with this blog. By putting myself "out there," I have opened up my writing and thoughts to the world. I think this is very similar to the experience my students would have in that I have had comments from my teacher and other students, but not from the outside world. Although I am not generally one comfortable to share with others in this way, I seem to have an awful lot of posts in my blog. I do like sharing my learning with others - perhaps that is why I am a teacher! This process has convinced me that blogging is something that students should be doing, as young as they can create the simplest posts.





Tom Whitby suggests that "blogging provides a real reason for kids to write.  The realization that an audience of more than one would be reading their work is a real incentive." As learning moves towards a collaborative and interactive experience, blogging plays a central role (Kist, 2010; Richardson, 2010)

So I am convinced! My goal is to get the Grade 3/4 class blogging after Spring Break. I sat down with the teacher a couple of weeks before the break and helped her set up her class blog in KidBlog. The teacher is somewhat uncomfortable about having kids putting things online and is worried about the responses of parents. I wrote a letter of introduction and permission letter to be sent to parents regarding the project that included some links about the value in blogging for kids.

Jenny Luca gives Six Reasons Why Kids Should Know How to Blog:

• creating positive digital footprints
• communicating with digital tools
• transparency for parents and family
• new ways of thinking about web tools
• effective digital citizenship
• pride in their work

20 reasons why students should blog are given by this teacher from Australia.

It is my hope that, with my guidance, this will be a successful and rewarding experience for the students, teacher and parents. By slowly taking steps to easy my school community into participation of the read/write web, we will be preparing our students for their futures.


Kist, W. (2010). The socially networked classroom: teaching in the new media age. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.

P, p, p, pin it!

I've heard through my web there's something new on the scene.

It is called Pinterest, but what does this mean?

A pin board online, to make and to share.

Finding others finds from here and from there.

Pinterest is one of the "new kids on the block" when it comes to social bookmarking, but it has become very popular, very quickly. I find Pinterest appealing because it is so visual. By pinning an image from a site you want to bookmark, you organize pins onto boards based on groups you make.

Here is my Pinterest page:

Due to its visual nature, I think that Pinterest is especially useful as a bookmarking system for students. In this video from Edudemic, Lisi Gopin discusses using Pinterest in the classroom.

Some great ideas from the video include:

• having images for writing prompts
• collections of resources to share with students
• collections of books

Additionally, Gopin points out that the built-in interactivity allows students to discuss things directly on the pins; there is a comment space under each pin.

I am liking many of these ideas for integrating Pinterest into the classroom. Additionally, the ideas for using Pinterest in the library abound. In 20 Ways Libraries are Using Pinterest Right Now, there are 20 great ideas including:

• creating book lists
• showing new aquisitions
• research

Additionally, this blog post gives some more ideas for Pinterest for Librarians, though most are for the librarians use as opposed to student use.

Recently, there has been some concern about Pinterest and copyright, which, as a teacher-librarian, rightfully worries me. Because Pinterest simply pins any images on a website, people are taking copyrighted images that do not belong to them. This article is about a lawyer who has deleted all her Pinterest boards because of this issue. Her personal blog gives more legal background regarding this issue.

So, this really complicates things! I like Pinterest and find the visual appeal would be useful for students. However, I can not, as a teacher-librarian be using this site that is known to be breaking copyright, either personally or professionally.

Au revoir, Pinterest! :(

What's in a book . . . mark?

How goes the bookmark, spidey says to me?

Has it keep your place, keeping it safe in the vast web-like sea?

I have found a system, though it is just for me.

For students, I'll search 'till I like what I see.

I have been using Diigo for about a year now to keep track of things on the web. For my inquiry project, I really wanted to take a look at how I might use it in the library to keep track of good sites for students doing various research projects.

Will Richardson (2010) illustrates all kinds of uses for Diigo in the classroom: setting up accounts for the class, tagging them for individual students to follow, annotating comments for them (pp. 95-96). While I can see the merit in this kind of use of Diigo, I think the students at my elementary school are not quite ready for this yet.

My investigation into Diigo Educator left me disappointed. While I was successfully able to create a class and start making bookmarks, the "social" part of the application made me nervous. While many of the "education" formats for Web 2.0 platforms are closed, Diigo seems to allow students more liberty at veering off the site and into something else. While I am definitely pushing the edges of what parents and teachers at my school are comfortable with in terms of working and creating online, I do not think this would work.

Here is a link to the Diigo page for Elementary School Safety. It is a list of resources related to safely implementing EdTech in elementary schools. Quite ironically, students can easily click on the top of the page and get sidetracked into some links that might not be great.

In this Tip of the Day - Using Diigo, J. Bauer suggests some other uses of Diigo such as:

• Have a virtual discussions about a website or article by having every student include a sticky note with their thoughts.
  
• Make notations beside videos to let teachers or students know what sections to watch or to explain if something is unclear.

In this video, an elementary teacher-librarian is interviewed about how she uses Diigo with her students. The collaborative way that the students use Diigo is very impressive, and learning how to tag as well as annotate their bookmarks is a very useful research skill.

While these are some other good ways of using Diigo, I think I will wait to implement them until I am at a secondary school.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.

All tweets on deck

Well what about TweetDeck? How did it go?

Was it really useful? How do you know?

TweetDeck is super, it helps me a lot,

I love the columns and never get caught.

When I began this inquiry project, I was already sold on the idea of Twitter. I was using it daily, creating a PLN of educators and finding lots of great information, ideas and food for thought. However, I was finding managing the information flow into my Twitter account overwhelming and did not think I was managing it well. Enter TweetDeck - a way to organize the flow of information and keep it manageable.

A PLN or personal learning network, is like differentiated learning. In Why Teachers Should Try Twitter, William Ferriter describes his path to individualized learning (as an educator) through Twitter. 

For educators who use this tool to build a network of people whose Twitter messages connect to their work, Twitter becomes a constant source of new ideas to explore. (Ferriter, 2010).

 In Nine great reasons why teachers should use Twitter, Laura Knight's reasons are all related to professional growth as a teacher:

• together we're better
• global or local: you choose
• self-awareness and reflective practice
• ideas workshop and sounding board
• newsroom and innovative showcase
• professional development and critical friends
• quality-assured searching
• communicate, communicate, communicate
• getting with the times has never been so easy

Will Richardson (2010) describes Twitter as a "network at my fingertips" for educators (p.86).

So, yes, yes, yes, I am sold on the idea of using Twitter for creating and keeping track of my PLN! I am all over differentiated learning for teachers. I am simply looking for a better way to keep track of it all!

Enter TweetDeck - a platform that allows me to manage the Twitter feeds I follow into columns. I can have columns for various hashtags that I wish to keep track of and can even add my Facebook account into it. Because I am using the Google Chrome add-on of TweetDeck, it shows up as a tab in my web browser which is very convenient. TweetDeck simply enhances my ability to use Twitter and allows me to better take advantage of it.



Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.

About face

So, says my friend, the end is in sight,

You need to assess all your work, if you might.

Let's start with Facebook, what do you think?

Will you keep it or is it bound to shrink?

As my Web 2.0 explorations draw to a close, I feel it is necessary to go back and visit each tool, seeing what I have learned and where I will go from here.

Before beginning my inquiry, I did not have a Facebook account. In fact, I actively avoided signing up for Facebook, based on various things I had heard about it - ranging from the time consuming aspect of it to privacy concerns about it.

After investigating the privacy concerns and learning how my personal privacy settings could be set to control who sees what, I am much more comfortable with Facebook. In terms of eating up my time, I do find that it is one more thing that I "need to check" when sitting down at my computer, several times a day - in addition to my two email accounts, Twitter and Google Reader. However, with my Facebook feed going into my TweetDeck, I find I only need to open up Facebook once unless I spot something I want to investigate further.

So, yes, I will continue to use Facebook. Personally, it allows me to connect with friends that I don't necessarily talk to or see very often. It gives me a taste of what is going on in their lives. It is nice to be able to share a photo and have everyone see it and give a comment. It also lets me connect with groups that I am involved with so that I am up to date.

Professionally, Facebook can also be used by teacher-librarians to connect with their personal learning networks. Buffy Hamilton, the Unquiet Librarian suggests using Facebook to connect with likeminded colleagues in Start Social Networking with Libraries and Librarians @ Facebook. She suggests some groups/organizations to "fan" as well as some groups to join to keep up to date on what is happening in the library world. Although I can see the value in this, right now, I am going to keep Facebook a personal foray and keep my PLN connections through Google Reader and Twitter.

Will Richardson (2010) suggests that the "key" to Facebook "for educators is to move beyond the friendship-based connections and really explore the potentials of the networked, interest-based learning that's possible" (p. 132). Facebook "has become an important online space in our kids lives" (p. 133) and, for the most part, no one is teaching them how to navigate it safely. Right now, I am at an elementary school. Since students must be 13 years old to sign up for Facebook, it is not possible to use it as a learning tool. However, I do believe that general discussions around internet safety and digital footprints need to begin in elementary school. In the event that I re-enter the world of secondary school, I can see some direct uses for Facebook in the classroom including creating private groups for discussion (Richardson, 2010) or creating Facebook pages for characters in books or history (What Would Romeo's Facebook Page Look Like). In fact, here are

So, the final word? I will keep using Facebook personally and will look to use it the classroom if I end up in secondary education in the future.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.

A day in the internet

Created by: MBAOnline.com

It's storytime!

A Storybird for storytime,

It doesn't always need to rhyme.

So cute and easy, it's lots of fun.

Pick some art and you're on the run.

Storybird is a lovely application to make beautiful online books. Storybird has a collection of art by numerous artists that are grouped together by theme. You choose the art for your book and get the whole themed collection. Then it is drag and drop - choose a piece of art you like and drag it onto the page of the book. You can shift the location - upper, lower, right or left of page. Then you add text and continue along to the next page. It really is easy to use and the beautiful artwork makes the books look professional.

What's Your Storybird: How to use Storybird  

Teachers can get an Education account (which I did), where they can manage classes, put assignments, etc. You can upgrade for other convenient features as follows.

I absolutely love Storybird! It is so easy to use and the results are so impressive and professional looking. I really want to get working with the Grade 2 and 3s on creating some Storybirds after the break - the nice thing is that we can do it in French!

In this blog post at Edutopia, Aviva Dunsigner, describes using Storybird with Grade 1s and 2s working individually, in partners and even using it during math centres while Stephen Davis uses it with his Grade 8 students (New Teacher Boot Camp Week 3 - Using Storybird).


Anne Coward at Educational Technologies for School Leaders suggests these reasons for using Storybird:

• Encourages reluctant readers to read and write
• Opportunities for students to collaborate and share ideas while they create their own story
• Students are easily able to navigate program to create storybook
• Great images and artwork for students that help inspire a story
• Student Work can be easily accessed to grade and review.
• The created project can be easily shared and downloaded so others can provide feedback or edit
• Embed anywhere i.e. class blogs, websites, email for others to see

On this wiki, http://kditzlerteacherresourcepage.wikispaces.com/Storybird, there is an example of an assignment about adjectives using Storybird. Students must choose an art collection and then create a book using adjectives to describe the art. There are also examples of collaboratively created Storybirds between classes in different parts of the country (USA).

Storybirds are an excellent way for students to engage in new literacies (Kist, 2010; Richardson, 2010). The ability to create and collaborate is critical as we move forward in the rapidly changing environment of learning and technology. Storybird allows students to participate in this read/write web, is fun and easy.

Kist, W. (2010). The socially networked classroom: teaching in the new media age. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.