Using Pen Names as Online Student Identifiers

Many teachers have embraced the digital age and have begun to share stories that happen in their classroom with the world.  Maybe they are posting photos to instagram, writing posts on a blog, or inviting conversation on facebook.  Wherever the sharing takes place, the question asked often is “should I post names of my students”?

For the most part teachers are sensitive to information posted online.  They won’t put names with photos.  They won’t use full names.  Some teachers use a first initial only instead of any name.  

One idea is to provide a student identifier for each child.  Sort of like a students pen name.  What if you provided student identifiers using fictional characters for each student?  For example, students could be referenced as Olaf, Cinderella, or Schreck.

When referencing work posted by the student, the byline simply reads “by Olaf”.  When posting a name referencing an image, use “Olaf and Eeyore enjoying the snow”.

One classroom has students author posts on her blog.  Each post is signed by the student identifier.  Then the post is labeled by the student identifier.  Using this label enables parents, or the teacher, to click on the label and bring up all the posts written by a particular student.

Everyone in class knows who wrote it.  Whoever is Winnie The Pooh, their parents also know it.  Yet it’s a safe a secure way of not posting personal information about students online.

Maybe in high school students want to establish a positive digital footprint, therefore they want to have their names associated with school activities.  For elementary school and middle school, using a creative student identifier can be a positive safe method of sharing stories with the world.

Students Writing Classroom Blog Posts

One of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) student standards focuses on communication and collaboration; that students must communicate, interact, and publish with peers and experts using a variety of digital tools.  

What do you have students doing in your classroom to meet this standard?  One suggestion could be to have students write posts to a classroom blog.

Often times teachers are so busy during a jam packed day, they don’t have time to sit and write a blog post of classroom  happenings.  Thus, it becomes another after school extra added onto the full plate taken home each evening.

Solution is simple, let the students be blog authors.  

You can share rights with student accounts so they can become blog authors, but with this method you will need to change these rights each year.

An easier method to consider would be to have students email their blog posts into the blog.  As a student composes an email, the subject of the email is the title of the post, and the content of the message is the post itself.  Images can be included in the post.

Blogger settings have email options, providing you with the email address in which to send the post.  Many teachers prefer to have the option set on draft mode so they can preview the post before publishing.

By doing this students simply email in their post, the teacher proof reads the content, then publishes when ready.  

Have a designated blog author for the week.  Choose at random a few authors each week.  Have students write blog posts at least once every two weeks as a task they need to complete.  

Students will be motivated authors regardless of how you implement.  And you will be sharing stories of classroom happenings beyond the Friday folders that are sent home.

A Dozen Nonfiction Reading Resources for Students

As non-fiction reading becomes a higher priority in the educational environment, here is a list of non-fiction reading resources that may be of help to your classroom.  Teachers in Northeast Oregon use several of these sites, so I hope you may find a couple that can benefit your classroom or student as well.

• Tween Tribune  Students find the news stories interesting and worth in reading.  There are four levels of articles including k-4, 5-8, 9-12, and Spanish.  Stories have thought provoking questions at the end to extend the readers mind.  Teachers can set up classroom environments to  help check for student understanding and allow for readers to submit comments. 

• Newsela  Non-fiction and current news related events are written in student friendly articles.  Each article can be read under different Lexile reading levels consisting of 690, 830, 980, 1130, and max.  Articles can be filtered under 8 different anchor standards, including Central Idea, Word Meaning and Choice, or Point of View as a few examples.  Some of the article contain a quiz at the end to help check for understanding.  Teachers can set up classroom environments to help check for understanding and monitor student progress through passages. 

• Youngzine  Readers enjoy reading a magazine containing articles and features tailored to the interests of students.  Also available are news related videos for a variety of mediums.  Teachers can set up classroom environments to help check for understanding and monitor student progress through passages.  If a student desires to be published, they can submit their article for future consideration. 

• Dogo News  Students can search news content by grades or categories, view stories associated with a mapped location, and read through kid website reviews.  All resources have comments providing viewer feedback, and any article may be embedded into a blog or website.  Teachers can create a personalized learning environment for their students by created accounts. 

• Wonderopolis  Each day a wonder of the day is published providing students answers to questions they may be curious about.  For example, what does it mean to be immune, or  what happens when lightning strikes a tree?  Each wonder contains a list of vocabulary associated with the article called "wonder words".  Wonders have a built in audio version, as well as investigation questions for those more curious minds.

• Scholastic News  A variety of article and videos are available from Scholastic at News for Your Classroom.  In one click students can navigate to other elementary grade level magazines or secondary subject matter magazines.  If you need magazines in Spanish, French, or Dutch, they are also available.

• Science News for Students  A nice variety of articles related to all sorts of science related topics are available to read.  Several student resources are available including ideas for student projects, digital badging, and Eureak! lab.  A section of Science in the News offers feature articles, bizarre or gory details, and viewpoints providing a variety of scientific reading experiences.

• Time for Kids  You've read Time magazine, now there is Time for Kids, TFK, containing current related article from topics all around the world.  Students can read articles from Kid Reporters, view photos, and watch videos.  TFK created Mini Sites intended to host many articles under one topic, like the Olympics or Antarctica.   Create logins to access quizzes, worksheets, and more.

• Hey There Everywhere  A good selection of articles with containing information in a variety of mediums and styles.  For instance an article may be read as an interview, or another article may contain videos supporting written content. In searching through archives, one can choose from a category or by a month/year.

• GoGo News   Student friendly news and student friendly topics are available under different topics including Planet, Animals, and Picks.  There is also a free app designed for mobile environments availabe from GoGo News.

• Teaching Kids News  Timely relevant news articles are available for kids, parents, and classrooms. Articles contain extension questions, grammar features, and discussion prompts allowing for more in-depth exploration of topics.  For the most part, content is written for grades 2-8.

• Our Little Earth   Stories are written to provide students an opportunity to learn about current issues happening in today's world.  Every two weeks an issue is published.  Teachers can sign up to have the issue delivered to your email inbox for free.

ZeeMaps - Creating Interactive Maps

Have you wanted students to create maps demonstrating their understanding of geographical concepts in locations throughout the world?

ZeeMaps is an online, iPad friendly, tool that allows someone to create interactive customized maps. Simply click "create a free map", enter in a title and a few more starting details about your map, and you are off and creating.




Start making your map interactive by adding markers, which could contain descriptions, photos, and video. You may also want to add map annotations, or colored regions.

Once finished, publish your map and obtain html code which can be used to embed the map onto a website or blog post.  Published maps are dynamic in that when you modify the map, it auto updates onto your website.  Below is an example I've started highlighting some tech rich environments in North East Oregon Classrooms. There are ads with the free version.


No account is needed to create a map if you plan on starting then finishing in one setting. However, to save and comeback later and make modifications, you will need to create an account. Accounts vary in pricing structure, as the free account is more than adequate for educational needs.

Ideas for students could be to create interactive maps demonstrating different ecological climates of the world, an interactive walking tour with photos and videos from historical stops from your town, or charting biographical locations of historical figures from a country. The list of projects is endless.

Free, easy to use, and adaptable for educational environments makes Zeemaps a nice tool for many opportunities.

Curriculet - Create your own online reading curriculum

Curriculet is a free site that allows teachers to add their own questions, annotations, links, and quizzes to books, pdfs, blog posts, or other online reading passages.

Creation of a class and adding students is all free, as well as many already uploaded free domain books and reading passages from ReadWorks.org.  In addition, uploading articles from blogs and other websites was simple by URL. Once uploaded, Curriculet changes the formatting, taking away all the ads and additional links, and allows for the adding of the teacher's own questions and quizzes.

Add Content via Files or URL or from the Curriculet Store

Example from TeenTribune article:

Add questions, annotations, or quizzes by click and holding.  Students can add their own annotations for their own notes as well, view able only to themselves. 

Student View of the book Call of the Wild

After assigning a book or passage to a class, teachers can monitor student progress by student or by question.  Adding students to a class requires adding by URL or a class "token" that they enter when signing up.  Students are required to use an email and teachers do not have access to change their passwords.   If students use Google, they can use a quick Google Sign In.

Curriculet is mobile friendly, working on any device that can access the internet.  This is great from BYOD situations, iPads, tablets, chromebooks, smartphones, etc.   More information about accessing newer titles, not just free domain, recently was posted on the their blog here.

It was easy to use and has a great guide for quick questions.  I personally would like to see the ability to have the text read aloud, but for the features it currently has, this site would be highly useful in any class!  

  

Celebrate Presidents Day with Online Tours and Great Resources!

Here are some great sites to visit in honor of Presidents Day!

My favorite is the Lincoln Memorial Interactive from the National Park Service .  This online interactive has amazing clarity, panoramas, and great video reflections from Park Rangers about the meaning and importance of both Lincoln and the Memorial.

Under His Hat is a website devoted to exploring who Lincoln was by using only primary sources.  By choosing "In the Classroom" you can pick a topic and click further to find lessons and activities to do with your students.  Great photos with 360 views and easy to understand information.  This is great for upper elementary on up!  

EarthCam of the Washington Monument

For Research and Fun Facts Elementary and Middle School Students can visit America's Story from the Library of Congress, Meet Amazing Americans    Check out the resources for  Abraham Lincoln  and George Washington.



For older students using primary source documents the Library of Congress Web Guide for Abraham Lincoln and George Washington  gives students access to amazing research tools.

If your class is studying George Washington the Mount Vernon Virtual Mansion Tour  is a fun spot to visit to see inside his home.

The History Channel has a nice history of Presidents Day with lots of fun links, from the evolution of the White House to our modern Presidents.  

Awesome Stories - Primary Source Research for Students

Awesome Stories is a great free story based research site that provides additional media with a focus on cited primary resources.  The stories are high interest, focusing on events from the present as well as the past.

With the recent passing of Nelson Mandela there are story snippets from his book Long Walk to Freedom. Each page contains numerous additional resources in the form of hyperlinks within the text as well as from the list on the side of primary source photos, movies, sound files, and other media.   

Students can use the search bar to look for specific topics or use explore the calendar to see stories for that week.

With the free version of this site there is access to all the stories and the primary sources.  With an additional silver membership (free for a 30 day trial) there are expanded options such as teacher account with student tracking, audio read alongs, visual vocabulary builder activities, CCSS alignment resources as well as other features.  A more advanced gold level is in the works.

The Hour of Code - Celebrate Computer Science Week Dec 9 - 13

Join classrooms around the country next week by doing an hour of coding with your students. Code.org has pulled together resources to make coding simple to introduce to students at all grade levels as well as being easy to understand for teachers who are unfamiliar with coding.

Why coding and why introduce computer science to your students?

The site as some jaw dropping statistics.  By 2020, there will be 1,000,000 more jobs than students in computer science.  9 out 10 schools don't even offer computer programming classes.  Just to list a few.

Visit the site, look though the tutorials and try a few out for yourself.  Do you have limited access to computer labs?  Only a few tablets in your room?  The site gives many different options, including non-tech lessons.   For coding and programming apps check out the post on our iDevice in the Mountains Blog. 

Not only will you be introducing them to computer science, but you will be helping them build problem solving strategies and teaching them perseverance. 

8 Classroom Photo Sharing Ideas Using Yogile

Yogile is a simple to use clean photo sharing service perfect for the classroom.  To begin sign up for a free account, create an album, and choose between a couple of settings.  

Albums created under the free account status will be automatically deleted after 14 days. It's perfect as they clean up the photo projects. You just need to remember to download the photos you want to save.

Yogile provides a random URL to access your album, or you can create your own.  

With this URL others can send photos to the album using the created email address, or upload them directly from a computer.

Another nice setting perfect for the classroom is to approve all photos before they are added to the album. This is perfect if you have students emailing a variety of photos for a particular assigned task.

There are no ties to social media, so you aren't playing photo roulette with "suggested" photos appearing on the webpage while you open the website in front of your classroom.

Ideas of how you can implement a shared photo album in your classroom:

1. Primary students can use iPod Touch's or iPads to take pictures of items that begin with letters of the alphabet and email those photos to a shared album.  It's best if the teacher types the email address the first time so that the email auto pops up for all following emails on an iDevice.  Other topics could include different shapes, different colors, or different sets of numbers.
2. Students could take pictures while on a field trip and upload their photos to a shared folder.
3. Students can email photos of whatever they want, and at the end of the week students can use the photos as writing prompts.
4. Have students take and share selfies to be used during class projects.
5. Students working on projects can have people from other parts of the world take and email photos into one shared folder, rather than have them arrive in many different emails.
6. Keep a photo record of different lab experiments conducted by students from various periods or classes in a district to be compared with each other at the completion of a unit.
7. Students can demonstrate an understanding of a vocabulary word by taking photo of them or someone "doing" the word, then store the photos in a shared folder to be reviewed later.
8. Have students take pictures of iconic images around town, like buildings, parks, murals or sculptures.  Then use a shared folder to place them all in one location accessible by anyone in class.

Please suggest other ideas how you could use a shared photo album with your class.

Online Assessments for Understanding Digital Citizenship

Common Sense Media is an absolute awesome web resource for obtaining curriculum addressing digital citizenship topics to your students. 


 There are 8 topic areas of content written in all four grade level stages; K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.  There are videos, questions, activities, and many resources to assist any teacher with integrating digital citizenship content into their classroom.  All activities are aligned to common core standards.

 

If you look into their scope and sequence of how these lessons are recommended being taught, lessons are broken into groups of approximately 5 lessons per unit.  At the end of each unit is a Unit Assessment.

I decided to take a couple of Unit Assessments to experience what the students will encounter.  There are a variety of question types similar to what you'll be seeing in a Smarter Balance test, that is to say there are very few multiple choice type questions.  Most questions involve higher level thinking like arranging an order of events, or placing items onto different parts of a venn diagram.

Students begin an assessment by typing in their name and an optional email address for their teacher, which will auto send the results to the teacher at the conclusion.  If a student incorrectly answers a question, the program will ask the student to try again, upon which if they miss a second time the correct answer will be revealed.  Only the students first answers are calculated and printed in the assessment results at the end. 

Allow for at least 30 minutes for students to complete the activity, as there are 15-20 questions they need to answer.  Students will be able to print the results of their assessment which shows the question, how the student answered, and the correct answer.

InCtrl - Empowering Students in a Digital Age

Here is a nice resource you can use to begin your digital citizenship discussions with your upper elementary and middle school classes from Cable in the Classroom, Be InCntrl!

They offer seven Lessons, which are basically units containing 3-5 half hour lessons.

• Working Together Digitally
• Living in a Digital World
• Your Digital Footprint: Leaving a Mark
• Media: Between the Lines
• Stand Up ... Be InCtrl!
• What's Mind Isn't (Necessarily) Yours
• In-Credibly Informed

Each Lesson offers a Teacher version of the video, Student version of the video,  and Lesson Materials with Activities which include ready to use printable documents for your class.  Objectives are include along with an estimated time for each section, list of vocabulary terms, engaging questions to ask, and an outlined project. 



The activities provide high level creation opportunities for the students.  For example students create a "Stop the Drama!" campaign which includes writing and distributing a survey for others to complete, analyzing the responses, and putting together a reflection about the findings.  InCtrl provides ideas, links, and resources for all the activities.  All activities are aligned to common core.


This is a great resource you can use to integrate digital citizenship topics into your curriculum.

Digital Citizenship Lessons from FBI - Cyber Surf Islands

We need to be doing as much as we can providing resources for students so they can become educated online digital citizens.  The FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, has created a series of lessons for grades 3-8 in a flash-based game environment called Cyber Surf Island where students are to learn content and then take an exit exam demonstrating their understanding.

Students click into a grade, like Ice Island, and choose from 7 different lessons.  When they have mastered the content they can take the exam.

Lessons include a variety of tasks.  One lesson provide users with vocabulary words to learn and short check for understanding questions.  Another shows video segments from NetSmartz.  Students can complete a word search and learn their definitions.

These lessons might be great to do with one projector and whole class discussion.  Like lesson 6 where students can determine what is actually meant with a common online statement.

Teachers can sign up their school, so their kids take the test, and compete against other schools from around the country to determine if they can make their school appear on the Leaderboard.  Tests are half hour with different questions for each student. 

Who knows, if your schools does extremely well you can even have an FBI agent visit your classroom.