Link and new geekiness

I published an article about the digital classroom on Elephant Journal a couple of days ago that I'm rather proud of, and it's gotten some nice feedback. If you're interested in reading/commenting on it, you can find it here.

I've also found a new and cool way to get info to my students without paper. I found an excerpt from a book that I wanted to use with my students, and so I asked the publisher of the book if I could copy it to use. I got permission, scanned it, and saved it as a pdf to a flash drive... but then couldn't decide what to do with it. I wanted them to read it tomorrow in class, but then there was the whole digital vs paper thing that has become something of a block for me now. I ended up emailing them the excerpt. (Yeah, I know.... obvious solution. I really do need to apply Occam's Razor much more often than I do.) Nonetheless, I am still rather pleased with the idea that each of the students in the class already has the excerpt waiting for them in their inboxes. Tomorrow in class, I am going to have them log into their email accounts and read the excerpt. We have the laptop cart tomorrow, so each can use their own, but this still wouldn't be that much of an issue if I have them do this same task in their Learning Teams of three, one team per computer; the principle is the same.

I definitely want to use this as often as possible. Best part is that a student can't claim to have lost the handout or leave it in class... all they need to do is log in at home and there it is! I can and will still print it out for students without internet access, unless they have a flash drive and a computer at home, in which case they can simply load it onto their flash drive, again saving paper.

I so love this whole technology thing. :-)



Oh! Speaking of technology, it's possible to search the 'net and be eco-friendly at the same time! I recently came across Ecoogler, a search engine that uses Yahoo technology and for every 10,000 searches done, they will plant a tree in the Amazon rainforest. To date, they've planted 2,290 trees and counting. So.... bookmark 'em and use it frequently! (Click on their logo or the link to get to their site.)
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Group work thoughts

Started group work in the freshmen classes this week. Now, group work was never really my strength, so it's a little scary for me to do that. The groups worked well, overall. Sixth block seized on it and used the time well, so they get huge amounts of credit for doing so well with it. It is going to take some time to perfect it, but I am pleased with how well things by and large went. I've always been something of a control freak, so doing this is a huge stretch for me. There are some definite kinks for me to work out, especially with the more unmotivated students, so it wasn't a cake walk, but I am encouraged by what I saw and by how the students handled it.

I still have some work to do with the students and blogging. Some have set up the blogs but have yet to actually do the blogging, which is somewhat disappointing. I am going to try to get the laptop cart in my room this week so I can reinforce things, and will rely on the learning teams to help each other out with this. If I have the students working in learning teams so often, then in theory I'd only need something like 7 or 8 laptops in my room; one per team. I'm thinking that perhaps I could go through donorschoose.org or something like that to get the laptops donated to my classroom. That would be super sweet, and it's certainly worth a shot. (256)