Tons of iPad Resources and more

My recent favorite collaboration and resource organization tool is LiveBinder.  If you've never heard of this site you should definitely check it out.  It makes organizing your resources, searching for resources, and sharing a breeze.  Just like you would with your Diigo or Delicious accounts you can install a "LiveBinder It" icon to your toolbar and add any page or resource you find and organize it into binders.

One of the most fabulous LiveBinders I have personally used to get iPad ideas and resources from is the iPads in School LiveBinder.  The Binder is very well organized and makes finding anything you need for iPads super easy.  Use the subtabs at the top to access specific category resources such as teachers, parents, administrators, etc. and then search within that tab for resources.  For example...if you go to the teachers subtab you will find resources for grading with the iPad and lesson plans, to name a few.  Remember this is an editable web 2.0 tool, so you can share and add to this LiveBinder any helpful resources you've come across and used. 
This would be a wonderful tool for your students to share resources.  If they were researching a topic for example they could organize all of their resources into one Binder where everyone can access it and write notes about it.
Happy searching!!!  I know you'll be hooked into creating your own Binders. 
As always let me know what you think and how you're using LiveBinders in your class.

Tech Bites for Thought

More Best of the Best.  Have you ever wondered how other teachers are using technology in their classrooms?  or What parents think about technology use in the classroom?  My classmates and I produced voicethreads on technology and literacy integration questions and asked some of our colleagues, friends and family members to post their opinions.  Check out the links below to view some of the voicethreads.  Oh and obviously the uses for this tool in the classroom are endless!  Comment on some trends that you see recurring throughout threads and what implications you see it having on the future of education.

MyVoiceThread
Caren'sVoiceThread
Elizabeth'sVoiceThread
Becky'sVoiceThread
Todd'sVoiceThread

Internet Based Literature Lessons

I have been taking summer classes (no rest for the weary, is right...as if having a 4 month old wasn't enough to keep me busy this summer) and just completed my final projects.  I have to say that one of my fav. classes and one that I feel I have gotten the most out of that I will use in my classroom is "Using Computers in the Classroom---Focus on Literacy and Technology Integration."  So many outstanding resources and new knowledge about technology use has been gained.  From virtual classrooms to  web 2.0 tools... I am a changed teacher!  I could do about 20 posts from this class, but don't have the time or energy right now for that so I'm compiling some lists/links for you to explore.  Here's a few of the BEST OF THE BEST...
Internet Based Literature Lesson Links created by yours truly and my classmates (organized by books/g.l.):

Pink and Say-3-5
Penguin Chick-3
Henry's Freedom Box-4/5
Mummies In the Morning- 4
Rosa-4
The Very Hungry Catepillar-k/1
Harriett Tubman (Civil War)-5
Snowflake Bentley-4
AncientEgypt-3rd
Punctuation Celebration-2/3

Finding Dulcinea: The Librarian of the Internet and so much more

There are a ton of websites out there that have been developed to help students and teachers with internet inquiry.  One such site is Finding Dulcinea.  Check out my Group Prezi that provides an overview of using finding Dulcinea in the classroom.
You may also be interested in checking out:
Thinkfinity
Webspiration

Enhancing the Writing Curriculum with Technology

With the emergence of new technologies the process of writing instruction and composition is beginning to take a new shape in the classroom.  Technology is enhancing the writing curriculum in many ways from making it more meaningful to more practical.  According to the article Writing Re-Launched: Teaching with Digital Tools "Outside of the classroom students most often encounter digital writing—that is, writing created or read on a computer or other Internet-connected device."  In the 21st century classroom it's becoming seemingly more important that students are composing through digital writing in the classroom as well.  Educators and research findings are finding that students are more motivated, collaborative and reflective when it comes to posting their writing for an audience to read through a technology tool.  Technology tools such as class blogs, wikis, email, google docs, and internet penpals spurs student engagement and creativity in ways conventional writing cannot.

Through the process of blogging students are encouraged to collaborate and share their ideas in a public forum.  Teachers can create a class blog where they can organize class information and facilitate class discussions and assignments; class news can be posted; project highlights are detailed; and students can respond to literature prompts.  Teachers can also use class blogs to aid in reading comprehension by having students collectively research an upcoming topic and post on the blog to build background knowledge.

The process of composing and teaching about writing digitally is much different than the traditional hand and pencil method.  The article Beginning to Write with Word Processing: Integrating Writing Process and Technology in a Primary Classroom highlights that students feel that composing through word processing is easier because it is less tedious, rereading occured more frequently when typing and that students tended not to use a web or prewriting strategy before composing.  Teachers have to adjust their teaching practices from the traditional to the digital style of writing as well.  Mini lessons may have to be shorter, a greater degree of interaction may be required and the pacing of the writing sessions may need to be grouped in shorter chunks to allow for students to take short breaks.  
Having students publish their writing on the internet is beneficial because it allows students to feel like their writing has purpose and is authentic.  A negative aspect of publishing writing via the web is that students could become desensitized to the fact that real people will have access to and read their published work.  

Hooking Reluctant Readers

Every year I have a few students that require a little creativity in order to hook them into the wonderful world of reading.  What better way than to use multimedia books.  I wish I had heard of these books sooner.  Check out the podcast with author Patrick Carman, where he describes what goes into creating a multimedia book and how reluctant readers are responding to them.
Check out his personal website for more details on his books.

Using Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom

I have spent a great deal of time researching the effects that interactive whiteboards have on student learning and engagement.  I have been fortunate to be able to dedicate a great deal of my time and energy through my graduate assistantship researching and developing resources and content for teachers and pre-service teachers.  IWB's have been proven to enhance student motivation and engagement, in turn increasing test scores and achievement throughout the year.  I had a Promethean AcivBoard in my classroom for two years and can personally share that the board made a huge difference in my learners on many levels in all subjects.
Three things that are very important for teachers to take into consideration when using IWB's in their classroom are time, student use, and taking advantage of the capabilities that the software has to offer.  If teachers don't incorporate the IWB into their daily routines and instruction throughout the day the board will not reach it's potential benefits.  Teachers need to adopt a new pedagogy when incorporating the IWB into their teaching.  Simply using the board as a glorified whiteboard and projecting notes and instructions is not going to produce learning gains.  The software that goes with the boards, such as Smart Notebook and Activ Inspire, allows teachers to create content in flipcharts that are interactive and engaging for students.  It's important that teachers develop these flipcharts in ways that allow for the students themselves to interact with the board.  If the board is mainly used by the teacher as a means for presentation the students are not gaining the full benefits.  Centers are a great way for teachers to ensure that all students get time throughout the week to interact with the board and even create their own content to show their learning.

In the Reading Rockets article The Digital Whiteboard: A Tool in Early Literacy Instruction a primary teacher discusses how she uses the IWB in her classroom and the benefits her students gained from it.

"The Paperless Classroom"

Classroom websites are an amazing way to keep your students, parents, and others connected to what you are doing in the classroom.  But what if your website was the hub for all that you teach and plan to present?  What if it takes the place of your filing cabinet and allows you to store and post all of your lesson plans and activity sheets with the click of a button?  Mark Barnes discusses the "Paperless Classroom" in this linked video.  From podcasts to message boards he covers a plethora of web 2.0 tools and how to embed them into your class website to enhance student learning and digitally organize all of your teaching tools.  I was amazed by all of the wonderful information and resources he shares in this video.  You have to check this out!
My goal is to try and work to organize my classroom in a similar digital fashion.  It will take a great deal of time and energy in the start, but will greatly pay off in the long run.  I think everyone will eventually be driven to this type of organization, especially with so many virtual classrooms coming into view.

Check out/Subscribe to Mark Barnes' Blog page

Are your students engaged and motivated to learn?

The best compliment I get as a teacher is when parents tell me how their child loves coming to school and that I make learning fun and exciting for them.  I think the biggest part of my students motivation for learning comes from our reading and writing workshop time.  To me the most important element during workshop times is sharing.  It is so important that we make time for kids to talk about what they're reading and writing with enthusiasm.  My enthusiasm for reading and writing carries down to them and then they motivate each other through activities such as book shares and author share time.  Students learn so much from each other when they have the chance to listen to another child's thoughts on what they're reading or writing.  My students look forward to getting to the next book on their "Books I want to read next list" and enjoy giving their book recommendations to others.
Setting up specific procedures and practicing what this share time looks and sounds like is key.  It's important that students are taught how to listen and reflect on what their classmates are saying.  This is not something that just comes naturally for most children.  I always post some guidelines for listening/sharing during these times for students to continually refer to on my Activ Board.  I have also been known to video tape the discussions and share sessions for us to reflect on as a whole class.
Take a listen...
The author of the blog site Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller, discusses in this Choice Literacy podcast how she defines 'engaged' reading and her role in motivating students.  She talks about how she thinks one of the most important things you can do to motivate student reading is by taking time to conference with each child on a one on one basis in the beginning of the year to find out what their interests are and helping them get excited and engaged in a book.  
What do you think is important and necessary to engage the students in your classroom?

Sites to try for helping kids find a just right high interest book:
Access book talks and trailers on this blog site:  http://mrschureads.blogspot.com/
Have your kids check out "bookcasts" to find a book that interests them:  http://www.readinginaction.org/

Conferencing Time Constraints

One of the most challenging things for myself and colleagues during reading workshop time is spending one on one time conferencing with my students.  We all know how important this time is in goal setting and monitoring each students reading growth, but meeting with (give or take) 25 kids during even a weekly period can seem overwhelming and impossible.  How do you manage conference time, yet make sure you are getting it all in? 
I have found that organization is the number one factor that helps me to keep up with my readers and which students I need to meet with and when. Keeping binders with individually labeled sections where I write anecdotal notes, goals, and needs for future meetings are key to being prepared for each conference and staying on task.  Using a conference calendar is also an essential organization tool, where I can see at a glance where I can add students to days and where I know I just won't be able to fit everything in.
In the Quick Take: Time for Conferences Video by Aimee Buckner she discusses how she limits her time with her conferences.  She says that she uses time to guide her future planning for mini lessons.  If her conferences are taking longer than 5 minutes she reflects on what she is discussing with the student and how she can address it in a whole group mini-lesson.

The following links are resources that I've found helpful on conferencing:

This site has tons of printable forms and rubrics that you can use in your conferences and that can help you stay organized and make your conferences purposeful.
http://www.readinglady.com/mosaic/tools/tools.htm

Best Practice: Formative Assessment Done Right

Best Practice: Formative Assessment Done Right
Reading this article and comments made me think a great deal about my own process of formative assessment and what my ultimate goal is for my students.  It is so true that the focus should be on learning and not scores.  It's so important to take time within the daily assessments we give to provide our students with feedback and motivate growth.  A letter grade on a report card or percentage on a test isn't going to help a student reflect upon their current understanding of a topic or subject.
I also think the power of collaboration and building a community of learners is a very significant part of the reflective and growing process.  Formative assessment in this way is not necessarily always gaged by the teacher.  For example instead of having my students simply write a reflection on how they think their literature circle groups did that day, I involve the whole class in providing feedback and reflecting on how to become a better communicator and listener.  I choose one group to videotape their literature discussion and then play it back the next day for the group and entire class to evaluate.  Student's have to be actively engaged in the process of assessing their peers and the chosen group is able to see firsthand what they are doing well and need to improve upon.  Author's Share Chair time is another equally beneficial way to use formative assessment, where the evaluation is done amongst peers.

Are you a teacher in Indiana and need technology support for your classroom? Ask Erica

I am supporting the Ball State Teacher's College in the role of a virtual GA and online technology savvy teacher to provide support for the needs of teachers and teacher-educators.
What can Ask Erica do for you?
Check out the iStudio website for more info

News You Can Use----An Instructional Approach Expands Its Reach

An Instructional Approach Expands Its Reach
What are your thoughts on the RTI process?

Shelfari---Motivate your students to read by creating personal libraries for each student

 Shelfari is a wonderful website where students and teachers can create/share their own personal library of books, write reviews about them, access other students' bookshelves, join groups to discuss books, and access discussions that people have read about books you're interested in.  You can organize your bookshelf according to books you've read, are currently reading, and want to read.  Students no longer need to keep a hard copy of the books they've, instead they import them into their shelfari bookshelf and can then print out their list.  What a wonderful way to motivate and engage your students in reading!  If you have any questions ask me.
I just started my shelfari bookshelf and you can see it on the right side bar of my blog page.  My current bookshelf is more of a professional development library.  It would be great for literacy coaches and curriculum directors to create a Shelfari Prof. Development Library for their teachers to access and discuss books.  I plan to create another bookshelf where I upload books for children and write personal reviews for my students to access.
If any of you are using shelfari please share any insights you might have in incorporating it into the classroom and leave your shelf name to add to my list of friends.
Check out the shelfari blog

Increasing Motivation and Comprehension

One of my favorite ways to motivate and engage my students in their independent novels is through creative and engaging book projects.  Book projects are a way to assess student comprehension and taught skills, while letting them be creative and have choice about how they share their insights and knowledge about what they've read.  My goal is to try and tap into student's higher level thinking skills, by having them take steps beyond just plot summaries and character development.  I've given my students options of things such as creating character scripts for play productions, commercials, webquests and foldables presentations (click link for awesome blog about foldables w/ examples).

I don't assign. book projects for every book my students read, but give them a heads up that they will choose one book over the next couple of months or so (depending on our schedule) to do a book project on.

Check out this book project idea:  Cereal Box Book Reports

How do you engage and motivate your students to read?

Choosing Books for Reading Instruction and Independent Reading

 Choosing Books in my Classroom:
I have spent quite a bit of time and money developing my library of picture books that I think are great resources for modeling and teaching reading comprehension strategies.  Picture books are wonderful resources for engaging children of all elementary grade levels and even for modeling specific strategies at the middle school level.  I also love to incorporate non-fiction picture books into all content areas as well.  I try to have a resource center of picture book texts available for each big umbrella topic we study.  I find that the kids get so much more out of reading and searching through these types of texts, rather than just assigning them pages in a textbook.  "Mentor texts" are also really great for modeling writing and teaching students about specific writing genres.  My students are encouraged to go to the "mentor text" area during their stages of writing to get ideas and refresh their memories about what we have discussed in mini-lessons.  Lucy Calkins gives a great list of mentor texts in her "Units of Study" series that I often refer to.  One of my favorite mentor text authors is Cynthia Rylant.

Comprehension Strategy Teaching/Independent Reading:

I came across a podcast from Sharon Taberski, author of On Solid Ground: Strategies for Teaching Reading, K-3, where she discusses Book Choice; how she chooses books for teaching comprehension strategies and guides her readers to independent book selections.  I like how Sharon said that she chooses a comprehension book not just because it is a good strategy book, but it is a book that she loves and knows the kids will love too.  She cites how important it is to engage the kids first and then look for how to incorporate strategy instruction, oral language and vocab., phrasing, and prior knowledge, etc.   For guiding independent selections she says that we need to be "a whole lot more careful about the books we put into our children's hands for independent reading."  In order to make the best use of students' independent reading time they need to be reading a book with 98-99% word accuracy.  Too often children are choosing books that they cannot read or are too easy because they've read them too many times.  She also discusses the benefits of "look books". 

How do you use picture books and mentor texts in your classroom?

iPad Evolving into K-12 Learning Tool

iPad Evolving into K-12 Learning Tool 
This Education Week article discusses multiple ways that iPads are being used in classrooms.

iPads, iPods, and iPhones can be really useful tools for teaching literacy in the k-12 classroom. I have been researching different educational apps that are available from apple and giving workshops for pre-service teachers and professors and am really impressed by what's available. The tricky thing to work out is synching all the iPads and not having to pay for the app Check out the links below for app ideas that I found. It's really helpful if you have a delicious account, as you can search for these websites and get some really quick and useful results from others.

http://www.iear.org/iear/tag/reading
This site gives reviews on educational apps. You can narrow your search by topic. One of my fav. reading apps is the "Learning A-Z Leveled Readers" where the kids can access a database of leveled books on their own on Ipads or Ipods.
http://www.onlineclasses.org/2010/06/16/40-amazingly-educational-ipad-apps-for-kids/
Here you’ll find apps for learning the alphabet, using the dictionary, reviewing grammar rules, and more. If you click on the app you can get details and reviews if you scroll down.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24470331/iPhone-iPad-and-iPod-touch-Apps-for-Special-Education
This site is dedicated to Special Education Apps which are great, there are many that you can use with lower elementary students to develop their reading/writing skills. You can search by category as well. My fav. is "Sentence Builder" which was rated "2010 lEAR lang. arts app. of the year."

Share any apps that you like and give feedack on my posts!

RTI Podcast Resource

"Mary Howard, author of RTI from All Sides, talks with Heinemann consultant Judy Wallis about RTI and what it means for teaching. She shares 7 keys to success and emphasizes the importance of high-quality instruction, sensible assessment, professional development, and materials that support flexible implementation."
(http://www.heinemann.com/podcastDetail.aspx?id=5)

  

Response to Intervention is a Hot Topic right now in literacy education.  I thought this podcast was a great resource in explaining the purpose behind the RTI process and what it's benefits are.  Mary Howard makes some really good points about not using the RTI process as "a scripted program" and that we need to make informed instructional decisions as the expert.  She also talked about the importance of tier 1 saying, "What happens at Tier 1 will largely impact how many kids will need support in tiers 2 and 3...We need to provide quality instruction from the beginning and not just when children start to struggle." I think these are some good thoughts to ponder with this process as I think many teachers are feeling overwhelmed in implementing all tiers.  I think the important thing to keep in mind is that the ultimate goal is to improve the quality of instruction for all students.  What are your thoughts?

Glogster! What an Amazing Webtool

Web tools and multimedia are great ways to engage students and create final product presentations.  I love the capabilities that Glogster offers for this.  While looking through the sites' project library I had so many wonderful ideas of how to use this in my teaching and then as a project presentation option for my students.  The MLK example gave me ideas of how it would be a great way for students  to do literature circle cumulative presentations or share their knowledge on biographies they've read.  Teachers could use glogster to introduce topics and get their kids excited about what they are going to learn.  I love the fact that you can embed video, graphics, etc. all into one interactive poster.  If you haven't seen this you have to check it out!

Erica's Favorite Literacy Tech Sites

 

A big way to get even your most reluctant readers excited about diving into that next book is through ebook resources and websites that promote reading. Walk your students through these sites and how to access books and they'll be reading in no time.  iPads are a great way for students to access these books anywhere in the room and not be tied to a desktop computer. 

http://www.biguniverse.com/

Read and write books online/digital resource library

http://www.bookwink.com/

video book talks for kids

http://www.tumblebooks.com

ebooks for kids

www.storylineonline.net

celebrities reading books

www.speakaboos.com

another celebrity book reading site 

Get students reading/finding books that interest them by watching "bookcasts"

http://www.readinginaction.org/