Elementary+School+Resources+and+Global+Partner+Classes

[|Write On!] Grade 5 blog at Mr. Monson's Duluth, Minnesota, USA school. One model. Also one set of students to read and write for in our own classes. [|Mr. Jarret's K-4 website:] This is an excellent site. Notice the website evaluation lessons he has for K-4 students, as well as student blogs, etc. Again--make a new habit. Don't just read him; contact him to see if his students will connect with your students! [|Dare to Dream:] This Los Angeles educator is looking for other elementary classrooms to connect her own with. Say hi and see where it goes!

http://areallydifferentplace.org : I heard from a third party that you were looking for RSS feed for elementary kiddos. I did the same search and found some options. Visit our blog site and click on news feeds and you'll see what we are using. I usually check everyday and so far nothing too inappropriate has been fed to us. I feel very strongly that we have to be extra careful in the RSS content becasue we are making the choice to bring that info "in". Our feeds have a "Blog-it" option which the kids can use to comment on articles. One of my 5th graders is blogging daily on the Word of the Day. I'm looking for Photo of the Day to include. David Warwick at 2 cents worth published an entry on some comments I made about my students' blogging, you can check it out if interested. Let me know if you find anything else. http://areallydifferentplace.org

First, I just want to commend you on both your entusiasm and your thoroughness. What a great read this is. Secondly, I just started a brief correspondence with Nancy Bosch from the Nieman Enhanced Learning Center in Shawnee, KS. She has been blogging with her 4-6 graders for quite a while at http://areallydifferentplace.org, and is herself trying to find the same type of RSS feeds. You might want to check her out. Cheers.

http://del.icio.us/tag/elementary http://del.icio.us/quirkytech I really love the idea of having cross grade level subscriptions to blogs. Excellent reading and writing integration. As a matter of fact,I have two teachers who are going to be starting blogs this week -brother and sister, 5th gr and 1st gr. We have many instances where older and younger grade levels have served as "book buddies" but blog buddies would be so much better and a good example to use when talking to teachers about the possibilities of blogging. Thanks!

[|Diane Quirk] said... There are a few interesting sites for older elementary that already provide feeds such as National Geographic News (where they also have streaming video and free podcasts),This Day in History from the History Channel, there are several Word of the Day sites that also provide RSS. Time for Kids is great for elementary kids but no RSS - so...try [| Ponyfish]. This is a site that will create a feed for any site without RSS. You can only create 3 without paying for it though. There are other sites that help you create RSS where there isn't any currently, but Ponyfish is the only one I've had time to play with right now. You can find others with a quick search.ht [|Diane Quirk] said... One more thing...I also have been letting del.icio.us do some of the work for me lately. I just add a del.icio.us feed to my Bloglines with a relevant tag in the feed. So, if I wanted to get a feed for "elementary" for instance, I add a feed to "http://del.icio.us/tag/elementary". I've been able to find quite a lot of good stuff by creating such feeds. You're welcome to see what I've got at del.icio.us by going to http://del.icio.us/quirkytech

NEW: http://www.feedrinse.com/index.php I took Diane's advice and let RSS search for me. This "FEEDRINSE" thing says it can fliter out "adult" or inappropriate RSS feeds. **Fady, Donna**, this might be what we're looking for. An alternative to Bloglines for ES and MS.

[|Diane Quirk] said... That would be fun! I'm an instructional/technology specialist for my district but mainly work with elementary teachers. Our third grades study world cultures so there's a connection and I'm sure there are some other teachers who might find it interesting to work with another school. I have a few 5th grade teachers who will be creating blogs in the next few weeks and can mention the possibilities to them. If you have any specific teachers in mind, you and they can contact me at dquirk@bville.org. Thanks

Other helpful input from world teachers:
[|Jeff] said... http://www.classblogmeister.com/ allows you to put HTML coding into the 'about me' section and the header section. It is low on theme choice for HS students, but does allow for HTML. In learnerblogs.org it might depend on the theme that you choice. If you choose a theme that is "sidebar widget enabled" then you can add all the HTML you want...I'd check that out first...I can't believe that James would not do that with the learnerblogs. I did it with our own installation of wordpress MU and it works great. Jeff said...

Congrats man!

What I think...take it or leave it. Teach students how to use RSS. No matter the age, no matter the subject THE most powerful tool.

After that there is know one size fits all. Some classes will need a wiki, others blogs, some yet might start by podcasting.

Classes to look at for examples: Elementary: http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/mahlness/ Middle School: http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/ High School: http://adifference.blogspot.com/

These are their professional blogs. Look down the sidebar for links to their classroom projects. I put these links here because most of them have more than one site for their classroom. Hope this helps!

Karl Fisch said...

Do you have any specific history or language arts ideas in mind for collaboration? I don't think it's necessarily too late for this year. I might be able to get a teacher or two in one of those departments in my building to bite. ..

January 4, 2007 1:36 PM Delete Clay Burell said...

Thanks, Karl~

Seems to me that any collaborative ideas with teachers Stateside should come collaboratively, maybe fourth quarter.

If you find those teachers (in either or both disciplines) who'll bite, I'll bite too.

We can hook up now and start looking for a good global connections project for our students.

Can you send out feelers?

Thanks again, and keep up the great work.

January 4, 2007 5:13 PM Delete Karl Fisch said...

Sounds good. Do you think you could email me a brief blurb about you, your school and your classes/students to give them some context? My email would be my name (all lowercase, no spaces) at gmail.

I agree about developing it collaboratively, but if you could include any of the topics that you are "covering" the rest of this year in social studies or language arts, that might help. My folks are still pretty tied to covering the content, and if there was a common piece of content to hook them with, that might help. If not, then I'll just pass along the other info and see what happens.

Thanks for considering this.

January 5, 2007 5:03 AM Delete Clay Burell said...

thanks again, karl. i'm going to keep it online in case any other readers see it and want to jump in. i hope you can either copy and paste or just send the link to this post.

So to answer your questions, point by point:

1. Me: grade 9 English AND grade 9 history this year. English content parallels history content either thematically or chronologically (a humanities approach).

As an English teacher, I use writing workshop and six traits. See "Arabian Nights" wiki idea at http://burell.blogspot.com/2007/01/language-arts-unit-planning-think-aloud.html also see the last section of this post: http://burell.blogspot.com/2007/01/open-offer-to-edtech-specialists.html

This seems to me something other schools from other countries (again, we're in Seoul, though very English proficient) could complement, as I discuss in my post. This year, it might have to be non-synchronous (partner schools could add to our "Korean Nights" stories wiki with their own "[your culture]-ian Nights" story cycles.

Next year we could get more creative if we planned the writing process and peer editing to be scheduled in the same timeframe--my students peer editing the partner class's and vice versa, for example...or a million other possibilities.

The English syllabus for semester 2 this year will be: Arabian Nights, stories from the Decameron, selections from Gulliver's Travels, Candide, Animal Farm, and (I hope) the graphic novel "V for Vendetta."

The English readings above will complement the following Modern World History 9 syllabus for sem. 2: French Revolution Industrial Revolution Age of Idealogy and Imperialism WW I/Russian Revolution Rise of Fascism/WW II Cold War Security and Liberalism in the Age of Globalization and Global Terror (so to speak--the V for Vendetta would fit here as sort of an "Animal Farm" for our kids' current and future world...) see this post for the "French Revolution wiki" idea. I'd be glad to consider something for later in the year on different content, along the same (or different) collaborative/edtech lines: http://burell.blogspot.com/2007/01/talk-aloud-unit-planning-how-to-wiki.html

Thanks for playing, Karl. Let's see what happens!

January 5, 2007 5:45 AM Delete Karl Fisch said...

This works. I'll pass it along next week when we start back.

The only other thing would be if you had some info about your school - I looked briefly through your blog and didn't see anything (but I might've missed it). I think it would be helpful for folks to know something about your school as well (but maybe that's just me).

January 5, 2007 9:46 AM Delete Clay Burell said...

Hi Again, Karl,

I hope you're subscribed to this thread...

Two things:

1) I'm going to play with the "fishbowl" blog activity I picked up from somewhere in your universe, and wonder if you can direct me to a description of it step by step. (Right now, I've posted key passages from the Arabian Nights, asked a focus question about them, and told students to hit 'comment' and reply quickly and briefly. My questions are more brass-tacks: a) is it better to keep students from seeing other student comments first--maybe by setting the "moderate comments" option to "yes"--in order to get more thinking out of them? And b) I notice some teachers using this at your school seem to give 30 minutes and more to this activity in class. What process do they use? What have they learned by doing it, and what advice would they give a first user?)

2) I'm ambivalent about naming my school at the moment, though I don't know why. I guess I want the freer expression that comes from not linking my thoughts to my employers' name and reputation....Make sense? I'd be interested in your thoughts on this.

Hope you're rested for a good '07.

Clay

January 7, 2007 6:25 PM Delete Karl Fisch said...

Here are several posts that talk about the fishbowl technique (sorry, don't have the time at the moment to hyperlink them):

http://smithewl.blogspot.com/2006/12/this-isnt-your-ordinary-act-four.html

http://learningandlaptops.blogspot.com/2006/10/fishbowl-101.html

http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/10/learning-at-speed-of-thought.html

http://annesmith9h.blogspot.com/2006/10/fahrenheit-451-live-blogging-40-68.html

http://learningandlaptops.blogspot.com/2006/12/skype-v-blogger-battle-of-fishbowl.html

Read through those and then let me know what further questions you have.

As far as revealing info about your school, that's up to you of course. But, in general, I think that's part of the power of all this. It's students and teachers sharing (appropriate parts of) their lives and experiences with each other so that they can learn with and about each other. If our students our going to work together through a blog or wiki or something else, they are going to have to share some of their personal experiences and world views - and that will undoubtedly lead to school info being shared. Having said that, I don't know your situation so you are a better judge of whether that will cause you - or your students - any difficulties.

http://www.childrenslibrary.org/