All Blog Posts (867)

Edmodo (http://www.edmodo.com/) is a free, safe, closed and private classroom community that brings students together.  Edmodo was founded in 2008 and as of September, 2012 it has reached a milestone of over 10-million users.  Edmodo allows teachers to create closed, safe groups that can allow students (and parents) to join their virtual classrooms.   As a technology coordinator at a Jewish day school I was so pleased to know that no private information…

Some Jewish learning news, hot off the presses: Jedcamp is Coming to New Jersey! This April 21st at Yavneh Academy, Jewish educators will join together from throughout the Greater New York area and beyond to learn and to share. Edcamps are free, participant driven professional learning experiences. Educators join together and participants volunteer to facilitate conversations. Read more…

It's Monday and I am on a high.  I am so pumped.  I think I'm finally getting it.  I've spent a ton of time reading about so many tools and I want to try them all!  Rabbi Wex, you are so right, I had forgotten how much fun it is to play in the sandbox. 

My first success came early this morning when my IT Teacher showed me how to use Animoto. I went back to class and within five minutes I had created my first video. Me, all by myself, no hand holding.  I was so excited.  Now my…

I recently was introduced to a website called "Wallwisher"  (http://wallwisher.com/) and I have been using it on a regular basis ever since.   Wallwisher is literally paper for the web.  You can use wallwisher to plan events, give feedback, create assignments, brainstorm, make lists, bookmark favorite sites, and TEACH!  My colleagues and students love this site and have created many amazing walls.  Check it out and start…

I have purposely not gotten involved in the world social networking yet. I have personal concerns about signing up with these sites as I feel I will lose myself and I would rather not open up myself to that. Because of this fear, I haven't opened myself up to the idea of using social networks in the classroom. After reading the chapter on social networking however, I can recognize the benefits for older high school students, using such sites in class for assignments in English, Social…

Several years ago, I started to teach AP courses in the high school in which I work. I found teaching an AP course exhilerating and challenging. I knew that at the end of the year, my students would take a nationwide test over which I had no control and they would be compared with thousands of students across the county. My principals and the board members of my school were very involved and conscious of my students' scores and I knew I would be judged based upon them. And yet although I…

שלום ,

לפני כמה ימים חזרתי מסדנאת עומק מבולטימור  שעסקה במשך שלושה ימים באוצר מילים ...

כן ! שלושה ימים ורק על הקניה של אוצר מילים .

האמת , מעולם לא האמנתי שניתן לדבר רק על אוצר מילים במשך שלושה ימים ...

אבל אכן כך היה , ובהיותי בסדנא יצא לי לפגוש חבורת מורות מוכשרות ביותר אך לצערי חלקן מגיעות מבתי ספר יהודיים בהם הטכנולוגיה אינה תופסת את המקום הראוי לה.

ולכן , כאשר חשבתי במה אפתח את הפינה הדו- חודשית…

Collage of Presenters at Connection Online for Instruction and Learning Conference

Today was my two year anniversary on twitter and I was serendipitously honored to celebrate by presenting a course on …

My favorite productivity tool is Evernote. Since using Evernote, I feel as if I really have become more organized. What is Evernote?  It is a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving. Each note can contain formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten "ink" note. Notes can also have file attachments. Notes can be sorted into folders, then tagged, annotated, edited, given comments, searched and…

Google Docs

Productivity tools are becoming an integral part of education and technology. Teachers are incorporating sites like Goolgle docs and Zoho in order to keep their classes organized and technologically savvy. Many teachers using sites like these cannot imagine life before google docs. Google docs and Zoho are wonderful tools for the upper grades, they allow for easy collaboration between students and teachers, make surveys a cinch and are fantastic for organization. For me, a First Grade…

Podcasts and Voice Thread

I was extremely anxious as I tried to figure out how to complete the assignments related to this chapter on social networking.  My day school is trying to use technology in a very thoughtful and cautious way.  We use a social networking site called Edline.  There, parents and students can check in on grades, nightly homework assignments, long-term assignments, links to useful websites for the class, and links to classroom videos and pictures that teachers have posted. (Our site is…

Visual tools were always something that intimidated me. I always loved the idea of creating digital stories or videos with my classes but it seemed like too much to take on considering the young ages of my students. I just imagined that I would end up doing all the work. This week, while trying to look through all the resources in my text book on Visual Tools, I came across Animoto. Since you can make a 30 second video for free, I decided to try it. It was so easy and so much fun! I…

Will I ever use virtual environments in my classroom? In short: I seriously doubt it.

I’m all for using technology to enhance communication. However, I am fundamentally opposed to using it as a replacement.

I have said it many times before: Technology should be used in education if and preferably only if it authentically enhances the experience. If technology is inserted into the classroom simply because it’s really cool and/or popular, but it does nothing really to enhance…

http://animoto.com/play/ISrlmQSZ21Dc8TYqOqbY0w

This was my first creation using Animoto and I absolutely loved it. I made a 30 second movie using pictures I took of the Old City of Jerusalem. In my 4th grade class, the integrated unit for the second semester is Jerusalem. Each student is assigned a different aspect of the city to study, write about,…

This week my class focused on visual learning tools that can be easily implemented into the classroom. I decided that since I have a ton of personal pictures that I would try to use those pictures to create a video.  I decided to use Animoto. Animoto enables me to use my own pictures and create short 30 second videos. You can upgrade for a small monthly charge to create longer videos, which I may do since I absolutely loved creating this project. I do not have a lot of time to create…

I agree with Alyse, facebook has its place.  However, as an educator and parent, I've seen it misused by students and faculty alike.  I do think privacy settings need to be tweaked by all who use it, and I think it is inappropriate to befriend a current student on facebook.  My facebook page is always monitored closely by me.  I only accept as friends former students who are in college or beyond and limit their access to post on my wall and show up in my news feed.   However, I do think…

Ok, I'll say it. I love Facebook. I have been on Facebook for quite a few years now and I love how it reconnected me with friends and acquaintances from so  many years ago. I love seeing the pictures of their families, sharing in their Simchas and their lives even from a distance. I love posting pictures of my own family, my sons' bar-mitzvah pictures and some of my own special family memories. I love the different groups I have been a part of. Sometimes I hear news from Facebook even…