Elana Kline's Blog (9)

•    Establishing norms/guidelines for student blogging (student blogging contracts, parental involvement, inclusion of district AUPs or "acceptable use policies," etc.)

                      Before students begin blogging independently, they need to be given a tutorial by their teacher about the responsibilities associated with using social media, and the ethical and safety concerns social media can present.  They should become familiar with the school’s…

 10 More Ways To Use Blogs In Your Classroom

1. Quote of the day discussion blog. I will post a quote of the day and students can analyze the quote and discuss what it means and lessons they can apply from the quote.

                                                        Place to find a quote of the day on every topic: …

            According to Education Week (2010), “The term ‘21st-century skills’ is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in today's world.”  While the exact skills and resources can be debated, all educator’s agree that 21st century classrooms provide students with the resources and knowledge that they need in order to be…

How could Google Apps help you to be more efficient as an educator?

Google Apps will be extremely useful to me as an educator. My school just got an education account to Google Apps this week and is encouraging all of us to use it in our teaching on a regular basis. As a literacy department, we have decided that all of our students are going to use Google to create blogs where they will reflect on what they have read every other week. They will also post to one another on their blogs,…

     I participated in an open source course on recognizing and employing different parts of a sentence.  This lesson discussed how to identify independent and dependent clauses, how to spot prepositions and prepositional phrases, how to find infinitives and infinitive phrases, and how to distinguish between participle phrases and gerund phrases.  

    This course had a definition of each general term (for example, clauses) followed by a definition of the types of clauses (independent…

        Virtual reality is a great way for students to gain experiences that they are not able to have in the real world, and to get a better understanding of content in order to enhance their education.  Virtual reality can give students practice with real-world jobs without the consequences or cost needed for the experience.  It can teach students about the ocean by giving them a close up view and a realistic depiction of what it might be like to be there.

        However, a virtual…

    Social networks are an important part of education, and life, in today’s world.  Everyone has heard of Facebook and Twitter, but many people are not aware of the thousands of other networks out there.  Through this weeks assignments on social networks, I have discovered a number of useful resources for myself and my students.  

    I have furthered my interest in having students create blogs to share their learning and collaborate with one another this upcoming school year.  I have…

      The Adams50 Acceptable Use Policy has a preamble that explains why a policy is needed, the importance of having a policy in place, and how the district’s code of conduct fits into the AUP.  While a definition section is seen as an important component of an Acceptable Use Policy, Adams50 does not have this section, and I believe it would benefit students if they included this.  The district does have a policy statement that explains appropriate uses of computers and the district’s…

    In the next year of teaching, I plan to use my knowledge of Bloom’s taxonomy and Marzano’s research to facilitate my lesson planning.  In every lesson, I will make sure to include (or build up to) higher level Bloom ideas, and to incorporate at least one of Marzano’s strategies.  I found that, while coming up with strategies for each level of Blooms while incorporating Marzano in the last activity, I often had to modify and add to my ideas to include both, and the outcome was a much…