It's Time for a Little Chat

How is it that those words can sometimes strike fear in your heart when you hear them?  I can recall many times when I was teaching and my principal would stick her head in my door and say something as innocent as, "Drop by my office on your plan time. There's something I want to talk to you about.", which would leave me in a state of panic for the minutes, or sometimes hours, before my plan time finally got there.  Then walking with trepidation to the office...how did the building suddenly grow so large? The office was never so far away before.
Entering the office with heart palpitating, I could only imagine that I was going to be fired on the spot. Heaven forbid if she asked me to close the door before sitting down!  Nine times out of ten (or more, actually) I would be greeted by her with a smile on her face, and right away, my nervousness would melt away. Often, I would find that she just wanted to know if I would serve on a committee, stay late to help with a building function, or even if I wanted to take a look at some clothes that her sister had grown out of. 
Don't get me wrong, there are times when a principal and staff member must have hard conversations, but most of the time, conversations are about the business of school. I guess it's just human nature to question yourself when someone lets you know they "want to talk" without providing information about the nature of the conversation. Luckily, all the "little chats" I have ever been involved in, have ended on a positive note or helped me become better at my job, a better colleague, or a better friend.

Chatzy
Chatzy is a free private chat room that can be utilized without registration. Email invitations will allow others to join the chat room. 
On their site, Chatzy advertises:

Chatzy is a good alternative to Facebook, Skype, Windows Live, and other messengers because:


*Chatzy has no registration steps - your friends can join instantly

*Chatzy is free and has no popup ads

*Chatzy does not require Flash or any installation on your computer (= no spyware)

*Chatzy works on all major browsers, with any language and through corporate firewalls

*Chatzy is simple and easy to use

Other reasons I like this mode of communication and collaboration for students: 
  1. It is more up-to-date than email. Many kids think email is only for grownups.
  2. Students do not need to register.
  3. If the teacher registers (free), there are levels of control that allow for more privacy, such as creating a
     password to enter the room.
  4. Registered users may also set up multiple rooms...for various reading groups, etc.
  5. Students may be given the url in lieu of an email invitation.
  6. All conversations are monitored by the teacher.
Although it took me a few minutes to become familiar with the environment, I feel this tool is worth taking a look at, especially for elementary and middle school teachers.

Virtual Note Board

How many of you use a note board at home to organize your life, leave messages for your family, remind yourself of appointments, etc? I really need something like that for my house. I currently just use a calendar tacked up in our laundry room. There are several appointment cards paper clipped to it. Not very effective, as sometimes the cards fall down and slip under the washing machine.
I wish I could be better organized. It always amazes me when somebody says that I am. Just like it amazes me when somebody says I can draw well, or that I have a good voice. Oh, they just don't know! I have been working on organization for a couple years now, and have been successful in some areas (my closet) and not so much in others (my desk). Today's site would be very useful for organization, and much more!

Wallwisher

Wallwisher is a virtual note board that you can attach stickies to for many purposes. It is a simple app to use and doesn't even require registration, unless you want to save a "wall". If you do want to register so that you can create and save several walls, it is so easy because you can make a wallwisher account, or use your Google or OpenID information. Walls can be kept private or shared, can be edited by only you or others. The only thing I have found a bit annoying is that you have to create a name, subtitle and choose a picture for each wall you build. This could cause a loss of momentum if you were building a wall as part of a brainstorming session.

I have created a wall to list a few ways to use this app in your classroom. Check it out and add ideas of your own! http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/classroomuses

Cooperating Through Twitter

This morning I was reading a few posts on Twitter and saw a couple of opportunities to help Twitter friends. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Often I will read Twitter posts that are requests on how to do a particular task in an application, what the best brand of (dvr, mini pc, wireless router, etc) is, or to shout out a hello to new Twitter users. It is great to have such a diverse community of friends to help with these types of questions.
Twitter can help with another type of request as well. This type allows for collaboration. This is the type of request I responded to this morning, and will always respond to if I have the opportunity, because it is such a valuable contribution.
One of the requests was made by cscribner, a Twitter friend and fellow Maize technology integration consultant. He and several students from his school are working on a VoiceThread about Christmas traditions around the world. His request was to add comments to the VoiceThread about how Christmas is celebrated in the poster's country. What a wonderful way to complete a global project in a short time. In the past, students (or the teacher) would have to write letters or emails. These two methods require efforts that are unnecessary today.
The other request was from mrmayo, another educator I follow on Twitter. His students created podcasts for book reports. He was asking for people to visit his blog, listen to the podcasts and comment. What an easy thing to do! Each podcast was under two minutes long, and picking a few of them I got the gist of the assignment. I listened and posted in under 10 minutes. Back when I was fifth grade teacher, I would have loved having my students receive feedback from people around the world. Unfortunately, back then I could only go down and bribe my coworkers with a day free of recess duty to respond.
So while I joined Twitter to learn new ideas and be a "requester of information" I am pleasantly surprised to see how I can contribute!

Mathway
Mathway is a site that shows step-by-step how to solve a math problem. The problem types range from basic to calculus. Students (and their parents helping with homework) can see the steps of the problem if they forgot how to do it once at home. Teachers can use the site to reinforce the steps of a problem or to show student an alternate way to solve. Graphs can even be created from the equations. Finally a glossary of terms is available for refreshing your memory of math vocabulary.

Research and the Web

I could write an incredibly long post on using the Internet to do research. I am just too busy to do so today! I have run across a couple of tools that can help students capture specific information on the Web along with the link and organize that information in a neat and concise way.

Google Notebook
Google Notebook is a free service offered by Google that provides a simple way to save and organize clips of information when conducting research online. This personal browser tool permits a user to write notes, and to clip text, images, and links from pages during browsing. These are saved to an online "notebook" with sharing and collaboration features. Notes can be added to each clip for ease of organization. If you have the Google toolbar version 5, it allows for a mini window to place your notes in.


Clipmarks
Clipmarks is similar to Google Notebook in that you can save specific information from a web page. The Clipmarks plugin lets you clip specific pieces of web pages, then share what you clip with your friends on Facebook, MySpace or anywhere else. Unlike bookmarks that let you share a link to an entire page, our free clip button lets you capture and share the highlights from the page. Clips can also be saved privately, emailed or printed.