Web 2.0 Tool - Padlet

A great Web 2.0 tool that I have been using in my fourth grade classroom is called Padlet. 

My students and I use Padlet as a virtual bulletin board. 

I create Padlet walls where I post questions, 

and my students create virtual sticky notes with their responses. 

Students can view our Padlet walls which display their peers' thoughts and comments. 

From there, students can respond, and discussions flourish! 

It is that simple!

Below is a video describing how to sign up and begin using Padlet in your classroom.

Please note - I mentioned in my Screencast discussion of Padlet 

as well as in my Web 2.0 Tool Review 

that Padlet sticky notes were limited to 150 characters. 

Padlet seems to have upgraded this feature, 

and sticky note responses can now be longer than the mentioned 150 characters. 

Web 2.0 Tool Review
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14oslLZgE-2xZEvSvg2DCIuzKDACBmMd9UckfsDFm9ac/edit?usp=sharing

Virtual Digital Conference - Day 3

     It is time to Control, Alt, Delete! This has been my favorite session of the Virtual Digital Writing Conference. I watched Developing Digital Literacies: Teachers in Transition, and the middle/high school teachers that were sharing were honest, easy to follow, and offered great applicable examples of how other educators can incorporate digital writing intro their classrooms as early as tomorrow! Each teacher presented/discussed their early experiences with digital literacies. They began by identifying their fears and hesitations, explained what their writing classroom looked like before using technology, went over how they first started, and closed with students reflections and the benefits they now see when students write digitally.

         I found the first presenter rather engaging, as she was very open and honest. Her initial fears with incorporating digital literacy where that she had too much other material to cover in the curriculum and that her students may be inappropriate online. She found out that 100% of her students actually did have access to the Internet in some fashion. As soon as they were engaged in the writing project, and wanted to continue working on it at home, they had the access to do so. Interesting how a little engagement goes a long way. She didn’t share at all that her students were being inappropriate when working in online platforms as again they were engaged with the task at hand. Before the “Control, Alt, Delete” reboot of her classroom, she always saw writing as having two forms, the narrative and the essay. The audience was the teacher, and all students went through the same writing process: brainstorming, drafting, conferencing, revising, editing, and publishing. That sounded all too familiar to me. The presenter also made mention of how all students’ work always looked the same: Graphic organizer to outline to draft to final draft paper. Again, ringing a very familiar bell.

         After experimenting with various digital writing forms, both the presenter and her students realized that digital writing can look like:

- podcasts

- videos

- slideshows

- emails

- texts

- picture narratives

- animation

- word walls

- scripts

- short stores

- the traditional essays

- the list goes on and go!

Writing will not always follow the same form, nor does good writing always have the same audience!

          The last three weeks have been a digital writing pilgrimage for both my students and me. We have been working with Google Classroom, and my students have been submitting homework assignments and weekly journal responses in a digital fashion. My goal is to expand the use of digital writing into collaborative writing assignments through Google Docs. We may not be there yet, but I am truly amazed at how well my students are doing using the Google Classroom platform. I am learning from them each and every day, and they are so very engaged in their new digital writing world.

Virtual Digital Conference - Day 2

For my second session in the Virtual Digital Writing Conference, I watched the presentation titled, “Increasing Student Engagement & Voice with Digital Writing."  The moderator was Troy Hicks, which sparked my interest as I read his book Crafting Digital Writing, for a class I took over the summer. The discussion panel included three teachers: Paul Allison, Dawn Reed, and Chris Sloan, all English teachers at the middle or high school levels. The panel members were discussing Youth Voices.net, a blog set up by educators to connect their students with other classrooms on the World Wide Web. Seeing Troy Hicks as the moderator was one reason for my clicking on this session, but I was also intrigued because so many of my classmates watched and responded on their blogs about this session.

            Two of the panel participants started Youth Voices.net about twelve years ago with the hopes of giving their students a digital platform to express themselves, ask questions, and connect with other students who had similar thoughts, views, and questions.  The three teachers sharing all mentioned how much they liked having an “open” classroom, a place where their students could authentically write to a large audience. Lessons on digital citizenship, leaving behind your digital footprint, and belonging to a personal learning network were all lessons the teachers incorporated into their use of Youth Voices.net. The blog was created by educators, and is also maintained by educators. Students’ posts and replies are monitored to be sure students are interacting in an academic fashion. The panel members have all had great success incorporating digital writing through blogging into their middle and high school English classes.

            I think the Youth Voices.net blog is a great place for older students to connect with peers their age across the country. I do not think it is appropriate for my nine/ten year old fourth graders. I’m thinking a class blog is a more appropriate way to incorporate digital writing into my classroom. My students write weekly in their journals in response to prompts that have been generated by our team of teachers. We try to make the prompts engaging and interesting for the students. My thoughts are to post these prompts to a class blog, and have my students digitally respond. That way, they can read each other’s responses and comment if they’d like to. Students often share their journal writing in class with their peers, so this class blog would be a way for all students to have the opportunity to share and respond every week. If our class blog is successful, perhaps we could branch out and have a grade level blog. Or maybe reach out to other fourth grade classes in the district to see if they’d be interested in becoming digital pen pals!

Virtual Digital Conference - Day 1

     My first session from the Virtual Digital Conference was a session about using commercials and Public Service Announcements in the classroom to teach students the three modes of writing. Eric Hammerstrom led the session "Video: An Important But Forgotten Medium." Although the recording did not have the best audio quality, and was difficult to follow at certain points, I gained several "take aways" from his session. Eric discussed how commercials and PSAs have the power to combine three modes of writing: narrative, informational, and argument in a short snippet of time. They are great teaching tools to show students that will spark discussions about the power of word choice. Creating a commercial is a difficult task as Eric discusses how authors of commercials have two seconds to capture the audience’s attention and eight seconds to maintain the audience's attention. If words, images, audio, and the message are not interesting, the audience will simply change the channel. Mr. Hammerstrom displayed a slide showcasing The Rhetorical Triangle, and how it is important to teach students the three points on the triangle. The first point is the author. In this case, students are the author and have creative freedom to design the commercial. The second point is the audience. Students need to be aware of who their audience is, and have the knowledge about their audience, the third point on The Rhetorical Triangle, to write a commercial that will appeal to the specific audience.

     Learning about making commercials and Public Service Announcements was interesting and left me reflecting on how I could actually use videography in my classroom. I thought about having students make commercials advertising books that they have read and enjoyed. Using a video to advertise or recommend books to peers would be a very engaging activity. Eric stressed in his session that before a quality commercial can be shot, the storyboard and script writing of the commercial need to be done. Students would need to focus on quality writing before getting to the fun of creating the actual video. Currently, my students are finishing up National Park travel brochures that they created as an activity to supplement the anthology story we read about Yellowstone and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. I could incorporate a video element to this project. Possibly having students work collaboratively to create a Public Service Announcement stressing the importance of preserving and protecting National Parks. The possibilities are endless…having the time and equipment is another story.