Alone with Your Thoughts

So I spend almost every day alone with my thoughts when I am running. In my run yesterday I was thinking about how much time kids (our students) spend time alone with their own thoughts today. Now I love my iPod when I'm running, but I also know I get "my best thinking" done when I forget that iPod on my run. This led me to think, I wonder what a student's thoughts would be like if they were unplugged from their iPods, cell phones, Myspace/Facebook pages, and were asked to just think for five minutes.

Admittedly, my brain wandered a bit from there but it came back eventually and I started thinking it would be interesting to have students put those thoughts into the "create" screen (www.wordle.net/create) on Wordle and to see what those word clouds would look like.

So with that in mind, I did this for myself. This is the random string of thought I had in about five minutes time:

"Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedez~Benz? I wonder where the tilde got it's name? I got a picture of a photograph. NFL~draft~day who will the Cheifs pick? dogs are barking all night wonder how much money NFL makes from draft~day stories dogs are still barking hope Blogger gets FTP access fixed too many people in my district rely on Blogger to have it down this long husband thinks that my free write will be scary I got a picture of a photograph so much noise going on even though I'm upstairs in my room wonder if INetU will up the importance of our networking ticket and open those IP~addresses for us? how do you spell that? hope it's right this is going to be such a bizzare mess when it's done I need to go running wonder if I can get in a 5K~run before it rains did I tell INetU to open up those ports for the IP~addresses need to stretch really well before running because my calves are sore"

I did have some other songs running through my head but I found it difficult to type my thoughts and the song lyrics at the same time. I also learned in this process that Wordle leaves out single letter words (I, a) so if a person uses "I" to start each sentence you wouldn't really know it by looking at their Wordle. Below is the Wordle from my random string of thoughts:

Coaches Make Better Teachers?

For the last several years I have been blessed with the opportunity to be a coach in addition to my role as a teacher. I started as a track coach for the urban school where I was teaching at the time. This was such an exciting time for me and it allowed me to connect with my students in a completely different way than I had been able to in the science classroom. I quickly realized though that I was going to have to enlist the help of others in order to get my athletes to where I wanted them to be. Since I am not quite 5'2", I am not any kind of authority in jumping events - at all. So of course I had to start researching the best way to coach long and high jumpers. I was lucky enough to have another coach that was pretty good with hurdlers, so I was able to have him coach my girls that were brave enough to try to tackle the hurdles. Then I had to make sure my distance runners and sprinters were getting the right kind of conditioning. Not to mention making sure the relay teams got some time to work on handing off the baton. Each day it was necessary to plan out practice making sure each group of girls was getting a good workout that would prepare them for their events in the next meet. It was a lot of stress and work, and there were definitely times where at the end of a meet we realized that I had not been an effective coach in one area or another. So we (the assistant coach, myself, and the girls) would re-evaluate the situation and look for a new approach. Most importantly, my girls knew that I would never expect them to do something that I myself wasn't willing to do - or at least try. So at each practice I would spend time stretching, running, "jumping" and participating in the training in some way. Sometimes I did well, and other times I fell on my rear (mostly when I was trying the jumping events.) The important part was that my girls saw me fall down and get back up time and time again. They knew that it was ok to not win every time, but that you always have to get back up and try it again.

When the season was over I realized that when I was coaching track was the first time I had really ever differentiated my instruction. This gave me the inspiration and drive to take that strategy into my classroom. I spent the summer teaching 3-7 graders the basics to chemistry and the entire class was hands-on activities, differentiated for the different grade and ability levels. It was so much fun for me and the students and it reinforced the idea that differentiating instruction is the most powerful thing you can do for students. So the next school year it was on! My students, much like my athletes, got to have an active part in how the learning environment was structured and what types of activities we would do in class. Again, I always made sure my students saw me actively communicating, collaborating, and participating with them in their learning. We learned together the best methods for carrying out an experiment. There were definitely times when my students saw me "be wrong" or "fail" in our experiments. Much like in coaching, I would simply talk about what went wrong with the students and we would try again with a new approach. Every time we would "get back up on the horse" and give it another go. Another component that I found to be valuable to my students is letting them see me NOT be the expert with all the answers. Much like when I was coaching, the teaching was a constant learning experience for me and my students, and we were all able to learn and grow together. If we didn't know the answer, it was just another opportunity to expand on our problem-solving skills and find the answer together. This was another opportunity to do what I had learned in coaching, which is to model the drive and desire for learning that I wanted my students to have themselves.

Most importantly in all of these roles, I always make sure my students (or athletes) see me having fun and know that they are what makes it fun. I can't always guarantee that ALL of my kids enjoyed having me as a coach or a teacher, but I do feel that being a coach is still the biggest thing that influenced my teaching. That first year after I started teaching, I was able to make the most amazing connections with my students and I truly believe it was because I implemented my coaching techniques into my classroom.

Web 2.0 Tools for the Classroom

Last weekend my department hosted our first "TechFest" and I had the pleasure of leading the Web 2.0 Tools for the Classroom session. This is my presentation slide show. I am proud to say that all reviews of my session said it was "Awesome." Hope maybe you learn something - I know I did while making it!

TechFest Web 2.0 Presentation

View more presentations from emisegadis.

CommonCraft - They're Geniuses!

Just a quick post to try to get the word out about an amazing website: http://www.commoncraft.com/. These guys are amazing! Lee and Sachi LeFever create these videos that take complicated ideas and make them really simple. If you've never seen a CommonCraft video, you need to try them out. You can use the videos to educate yourself, to teach others (if you're a non-profit organization) or in your business (by purchasing the videos from CommonCraft.) Check them out today!

New Favorite Web 2.0 tool: Glogster

I had the pleasure of attending the MACE (Mid-American Association for Computers in Education) conference last week in Manhattan, KS. I learned so much! I learned about a number of fantastic Web 2.0 tools. Some of these are: http://www.search-cube.com/: a search engine that builds a visual cube of your search results; http://www.polleverywhere.com/: a site that allows you to build online polls that participants send their responses via text messages; http://www.mywebspiration.com/ which is an online version of Inspiration (although rumor has it that this one will be going to a paid subscription once it goes out of beta.) But my favorite is Glogster. Basically glogster is a single page site (although you can build multiple glogs on one account) that is sort of like a cork board. You can add images, videos, text, links, graphics to portray your message.
So how can you use a Glogster in your classroom? Why not build a glog for next week's lesson(s) about fractions? You can put a quick video about fractions, a couple of links to websites for practice, an image or two that show how to reduce fractions, and then the assignment that they will turn in to you. Or maybe you're covering the water cycle and you want to put a link to an interactive site about the water cycle, a video about acid rain, a graphic that details the parts of the water cycle, and then the directions to the hands-on exploration you'll be doing in class. Below is my glog from my Web 2.0 session from the MACE conference. You can view the glog on Glogster at http://erinmisegadis.glogster.com/MACE-glog/.

What is Ed Tech...really

So I am obtaining my master's degree and the first assignment for this semester was to create a graphic organizer about educational technology. We were to simply demonstrate what we felt is encompasses in educational technology, what it draws from, and where it feeds in to. Several of my classmates had some wonderful graphics and representations, but mine is below. It really was such a simple task, but really got me thinking: What is it that I do? Where does it come from and where is it going? What does my job encompasss, and what will it encompass in the future? This was supposed to be the "easy first assignment," but I found it to be the most difficult. (Click the image to see a larger view.)

Online Design

One of the things that I do in my job is teach educators about using websites, blogs, and wikis in their classroom. It is really fun to help teachers and students learn to make a web presence for themselves, but often times design is a problem. The problems can be many, and don't kid yourself if you think it's only students making the following mistakes.

First, you want to make sure there isn't too much "action" happening on the screen at one time. There's nothing wrong with a scrolling banner, or a flash animation, but having more than one of these elements going at once is just too much.

Next, is color which can often be overwhelming. There are a lot of online color scheme tutorials and creators that can help you choose great colors. Usually the problems occur simply because the designer doesn't really understand the concept of contrast: bright on dark and dark on bright. A great site to help you to understand how color can work for your purpose is http://poynterextra.org/cp/index.html.

Here are a few examples I've used as what NOT to do when creating a web presence:

World's Worst Website

Haven Works


These are some great sites for color design:

Color Scheme Generator

4096 Color Wheel

Wordle for Writing

The Web 2.0 tool sweeping through my district is Wordle. (http://www.wordle.net/create) Basically, you can either type into the box provided or paste text into the box. Then when you click "Go," your word cloud is created. The more often a word is used, the bigger it appears in your Wordle. One way to use it in your classroom would be to have students paste in their journal entries, writing prompts, or other writings, and they will be able to visually understand which words they are using the most in their writing. (Many of your students may find they use the word "like" way too much in their writing.) You can change the font style and color, layout, and style of your Wordle. Then, you can add it to the Wordle gallery if you like. To save the Wordle to your computer, simply do a "Print Screen" and paste it into a document.

Here's a few tips for Wordle:

• It is a good idea to send directly to the "Create" page, as not all content in the gallery may be appropriate for the classroom.
• You need to "Copy" the text in the box before clicking "Go," as you can't go back and edit your text.
• Post your students' Wordles in your classroom blog so the world can see your students' accomplishments!

Why blog?

With blogs being such a new concept for education, many teachers find themselves wondering "Why should I implement blogging in my instruction?" or "How will blogging benefit me and my students?" Below are a few ideas for implementing blogging in your classroom:

• Reflective writing for all subject areas.This could be reflection over readings in class, assignments, group projects, or anything else pertaining to your curriculum
• Review of content skills
• Have students post one thing they know about the civil war, or reducing fractions, or photosynthesis, or persuasive writing.
• Online journals - You know, instead of hauling around all of those spiral notebooks!