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What's your favorite digital tool for learning?
Everyone who reads "tuesdays" loves to share and encourage others to share. It's very impressive to me how the teaching profession has evolved since I began decades ago. I was given a key, a pat on the back and a spot of luck to "do a good job!" I rarely had visitors and was trusted to take great care of the children. I lived in quite an isolationist bubble with very little adult conversation and really no opportunity to share. Today, it's incredible. We have access to each other like no other time in history and teachers are collaborating, sharing, giving and encouraging each other. It's exciting. In fact today, I had a great sharing session with teachers in Wake County, NC. I'm always so encouraged by working with teachers because they are so creative and are willing to share their way of using digital tools in ways I would never imagine. This "tuesdays" is a look at one of many collaborative sites that I hope encourages you to share with others.
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Just yesterday I came across the most gifted centers teachers I have ever seen! Scholastic has always been a leader in supporting teachers, but I was totally unaware of their Top Teacher area until Barbara brought this particular idea to my attention on Facebook. Erin Klein is a second grade teacher who has created a hybrid flipped classroom like none I've ever seen. Her gift is for organization, sharing and creating a practical and appealing classroom environment. On her Scholastic blog, she has shared how she has leveraged technology in ways that are so creative. Not only is she utilizing a modified flipped classroom, she has trained her students to become very independent learners in 2nd grade! Her real gift is that she has made all her classroom organizational forms available for download. Now there's a Top Teacher for sure. I encourage you to check out her blog. It may be one of the best out there. I did notice that Scholastic is highlighting 10 Top Teachers, but for me, Erin is my pick! |
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If you like to brainstorm and share with others, I would like to encourage you to share this great resource. Answer Garden is for anyone interested in using an easy and powerful way to get feedback from a group. Answer Garden is used by teachers to establish the knowledge level of a class on any give topic. It is used at conferences and workshops to break the ice with the audience in a fun and interactive fashion. Answer Garden is used by creative teams for digital brainstorming sessions. If you use it, be sure to create a password so that you can control the content. You can limit answers to only one per computer and even lock it so random answers cannot be added later. If you want the results to be pretty, then you can export them into Wordle or Taxedo. It's a great simple tool for great results. Keep It Simple Sweety!
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How do you use Answer Garden? Answer Garden has a sweet Quick Start Guide. It was created by teachers so they fully understand all the things that could go wrong in the classroom and develop it from the need for simple sharing and gathering of information. You create an Answer Garden by entering a topic on the Create New AnswerGarden-page. Then you'll be redirected to your newly created Answer Garden. Since no one has posted an answer yet, your Answer Garden will still be empty. The next step is to share your Answer Garden. Use it live in the classroom, at a meeting or a conference. Or place (embed) your Answer Garden on your blog, site or social network page, using the provided embed code. Or post a direct link to your Answer Garden in email it to friends. As your Answer Garden draws attention people will start posting their answers to your question, either by entering their own answers or by clicking on and submitting existing answers. These are then represented in your Answer Garden in the form of a growing word cloud. Thanks so much Jenn for sharing this tool with all of us!
This is an Answer Garden we did today. This prompt was, "How would you describe a performance task?
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| What is "tuesdays with Karen"?
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"tuesdays with Karen" is a weekly newsletter/blog designed to encourage, equip and empower teachers to be creative with educational technology. Please add your technology comments to my "tuesdays with Karen" blog. |
