Teacher Magazine: Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards

Teacher Magazine: Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards

I'm catching up today on some of my "Read It Later" list, thus the flood of blog posts today. This is an article that was in my list to read and gets at something I've been thinking for a long time. In my school we have installed SMART Boards in all of our math, middle school, and science classrooms. Now I think the math teachers are making great use of the technology and using it in interactive ways, in contradiction to the linked article. Beyond that, however, I think I agree with much of what the article says. In fact, it is clear to me that much of our staff do not really know the difference between a SMART Board and an installed projector. Most of us, in fact, are really just enjoying the installed projector/speakers and not taking advantage of the SMART technology. Perhaps I have not taken enough time to really learn how to use this technology, but for me, my time is best spent learning tools that I can teach students to enhance their learning, more than my teaching. I don't see interactive white boards in that way, so I'm not a big fan. What do you think?

Canter Video Links

Canter Video Links

Donald Leu (University of Connecticut) is one of, if not the, leading researcher in the literacy community when it comes to online reading. On this site you will find some great videos of Don discussing elements of online reading, along with links to some of his publications. I highly recommend checking out the videos and his other work.

How music training primes nervous system and boosts learning

How music training primes nervous system and boosts learning

I recently ran across this article and find it very interesting. I have for many years felt there was an important connection between music and reading & learning. For example, when our middle school does auditions for our annual musical, it is usually pretty clear which students have had the greatest struggle with decoding issues, as they are usually the ones who have the most trouble matching pitch. This article makes a great case for the importance of musical training and therefore the importance of including music in our schools.

Website Watch: Bringing the World to You

Feeling overwhelmed with keeping up with all the information that is out there on so many different topics? You are not alone. I recently ran across a term “infowhelmed” that I think sums this problem up nicely. Especially when it comes to the Internet, it is hard to keep up with all of the different sources of news and information out there that are both personally and professionally interesting to us.
That’s where RSS comes in. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Think of it like the ability to subscribe to many sources of information. You may subscribe to print materials such as a daily newspaper, a weekly news magazine, a popular magazine, professional journals and newsletters, etc. You would not dream of having to get into your car and drive to various locations to pick up these individual pieces. Instead you have them delivered to your home or office. (Of course that means that some of this is at home when you want it at school or at school when needed at home!) RSS along with an RSS reader can do this for many of the sites you might frequent on the Internet and pull in even more useful information. And it is all available to you wherever you have Internet access! For a quick visual introduction to RSS and RSS readers, click here for a great video explanation then come back and read on.
So now that you know a little more about how RSS and RSS readers work, let’s talk about setting up your reader. One of the easiest to use is probably Google Reader. (For you visual learners, click here to get a quick video introduction to Google Reader.) If you already have a Google account, you already have access to Google Reader. If not, it is free to sign up, and you really should be taking advantage of the many great tools Google has to offer anyway. Just go to reader.google.com, sign in or create an account and you are ready to get started. There are two ways that you can add what are called news feeds to your reader. A news feed is simply the way that many blogs and website allow you to subscribe to their updates.
The first way to subscribe is to click on the “Add Subscription” button in the top left corner of Google Reader. There you can enter a search topic and Google will provide you with a list of blogs and other sites with news feeds on that topic for you. You can preview the feeds to decide if any look appealing. Perhaps you have a website that you frequently visit already. For example, if you want to keep up with news in the field of reading, you might visit the Reading Today Daily website.To subscribe to IRA’s daily news feed, click on the RSS button they have prominently located near the top center of the page. (It is orange and looks like the picture above.) Then cut and paste the URL address from the page that appears (yes, the page looks like gibberish) and paste the address into the “Add Subscription” box in Google Reader. Some sites make it even easier. Education Week makes subscribing even easier in some ways. If you go to their website and click on the RSS icon in the upper right side of the home page, it takes you to a whole list of topics that you can subscribe to and all you need to do is click on the button next to the topic and then click the “Google Reader” icon on the page that appears and Reader does the rest for you. It is that simple.
Be careful – once you get started bringing the world to you through RSS you will find it quite addicting. Start with just a few sites and check in on your Google Reader feeds at least once a day. Google Reader also allows you to set up folders to organize your feeds. For example I have a folder on “Literacy” sites, one on “Technology” sites, and many more. If you find you are not reading a certain site’s feed anymore because it is not helpful, you can always unsubscribe.
There is so much more that can be said about RSS. And it is not just useful for teachers, either. Think about students doing research or keeping up with current events and having information flow to them! If you are interested in learning more about RSS, you might check out the books Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson (Corwin Press, 2010) or Web Literacy for Educators by Alan November (Corwin Press, 2008). Learning about RSS has been one of the most important tech tools I’ve learned about in the last two years. As Will Richardson writes, “RSS is a powerful, flexible tool that I think will be changing our information gathering habits for years to come. If you don’t try any other tool …, you have to start using RSS. Remember: Resistance is futile.” I agree and encourage you to give it a try today.
(This post was originally written for The Keystone Reader a publication of the Keystone State Reading Association. Become a member today!)