Thank You and I'm Sorry

Thank you. Thank you to the people who taught all of us. Thank you to my co-workers in the STF for all the extra work you do that nobody sees. Thank you to my co-workers outside the STF who work tirelessly for students everyday and never hear thank you enough.  Thank you to the central office staff for your support  even especially when I don't seem to appreciate it.  Thank you to the parents for ensuring that your child is ready to learn each day.  Thank you to the students for coming to school and working as hard as you do each day.


I'm sorry. I'm sorry my co-workers and central office staff are caught in the middle.  I'm sorry that today was very inconvenient for so many parents.   And to my students, I'm sorry I wasn't there today.

365:2011

I started my 365 photo challenge for the year. Wish me luck.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/markkowalski/sets/72157625723944088/

Haiku Picnik

We are going to take cameras and thesaurus outside tomorrow to write haikus.  When we get back to class we will use Picnik to put it all together on our blog.  I'll post tomorrow night with an update.  I'm pumped about this one.

Basho, I am not.

Edmodo and Current Events

I am teaching grade 8 current events this year and we started with a few discussions around edtech and items from the news.  We are also using monthly news booklets from Classroom Ready.  The bulk of our time was spent in discussions about current news stories.

We had two major problems:
1. The conversation was dominated by 5-6 students and myself.
2. I had no good way to give them a mark on their conversations.

Solution:
Edmodo.  Now, I can give them article, promote discussion and then make sure everyone has a chance to respond in a non threatening way.  Some of the students are even using it to post articles and questions after hours.  Cool.

KidBlog = Nice Compromise

I was trying to start a new blog for my class this year using Blogger.  I usually use this service but I came across KidBlog and decided to give it a try.  It is a real nice balance of easy and powerful.  It also provides a nice set of tools for balancing publicity/privacy.

We are starting with some posts about "Habitats and Communities" from the new grade 4 science curriculum.  They are creating a food web for randomly generated environment. So far so good.  Check it out.