Instructify

BY AARON FOWLES

This article also appears on LEARN NC.

If you’re a teacher, you’re probably familiar with the life cycle of a computer in a typical classroom. The first two weeks are magnificent. The computer works wonderfully and performs all its tasks very quickly. Shortly after the honeymoon, though, things go sour. Internet Explorer won’t load a website. The computer begins crashing frequently. A student managed to get a virus on the computer. The icons on the desktop are all messed up. The computer then spends a few years in this semi-usable state: It won’t run the newest applications or even load a YouTube video. Eventually, it won’t turn on at all. The computer ends up either unplugged in the back of the room or sitting in a closet.

It doesn’t have to be that way. There is a way to invigorate those old computers and turn them back into machines that power teaching and learning. This method is totally free, relatively painless, community-supported, very stable, constantly updated, and secure. What could this magic solution be? The Linux operating system.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

Joseph is a typical student who is reading a novel about the internment of Japanese-American citizens during the aftermath of World War II. Like many high English Language Arts sessions, there are plenty of in-class guided discussions that are led by the teacher. But Joseph’s learning and inquiry extends beyond the classroom walls and beyond the school day. Using a closed online site that has been set up by his teacher, Joseph and his classmates are required to complete a series of activities that demonstrate what they are learning about the internment issue. Joseph finds some source videos online at the Internet Archive and uses iMovie to create a remix version of the experience of a young child in the camp. Joseph’s project is persuasive in nature, trying to convince his audience that the government was wrong in what it did to United States citizens. He sets up a Voicethread and embeds it into his online space so that others in the class can give him audio feedback on his project even as his teacher posts comments and suggestions about the project to Joseph’s online forum while checking in with him during class time. Joseph dutifully keeps a log of his activities and completes weekly surveys posted by his teacher on his progress. The final project is a presentation in the classroom of his persuasive video, along with a multimedia reflection by Joseph that integrates peer feedback. Later, after more revision sparked by his class presentation, Joseph posts the video project at his class website, extending his audience to the world.

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BY REBECCAH HAINES

As most of you know very well, the day-to-day (not to mention hour-to-hour) tasks of a teacher can be hectic and time-consuming. In addition to actually teaching the warm little bodies in our classes, we have to grade papers, attend meetings, participate in school leadership committees, create bulletin boards, set up for labs, meet with students, plan future lessons, prepare for and administer tests…the list seems endless. As if that isn’t enough, we’re also faced with the critical task of communicating with parents about their students and the classroom in general. Thankfully, the internet has made this task a little less time-consuming for teachers and parents. This article will discuss the many tools that can help you design a website to keep parents in the loop.

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This article also appears on LEARN NC.

BY KEVIN HODGSON

Teaching, like writing, can be a very solitary experience. We close our doors and it is mostly just us, the teacher, alone with them, the students. We may be lucky to encounter a few interruptions during the day — perhaps a colleague is searching for a misplaced book, or another student has a message — but for the most part, teachers spend the bulk of the day alone.

Writers are often thrust into the same situation: alone with their thoughts, scribbling or typing away in a quiet workspace away from the noise. While there certainly is merit to the need for focus, there are many benefits to collaboration and connection with others as both teachers and as writers. And with the emergence of the Web 2.0 world, the physical space in which we teach and write can be extended, virtually, beyond the physical walls around us, allowing us to expand the reach of our professional learning communities. As a result, there are numerous opportunities for teachers to connect with their peers as writers.

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This article also appears on LEARN NC.

BY CINDY PHTHISIC

A class of second-graders sits and waves to themselves on screen as the teacher tests the web camera. The students know they’re about to make a video call using Skype. This is the first time they have ever heard about Skype, so they are not sure exactly what’s going to happen. For now, they are fascinated with just seeing themselves on screen.

While waiting for word on the other end, the teacher pulls up a Google Map to show the caller will be speaking to them from many miles away in Louisiana. A message flashes at the bottom of the screen indicating the caller is ready. Students go quiet as they hear their teacher place the call.

When a familiar face appears on screen, the students whisper, “I know him.” “He was at our school.” The caller is author Mike Artell, who had visited their school just a week earlier. The rambunctious group becomes still and silent. The students sit completely captivated.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

This article is also posted on LEARN NC.

“Are we Glogging today?”

It’s a typical New England morning and our sixth grade students are all dutifully lined up in the fading autumn sunshine beneath the trees. Most schools typically have a series of fire drills toward the start of the year, and my school is no exception. I keep an eye on my class and chat quietly with my colleague who teaches science down the hall. She is eyeing the truck of the fire chief warily.

“I hope he doesn’t come through my room,” she whispers. I imagine a Bunsen burner left on or something. The fire officials come through random classrooms during fire drills, making sure that there are clear escape routes.

“Why?”

“The posters,” she says, “for the Scientific Method Fair. My room is covered with posters. Posters everywhere.”

Luckily, the fire chief doesn’t come into our wing of the school. On the way back in, I glance into my colleague’s room. Sure enough, there are three-paneled cardboard posters everywhere as our 80 sixth-graders prepare for the upcoming science fair for our school and families. I wouldn’t want to see the look on the fire chief’s face if he came in there, but what could she do? Posters of student work have been part of classrooms for a long time and few things have the potential to make learning so visible as a well-constructed poster of information.

What could she do? Well, she could move the entire project online, as I did a few weeks later, when each day, I was greeted at the door by students asking, “Are we Glogging today?”

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BY REBECCAH HAINES

This article is also posted on LEARN NC.

As educators, most of us are familiar with the dreaded School Improvement Plan (SIP). Every few years each school is required to create an extensive, detailed document that outlines its plan for constant improvement until the next document is due. In the interim, success on reaching goals is evaluated, documented, and sent off to the central office. As any teacher who’s been involved in this process can attest, creating this document can be extremely labor intensive.

My personal experience participating in our school’s last SIP committee was no different: Reams of data had to be collected and analyzed. Goals had to be pinpointed, voted upon, and revised. Success indicators had to be determined and recorded. It took our committee of eight or so teachers nearly the entire school year to prepare this document. Not only was the process labor intensive, it used a tremendous amount of paper. Drafts, revisions, and submissions to the staff required new copies each time.

Several years ago, there weren’t a lot of options for streamlining the SIP process. But the recent explosion of Web 2.0 tools, thankfully, offers schools many time-saving options. No longer does the process need to be so time consuming. By using the following collaborative tools, schools can go through the SIP process much more efficiently and collaboratively, and with much less paper. (more…)

BY GRETCHEN SCHAEFER

This article is also posted on LEARN NC.

Teachers have long used portfolios to highlight their education and teaching experience, show evidence of growth, and share examples of their own learning experiences in the classroom. A portfolio is a valuable tool when seeking a new position, for assessing professional growth in an existing position, or to keep a record of your teaching career. In a typical oral question-and-answer interview, you can explain how you taught a certain lesson or unit, but with a portfolio, you can show evidence of how and why the way you taught that lesson worked best for your class.

Your portfolio might even include a reflection that explains how you changed the instruction method or materials used, and how the lesson has evolved since the first time you taught it. Sharing student work as part of your portfolio can illustrate how the students responded to the lesson as well. It can also serve as a record of your professional development — in addition to keeping a current resume on file, certificates and awards can be added to a portfolio to show how you’ve continued your education beyond initial certification.

Traditionally, portfolios were often created using three-ring binders or scrapbooks to organize a collection of physical information. But the paper teaching portfolio usually exists only as a single copy, so it can’t be accessed by others without physically receiving it. An electronic portfolio, on the other hand, can be accessed by more than just one person at a time, which can be valuable when you are submitting resumes for several positions. It allows hiring committees time to review your work before meeting you in person, and it removes some of the worry that that single copy (with no backup) might be lost if handed to the wrong person. In addition to being accessible by multiple people, an electronic portfolio provides concrete proof that you have a grasp of how to use technology effectively — and how to incorporate it into your professional practice. (more…)

BY LISA HERVEY

Many K-12 teachers are very interested in and/or are already effectively leveraging free Web 2.0 tools and other forms of media (audio/video) in their classrooms. This reality was especially evident to me this summer as I worked with teachers from all over the country at The New Literacies Teacher Leader Institute, a week-long professional development institute that focused on new literacies and associated Web 2.0 tools and multimedia.

Several of the teachers attending the institute work with student populations such as English as a Second Language (ESL), Hearing Impaired (HI) and Visually Impaired (VI). Many of the internet-based tools and applications available to teachers are certainly wonderful, but may immediately marginalize these same students. Tools that use English in text or audio may not be accessible to an ESL student. Videos and podcasts may prove difficult for students with hearing impairments. Engaging with tools or media that have small fonts and or images may be untenable for visually impaired students.

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Earth Day is coming up on April 22. With that holiday approaching and the glorious springtime weather, aren’t you in the mood to get outside and do something for the environment? Well, if you’re feeling this way, it is likely that under your leadership, your students can attain this feeling also. I think that one of the most current and important topics for educators feeling the “Go-Green” bug is climate change. This year, climate change has been one of my environmental education focuses with my students, and I wanted to share with you some of the excellent resources I’ve found for teaching about this important topic.

By the book

I started with a book called How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming by Lynne Cherry and Gary Braasch. This book is a great place to start teaching about climate change. It presents the scientific evidence for climate change in a straightforward, understandable, and readable way. My 7^th graders had no trouble comprehending the one to two page vignettes on serious research. Most of the chosen research highlighted in the book involved collaborations between scientists and students or other “regular” citizens. Also important for students, the book is not all gloom and doom. It presents the evidence that scientists have gathered, explains their conclusions drawn from evidence, then completely skips the “we’re all going to die” mentality that some doomsayers have, and gives students real options for taking action. As an educator, I appreciated this truthful-but-positive spin. Also as an educator, I appreciated the separate teacher’s guide for the book. While not all of the activities were flashy, it gave me some good ideas on where to start with students.

Citizen science

Inspired by the book, I have gotten my students involved in a couple of citizen science projects in which we are helping climate scientists and others track seasonal changes in wildlife and vegetation. While there are many options for this kind of involvement, the two I have chosen are Journey North’s Tulip Garden project, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bird Sleuth program. Both of these programs allow for what I think is an easy entry into the world of citizen science. Both also allow for online data entry and visualization, allowing you as the teacher to use that data in many ways for various projects with students. Check out this year’s tulip map and see the little red dot on Morehead City — that’s us! Journey North also offers many other data collection projects besides the tulip garden project, and most are free or cost very little to participate. For example, I spent about $40 on the tulip bulbs to plant at my school. Granted, I had received a Bright Ideas Grant from my local electrical cooperative for my climate change study, but even without the grant, a couple of parents may be willing to sponsor. The Bird Sleuth program also offers both free and paid resources that you can explore through their website.

Online tools

In addition to having my students participate in citizen science so they could get that hands-on feeling, I used several websites and blogs in my classroom. First, I happened to hear this podcast on NPR’s Science Friday just a few weeks ago. During the program, they talked about the USA National Phenology Network. In case you don’t know, phenology is the study of regular seasonal changes, and something that climate scientists study closely and use as evidence for climate change. Through this website, you (or your class) could become a phenological observer, providing valuable information to scientists nationwide. It would allow one more way for your students to get involved.

For background information, I used Windows to the Universe. It has pages of text, images, and multimedia about many earth-science topics, including climate change. An excellent feature of the site is the ability to select from three different reading levels on the text pages — a must for an inclusive classroom. Another reference is the EPA’s Climate Change for Kids site. It offers another source of text, images, games, links, and other media to help your students gain background information on climate change. Of course NASA also offers an excellent website for up-to-date information at Global Climate Change from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This website offers some interesting interactives as well as text and images to help explain the evidence for climate change. As an added benefit, you can subscribe to an RSS feed from the site. This would be a great way to integrate the information on a more regular basis in your classroom. Finally, for a more editorial point of view, I look to Dot Earth. This is a blog published by the New York Times that “examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits.” You could use posts from some of these blogs as starting points for verbal debates or position papers.

I hope I have given you some ideas that you can integrate into your classroom in celebration of Earth Day. Of course, don’t wait for Earth Day to encourage your students to get out there and make a difference. And if you’re not convinced that this is a worthwhile use of academic time, take a gander at this video. This man’s logic seems pretty solid, and all of us, especially those of us responsible for educating the next generation, need to take action and make a difference. -REBECCAH HAINES

How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate from Amazon

Journey North

Bird Sleuth

USA National Phenology Network

Windows to the Universe

EPA’s Climate Change

Global Climate Change from NASA

Dot Earth

Related stuff:

How to successfully debate the climate skeptic in your life

Scientific American explores whether cloud seeding works
Photo credit: CRASH-candy on Flickr.

This is the second in a series of feature articles about online teaching. Keep checking Instructify every week for a new feature. Click here to read part one, click here Taking the plunge into online teaching — your students.

Every educator knows that a significant component of good teaching is good communication, and most of us are quite skilled in communicating with students who are in the same room with us. But some of the communication cues that we use in brick-and-mortar classrooms don’t always translate to the online environment.

Online vs. face-to-face

In a face-to-face classroom, we can see who is in the room and can use students’ facial expressions and body language as informal feedback, helping us gauge students’ interest, engagement, and understanding.  A simple glance around the classroom can tell us whether or not students “get it” and help us realize when we may need to slow down, speed up, add another example, ask a question, or explain something again. Students working on group projects see each other in class and can easily talk to one another about their ideas or quickly compare schedules to set meeting times for a long-term project.  Students and teachers have time before, during, and after class to check in with each other, ask questions, and request or offer advice and feedback. Our physical proximity, ability to interact instantaneously, and visual and auditory cues all help us communicate with one another and understand how our students are responding to our teaching.

Online courses present a different set of challenges. In an asynchronous online course, participants often log in at different times, making it rare for everyone to participate in the course simultaneously. If a student doesn’t post comments or ideas in class discussion forums, she can be “invisible” to their instructor and their peers. That silence could signify any number of problems — perhaps the student simply isn’t logging in. Maybe she doesn’t understand the material, or doesn’t know what to add to the discussion. Unless your online course uses video chat options, you won’t have visual cues (facial expressions, body language, etc.) teachers and students take for granted in classroom interaction. In an asynchronous environment, the lag time between posting a question and receiving a reply may make it more difficult to quickly resolve a question or to schedule times for group work sessions, chats, or other real-time features of the course. As instructors, we need to make an extra effort to overcome these potential difficulties and help our students become effect online communicators.

Find your students’ comfort zone

In my experience, students differ in their comfort level with online communication. Some students are hesitant to join an online conversation if they don’t yet feel a sense of connection to their peers. Others may be uncomfortable with the technologies involved or may not log in regularly enough to take a meaningful role in an ongoing discussion. On the other hand, some students may be shy in a face-to-face setting or prefer written to oral communication, making them more comfortable in an online discussion than they would be in a face-to-face classroom. Others may appreciate the ability to think through their answers to questions and write them out in a deliberative way rather than being put on the spot in a real-time discussion. Whatever your students’ preferences, you’ll find that establishing a rapport and encouraging interaction early and often will probably help everyone participate more fully and begin to create a vibrant online learning community.

I like to use introductions and ice breakers early in the course and to encourage a lot of first-week interaction to try to get to know my students and help them get to know each other. I usually post a photo of myself along with a warm introduction that shares my professional qualifications and some of my personal interests in an effort to make myself real to my students, and I invite my students to do the same. I start to make connections between students by noticing common threads in their introductions and suggesting ways that the students might benefit from each other’s experiences and expertise.

Lines of communication

As the course gets underway, I use all of the communication tools at my disposal — email, discussion boards, chats, etc. — to stay in touch with students and foster communication (both student-teacher communication and student-to-student communication). If someone hasn’t posted to the discussion board in a couple of days, I send them a personal message making sure that they aren’t having technical difficulties and inviting them to jump into the conversation. Don’t forget that the telephone is also a tool that online teachers can use to get in touch with students when higher-tech strategies have failed or when speedy communication or a stronger personal connection might be more beneficial.

Of course, one of the best ways to ensure good communication is to model it for our students. Logging in daily (even several times a day), promptly replying to emails and discussion posts, reaching out to students who are not yet participating fully, posing open-ended, thought-provoking questions, and responding generously to student questions and comments all set the tone for an inviting, engaging learning community. Once you’ve found your own communication style in the online environment, I think you’ll find that online communities can be places where students and teachers communicate very effectively, developing a strong rapport and engaging in exciting discussions that will get everybody thinking and learning.

In my next Instructifeature on online teaching, I’ll explore some of the ways that you can share information with your students in an online course. -KATHRYN WALBERT

Dr. Kathryn Walbert has developed and taught several online courses in the fields of online teaching and U.S. history. She serves as a consultant on U.S. history, oral history, and academic skills to LEARN NC and other organizations throughout North Carolina. 

Photo credit: larskflem on Flickr.

This is the first in a series of feature articles about online teaching. Keep checking Instructify every week for a new feature.

If you’re considering taking your teaching skills into the online classroom, you may be wondering what to expect.  How is online learning different from face-to-face learning?  What does it demand of learners and teachers? How will I get to know my students, build a rapport with them, and communicate effectively?

When I got started teaching online in 2001, online learning was not as widespread as it is now and there was very little research on effective teaching and learning strategies for the online environment.  Fortunately, today’s new online teachers can draw on the experiences of veteran educators, training programs like LEARN NC’s COLT program, and on a great deal of new research to help them acclimate to this new environment quickly and put best practices into action in their own online classrooms.  In this first of what I hope will be a series of Instructifeatures about online teaching, I’ll focus on the learners in your online course.

One of the keys to successful teaching in any environment is the ability to tailor your instruction to the needs of the students in your course.  So who are the people who take online courses, and what special challenges do they face?

Online learners come from all walks of life, as this article by Jennifer Williamson points out.  If you are teaching K-12 students, your students may be taking credit recovery courses, enrolling in advanced or specialized courses that are not available in their brick and mortar schools, homeschooling, or participating in alternative education programs.  If you are teaching professional development courses for adult learners, your students may tell you that they are interested in exploring a topic that isn’t offered in their school system’s professional development offerings or they may simply appreciate the flexibility and convenience of online learning.  Understanding students’ reasons for taking an online course can help you anticipate and meet their needs more effectively.

Whatever their reasons for enrolling in an online course, online learners will need to be motivated, organized and independent.  Without the face-to-face contact and regular schedule of an in-person class, online learners must take the initiative to login regularly, complete assignments on time, and make connections with their instructor and other learners in the course.  Online learners also have to have a certain degree of tech-savvy so that they can navigate the course and use online tools successfully.

There are a number of tools available for online learners to help them determine their own readiness for the challenges of online learning.  SORT, the Student Online Readiness Tool from the University of Georgia system, offers an online quiz with suggestions to help learners fill in any gaps in their preparations.  Building some sort of self-assessment of readiness for online learning into your course can help your students understand their level of preparedness, allowing them to plan ahead for a successful online learning experience and allowing the instructors to understand which students may need some additional support.

Online education can help fill many needs for K-12 and adult learners, allowing them to explore otherwise-unavailable topics, learn in a flexible and convenient environment, and step outside the boundaries of the traditional classroom which may, for a variety of reasons, not fully meet their needs.  The online environment presents its own special challenges for students, but if instructors are aware of those challenges and can help students prepare to meet them, online learners and their teachers can look forward to a fantastic experience. In my next Instructifeature on online teaching, I’ll share some ideas for communicating effectively with the learners in your online courses! -KATHRYN WALBERT

Dr. Kathryn Walbert has developed and taught several online courses in the fields of online teaching and U.S. history. She serves as a consultant on U.S. history, oral history, and academic skills to LEARN NC and other organizations throughout North Carolina. 

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If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.- Winston Churchill

These troubling times give a whole new meaning to the term dismal science, but all this despair brings lots of opportunities for teaching. Aside from the obvious moral lesson in the person of Bernie Madoff, as with most economic catastrophes, this one brings a lot of data, and in that data can be some great lessons for your kids. Here is a recent post from Flowing Data, an infographics blog. It originated at The Big Picture. While Flowing Data is suitable for students, The Big Picture is run by a Wall Street type, whose language can be blue in keeping with his milieu, so be forewarned.

The post features four different line graphs about unemployment in this, and past, recessions. Looking at them there can be a great lesson in critical thinking. I’m going to show the graphics, and share some thoughts of my own about each at the bottom. I would NOT teach based on the notes at the bottom, but instead, see what your students can dig out of it. You may notice things of interest in this that I’ve missed, I only provide commentary to get your thinking rolling.This first one from Time Magazine shows job losses in recent recessions.

Graph number 1 has only recent recessions on it, so it’s missing some of the context that some of the next graphs have. It is also comparing based on numbers, rather than the percentage of the population. Since it is only looking at recent recessions (1990, 2001, now), the population figures have some growth (~13% between 1990 and 2000) this can cause some problems in comparing the numbers, but we’ll see in some of the other graphs with older data, this is a big difference.

Graph number 2 looks at percentages, and goes back to all recessions in the post-WWII era. this gives context, and by using a percentage, makes it a comparison of apples to apples (as opposed to apples to kumquats). Two things stand out — the job loss is still not as severe today as in 1940s and 50s recessions, but there is also a trend towards recent recessions lasting longer, so we may not even be at the mid-point yet.

Graph number 3 is similar to number 2, but it looks at job loss numbers like graph number 1, and you can see how that skews things quite a bit when you compare historic data

And finally, graph number 4 uses 100 as a baseline for peak employment, so it’s like it’s looking at percent of employment rather than percent of unemployment, but it can go above 100 because employment can be higher than it was at the peak. This was very confusing for Bill, my editor, so here is how I explained it to him:

Let’s say you are a sales person paid on commission, and your salary is one line. Your salary hits a peak of $100,000, then drops at the recession starts. 100 is equal to your peak salary. Your salary begins to free fall for about 12 months, so that it ends up at $50,000. You would then be at 50 on a 100 point scale. Then it starts going back up, at 18 months, you’re back to $75,000 (or 75 on the scale). There is a recovery and at 24 months, you are exceeding your old salary, and you are up to $125,000 or 125 points on the scale.

Then let’s say another line is your smarter, but less well-paid older brother. He has a PhD, but he’s an adjunct professor (lecturer) at local community college. He manages to take home $50,000 before the recession hits state education budgets. So that month his salary is 100 points. It drops rapidly too, hitting $25,000 in six months which will put him at 50 points (half his peak salary), and then drops to $10,000 which is 20 points at 12 months. Stimulus money to the state arrives just as the food stamps do for old bro, and he shoots back up to $50,000, or 100 points at 18 months, when the local university goes on a hiring spree for retraining. The lines would looks similar (with some differences) for both of you, even though the “real” dollars earned is not the same. This is good for comparing numbers that are not apples and apples, like the number of people employed in 2007 versus those in 1981, but unlike percent of employment, you can exceed 100, if your employment level goes above where it was at the start of the recession which is what you want to happen. The other graphs show something like this by showing the job losses as negative percentages, and job gains as positives. This is a sophisticated way to represent things, but can be confusing, right Bill? Let’s hope that helps us get our thinking caps on. Please let us know if this helps explain things to your students! -ALICE MERCER

4 Different Looks at Job Losses During Recessions via FlowingData

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Monday by the Numbers - 10/20/08

Very few of us think data is fun, unless, of course, you’re an accountant or some kind of math or physics whiz. I would guess that even fewer of our students get excited about the prospects of analyzing and graphing numbers and data. This doesn’t always have to be the case. Through the use of an interactive white board, graphing can be fun. It doesn’t have to be just about the numbers, it can be about interaction.

An interactive whiteboard is a whiteboard connected to a projector and computer that allows users to control it through touch. A projector projects the computer’s desktop onto the board’s surface, where users control the computer using a pen, finger or other device (using the finger is the most fun for most students — it gives that magical feel to it). Through the use of an interactive white board such as a Smartboard or ACTIVBoard and one of the many great graphing web tools out there,  graphing and analyzing data can be fun and exciting.

One of the more popular online graphing tools available is Create-A-Graph.  This great tool comes to us from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education. Exciting stuff, huh? Well, exciting or not, they’ve created a great tool.

Create-A-Graph gives you the choice of five different styles of graphs, from bar charts to XY graphs. The choices are great, but your capabilities for interaction with the Smartboard are limited. This site is very data-driven. All of the data must be typed in via keyboard and there is no way to “play” with the graphs using the interactive capabilities of the white board. It was fun to “mark up” the site using the Smartboard’s notebook software, which allows the user to draw on the screen using a pen or a finger, but there was no way to play with the graphs themselves. If you’re looking for a great online graphing tool, Create-A-Graph is the obvious choice, but if you’re looking to fully use the capabilities of the white board, it wouldn’t be my first choice.

However, there is a graphing website out there that allows you to fully use the drawing and interactive capabilities of an interactive white board, IF you can get past it’s name: Crappy Graphs. It’s too bad the name might prevent some educators from using this site in class because it truly is a great tool. The site allows users to create freehand line graphs or Venn diagrams, which really allow students to be creative and experience the “magic” of drawing on the board with their finger (regardless of grade level, all students love this.) For example, one might want to graph the Food to Mess ratio of various foods. Students can draw, using their finger or pen, the line graph, then easily add text and name the X and Y axes. With Crappy Graphs, drawing and creating the graph is so much fun, students will not even realize they’re learning. This is a fantastic and fun tool to introduce students to the wonderful world of data and graphing, if only we could convince it’s creator Brian Shaler, to change it’s name.

The third and final tool is not as data-driven as the previous two. It’s more of a diagramming tool, but it allows educators to fully implement the power of the interactive smart board. Lovely Charts allows you to create incredible flowcharts, site maps or people diagrams. What makes this site so perfect for interactive white board use is the ability to drag and drop almost everything onto your diagrams. Then, by clicking on the Create and Connect option, I can connect, using only my finger, multiple items or people in my diagram. There are many images, symbols and graphics to choose from and all of them can be added to your chart by simply dragging them with your finger. If you want to get your kids out of their seat, get in touch with the kinesthetic sides of their brains, and get them excited about the capabilities and the “magic” of an interactive white board, then Lovely Charts would be a very good place to start. You can view an excellent screencast describing the tool here.

Interactive white boards, combined with online tools can be an amazing way for kids to have fun and not even realize they’re learning. Introducing students to data and graphing can be a difficult sell, but using an interactive white board can make this introduction a bit less painful for your students.- JERRY SWIATEK

Create-A-Graph

Crappy Graphs

Lovely Charts

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Graphing calculators for everyone! Yay!

My first electronic portfolio was done six years ago using Mozilla Composer and burned to a CD, and my student teaching advisor was thrilled to not have to wade through another four-inch-thick binder filled with plastic sleeves and teacher-themed paper.  Back then, the CD was my compromise for privacy, as setting up a password-protected website was a lot more complex than it is now. These days, I’m helping student teachers create their own electronic portfolios, and Google Sites is the go-to tool for us.

Security and privacy is still a concern, and always will be, thanks to FERPA. Google makes it easy to make your site private, to share it with select individuals, or to make it entirely public and open to the world. Changing the sharing settings is a click away. If you’re submitting resumes, include a link and a note explaining how the hiring committee can access your portfolio, and in an interview, be prepared to share it.

Since Sites is a Google product, it works seamlessly with Google Docs (to save space, if you’re approaching the 100mb limit, storing files like your teaching philosophy in Docs and embedding them won’t count against your server space), YouTube (Google Video is sunsetting this year, sadly), Google Calendar,  Picasa web albums…you get the picture.

One of the reasons we’ve gone with Google Sites is that the portfolio is never married to the university’s servers, and long after our students have graduated, they can keep updating and accessing their portfolio without worrying their alma mater will someday push them out to make way for new student portfolios. It’s ad-free, unlike many other free websites, and very simple to edit and maintain. If you want your own domain name, you can purchase it and have it redirect to your Google Sites page.

It’s not perfect, though. For instance, you can’t download the source files easily, although I’ve heard rumors it’ll eventually be possible. I prefer Vimeo for video hosting, and the only embeddable content would have to be stored on YouTube, and be publicly available. There are several pre-designed themes (including one for teachers, if you’re into that!), and you can change the colors for just about any part of your site, but you can’t install custom themes. The limitations make it fairly foolproof, both for creators and for readers. If you are really committed to other services that don’t mesh with Google Sites, consider the Site a portal to your entire online presence.

To get started, get yourself a Google account if you don’t yet have one (and if you do have one, make sure it’s under a username you’d feel confident sharing professionally). Helen Barrett has a great tutorial (built within Google Sites) to guide you in creating your portfolio. You’ll have to sign in to each Google feature the first time you use it (Docs, Sites, etc) but your Google account name will be the same throughout. And since Google also allows you to have multiple sites, once your portfolio lands you a job, set up a new site for your classroom, and keep on learning. -GRETCHEN SCHAEFER

Google Sites

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