November 2009!
November 3rd was my birthday and little did I know how many surprises I would find this month, especially with this blog. Let’s begin with the new layout. I continuously am looking for ways to share information with you. I want you to be able to find your way around easily and access the information when you need it. I am hoping this new layout accomplishes this with labeled categories, new pages, more links, changes to the series, and a bit of restructuring.
What you might have missed…
Your favorite posts this month-
- Most commented and retweeted- You still have time to join in the discussion presented by Tom Whitby’s guest post, Twitter’s Effect on Presentations and Presenters. Tom raises the question of how presenters deal with negative feedback in the backchannel.
- General Favorites- based on comments, Feedburner statistics, and analytics
- Goal-Setting with English Language Learners– We discussed the importance of showing students how to create learning goals and statements for themselves and how to keep students accountable to these goals.
- Edublogs 2009 Awards: Inspiration in Education– Check out my nominations for the Edublogs Awards.
- The State of Now in Education: #14o Conference– Check out my highlights of the 140 Character Conference, including the video featuring silly photos of Tom Whitby and Steven Anderson. On a more serious note, I explore where idealism fits in education. Does idealism have a place in education?
- Favorite What Did They Tweet Series- In this post, Twitterers shared with us 10 Ways to be an Inspirational Teacher, Spoken Word podcasts, and Stephen Fry’s video about this take on social media.
- Favorite Cool Sites Series- Perhaps it was the Pecha Kucha videos on my Youtube Channel that made this post extremely popular overall. I know I have caught the Pecha Kucha fever! Since this post, I have updated the Youtube channel with ever more Pecha Kucha presentations from the Virtual Round Table Conference!
- My highlights-
- Favorite tool- Intodit.com is the easiest free tool for making quick and fantastic wiki pages with the ability to drag and drop boxes, great templates, and widgets.
- Favorite collaborative project featured this month- Project Peace for Students @ddeubel created an international global project for students everywhere! If you are looking for an easy project to connect your students with other schools worldwide, then you may want to check out the details here. Join the ning, choose 1 of 8 songs about peace, download the song cards, have students decorate them, then make a video! Here’s anexample of one of the video projects!
Find more videos like this on PROJECT PEACE
- Favorite way to use a website in the classroom- This story was first featured in a What Did They Tweet post. Isabelle Jones shares advice on how to effectively use videos to motivate students to learn languages. Isabelle also lists many video search engines and video tools. Below is the video wall from one site mentioned, Blinkx, which is a highly visual search engine that allows students to view what world events are taking place in real time.
- Guest posts- Thanks to these brilliant bloggers who posted this month!
- Ozge Karaoglu shared her favorite tools for collaborating with others for projects.
- Tom Whitby raised the question of how presenters deal with negative feedback in the backchannel.
- Neal Chambers provided us with advice on winning friends and showing support for them on Twitter.
- Eric Sheninger provided us with innovative ways to get technology into our schools.
- David Kapuler shared his top 5 educational sites of all time.
- Ozge Karaoglu shared her favorite tools for collaborating with others for projects.
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What was your favorite post? Leave a comment below!
