Kudos to my friend and colleague Darrin Sato at Kamehameha for teaching me about Sharetabs.com. Have you ever wanted to share several links with someone or with a class? Sharetabs.com is the place for you! 

Today our teachers at the elementary school were fortunate to have Stephanie Harvey (a Heinemann author) present to us in an all day workshop on teaching non-fiction (reading and writing). It was fabulous. Well throughout the day, Stephanie would mention different authors and studies and websites that we might find useful in our work with non fiction. I had multiple tabs up by the end of the day but most teachers in the room didn’t have their laptops.

So I went to sharetabs.com and created a sharetab link for everyone. With the press of a button I was able to create a sharetab called http://sharetabs.com/?stephanieharvey.

It was so easy! One click practically! And now everyone will have all the websites literally at their fingertips. There is a “preview” of each website as well as links as “tabs” at the top of the sharetabs page.

Thanks Darrin!

I am wondering if I should be sharing this with my principal, teachers and library media specialists. What do you think? Would it make a difference?
I am not a big fan of textbooks of any sort (well, maybe math…). I think they become outdated too quickly, they have inconsistent and inaccurate data frequently, they are TOO HEAVY for kids to haul around in their backpacks (seriously, I remember my 5th grader having to lug 5 textbooks on any given day) and there is so much information out there on the web at their fingertips (via handheld devices and laptops). Besides the fact that they are EXPENSIVE and a waste of trees.
What do you think?iPods, Laptops Replacing School Textbooks – ABC News

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I love me a great website for kids. And I found one, thanks to my twitter PLN (personal learning network) and twitter friend, Angela Maiers.  She always posts the greatest websites, including the focus of today’s blog, E-Learning for Kids.

e-learningforkids.org

It has a wide array of SUPER kid friendly lessons and activities on specific subjects, such as language arts, science, math, health and computer skills. It is unbelievably GOOD!

I checked out a great math lesson on mean, median, and mode. NICE! I learned from it!

e-learningforkids.org

I also looked at another math lesson fractions. Very interactive. Kids take a magic wand, choose the total amount of apples, and then select one to change the color to green. One third! Tell me what kid wouldn’t like this? I’m certain there is someone out there who wouldn’t like it. But that’s what differentiation is all about…learning multiple ways.

Good luck!

Until I learn how to do webpages, I am all about putting everything I need and everything my students and their families need, on my blogs or wikispaces. So I am really loving two new wikispaces for use by teachers. One is “Cool Tools for Schools” and and is full of great web 2.0 apps that students AND teachers can use. They are awesome. The other one is “Getting Tricky with Wikis“. If you are a teacher and you use wikispaces, this is a must have for you!!!

Cool Tools for Schools

Getting Tricky with Wikis

I am constantly amazed at the collaboration from teachers throughout the world. In this case, sharing is caring…caring that teachers have the tools available to integrate technology successfully, and caring for students, that they have tools available to them, too, to move forward and become change agents.

I finally had a chance to play with animoto.com again. Whew. As easy as it was the first time! And I can tell right away that animoto changed my glottal stop (from a Mac) into a question mark (obviously a PC lover). Darn. I know for the next time.

Now I wonder how I can get my elementary students using this without having to have all of them sign up for their own accounts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlqfJsmjcOs

I have been using del.icio.us for at least a year. And I like it. But seriously, I donʻt use it much. Well, I do in the sense that I was dumping lots of stuff INTO it but not accessing the info very much. And then diigo came along and people started blogging about it. I signed up and imported my del.icio.us bookmarks but didnt really use it after that.

Well, just last week someone mentioned it again and I asked, "Why would I want to use diigo rather than del.icio.us?" He replied, "Highlights, babe, highlights." Well, he might not have said the "babe" part but I wish he had.

So I am venturing back into diigo and trying to get a good grip on it. I put the plug-in on my computer at work AND I did a search for a help video and lo and behold!!! COOL STUFF!

So I am back on track again. School is back in session and Kumu Iaea is right back with it! Tahiti is a fond memory. Walking every morning is a thing of the past (except on weekends, of course). Itʻs time to LEARN!!!!

Oh, by the way, I just wanted you to know that I was able to do this blog RIGHT FROM the youtube site, as part of a diigo feature! Check out the video and you will know exactly what I mean! GOOD TIMES!

I have been DELINQUENT! Teaching and life in general seem to put blog posts as a last priority. But the more I learn about new technology tools or ways that “old” tech tools are being used to improve student learning (and use them myself) I realize that posting to this blog is not only a way to share information, but also a great way to organize my own thinking!
And so, finally a post.
Every morning I wake up to a wonderful post by Kevin Jarrett. This morning was no exception. And while I think this particular “In Plain English” video is probably more suited to upper grades (middle on up) I do think teachers in elementary levels need to know that this is where our kids are heading. And anything we can do to help better prepare them for that world is in everybody’s best interest.

Take a look at this great post about Goomoodleikiog: Transforming Teaching in Plain English. You’ll love it and find it thought provoking.

My latest greatest most favorite tool to help me remember (and believe me, I need help remembering nowadays) is evernote. As the website states: Evernote allows you to easily “capture” information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most confenient, andmakes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. In a nutshell, you can save, search, view information on any computer (web-based and downloadable) and on your phone. I have an iPhone and the application I downloaded is amazing. And it just keeps getting better. I now have a plug-in on firefox and just started using that today! When I find an amazing website (today I wanted to save a cool idea for a Thanksgiving activity with kids) or a great recipe that I want to save (comes in handy when grocery shopping), I just clicked on the plug-in, added appropriate tags, and wrote a short comment (to spark my memory once I access it again). Amazing. You wouldn’t believe the information I have stored on evernote. Business cards. Recipes. Websites. Pictures of books i want to buy. OMG I even have some voice memos (a couple of cheers I wrote way back). ID info (you know, airline mileage programs, membership to organizations, etc). travel info (things to do in NYC or LV that I read about or was recommended to me). And the list goes on. Best of all? It’s FREE! You can buy a premium account but I don’t even see any use for it..YET! I think I’ll work my way up to it, it’s that good. Here is a snapshot of one of my evernotes (a photo I took on my iMac, using iSight Note, on Evernote), a book I want to purchase later. You can see part of my list of “evernotes” that I’ve saved. On the second picture you can see the blog itself, plus, if you look carefully you can see the little evernote icon as a plug in on firefox. It’s to the left of the URL area. Evernote’s logo is a cute elephant. Get it?

Give it a try. If you are someone who has trouble remembering when and where you met or read something that you thought was important to remember, evernote is for you.

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina

My review

I bought this book as a recommended read on twitter. It contains 12 brain rules. When I began I was hoping for help to better meet the needs of my students. I think I am on my way! So far I’ve learned that it is not possible to multi-task. With this information, I am sure my frequent lapses of memory (repeatedly…the other day I walked to the fridge TWICE, forgetting what I was supposed to get BOTH times, right after reading the recipe), I am sure that what I mistook for multi-tasking is really me focusing on one activity haphazardly while trying to complete another, also haphazardly. I also learned that exercise is rule #1. And as kids do worse and worse in school, we take away more and more of their exercise (in the form of recess, P.E. and shorter lunch periods).

View all my reviews.