Feedly Article #3--"A Handful of Ways to Display YouTube Videos Without 'Related' Content"

Watchkin - Safe YouTube'ing

Summary of Article:

Mr. Byrne finds solutions for removing that pesky, distracting, and sometimes wildly inappropriate "other" content when using YouTube in the classroom.  Watchkin is a website that allows you to either enter YouTube URLs or search for videos directly from its site.  It then filters out the unwanted extra sidebar content.  The site also allows you to bookmark videos for easy return. Some other similar tools and applications mentioned are: ViewPure, Quietube, and SafeShare.tv.  Safeshare.tv also removes the comments.  

Applications for the Classroom:

These tools are beneficial to the classroom because you do not want to be the teacher that displays that inappropriate "other" content in the classroom.  Besides being inappropriate, it can also be distracting to students, and these tools will help students keep on task.  Also, comments can be upsetting and offensive.  

Find the Article/Application: 

I found the article on Richard Byrne's blog Free Technology for Teachers, available here.  Find Watchkin here.  

Feedly Article #2--"'Edueto' Has Got To Be One of the Best Teacher & Web 2.0 Sites of the Year"

Edueto - Original Online Exercises 

Summary of Article:

Edueto allows teachers to create a variety of online exercise.  Teachers can create: quizzes, gap filling, matching, writing, sorting, equations, PicTag, and sequence.  Mr. Ferlazzo believes it to be one of the most useful sites of the year, and it's free!  Teachers can create the activities and assign them to virtual classrooms.  This means that, unlike many sites, teachers can track student progress. Tutorials are available for each of the applications.  

Application in the Classroom:

Many of these applications will work for the English Language Arts classroom.  You can make quizzes, but many sites have quiz applications.  The key here is the ability to track student progress, again, for free!  With any literary work, the sequence application could help students order and review.  Gap filling and matching would come in handy for literary term reviews, or even, say, matching characteristics of a character to the character.  There is also a writing section.  I will have to review that in greater detail before I can suggest possible applications.  

Find the Article:

I found this article on Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day blog, available here.  Find Edueto here.  

Feedly Article #1--"What2Learn-Create Your Own Review Games"

What2Learn - Review Games

Summary of Article: 

What2Learn is a site offering review games.  It offers them in math, science, social studies and English language arts.  Student registration is not required to play the games.  There are pre-made games, or teachers can build their own.  With 16 templates available, you have the option to preview each game before selecting the template.  Once you have completed the game, it can take up to 24 hours before the game is live to allow administrators to review content.  

Application in the Classroom:

This would be a great tool for building interactive quizzes for students.  In English language arts, this can be used to review works you've read in class or to study literary terms.  By creating your own, you can customize the quizzes to your curriculum.  If you really want to get students thinking, you can have them help you create the questions for the quizzes.  If you are looking for more quick options, you can simply utilize the numerous existing quizzes available. 

Find the Article:

I found this article by Richard Byrne available on the Free Technology for Teachers blog, available here.  

My YouTube Playlist About The Great Gatsby

As a resource for my students while reading The Great Gatsby, I have created my own YouTube Playlist, available here.  As I review additional videos that I believe are helpful to students, I will update the list.  For now, the list includes:

• The infamous crash course video by vlogbrother's John Green.  As always, he provides a fast-paced cheeky review of the novel.  It amazes me how he quickly and effortlessly he pinpoints the flaws of the characters and relates them to the high schoolers watching the review.  And because it's John Green, they accept it! 
• A short clip by the Wall Street Journal of BBC footage.  This is a nice short introduction to how Fitzgerald incorporated elements of the Jazz Age.  The images from the time period are provocative, as would be expected.  
• Video SparkNotes summary of The Great Gatsby.  This is a great tool to help students to review the novel.  It summarizes events in chronological order rather than the order in which the narrator tell them, for a clearer overview.   

SMART Board Videos

I found two videos that have been helpful in learning to use SMART Board with particular applicability to high school English classes.   "Using Smart Board Technology in the HS English Classroom" by Steve Putnick, available here, provided great ideas for use in the High School English classroom.  Then "SMART Notebook 11-How to Make a Vortex Sort Activity" by Caleb Lee, available here, provided specific information about that particular application.   

"Using Smart Board Technology in the HS English Classroom" by Steve Putnick

Mr. Putnick recommends using the Smart Board for revision and editing in writing lessons.  During the writing process, students are able to go to the board and drag words and rearrange them.  They can immediately see the results of the editing.  Because everyone can see the edits, everyone can follow along with the changes being made.  Mr. Putnick and his students like that it makes editing more of a physical and collaborative process.  

"SMART Notebook 11-How to Make a Vortex Sort Activity" by Caleb Lee

For his video lesson, Mr. Lee uses separable and inseparable phrasal verbs in two separate vortices. He simply selects the number of vortices, and then categorizes the phrases as he enters them. Students sort the phrasal verbs by selecting the phrasal verbs and moving them into the correct vortex.  If the verb is accepted, it disappears.  This is a great activity to work with easily categorized information.  

PLN #1-My Educational Toolkit

I am a Post-Bac Teacher Certification student for Secondary English.  Secondary English will be the subject of my LiveBinder.  My LiveBinder is named English Goes Green and is located here.  

I found a LiveBinder by High School teacher Mrs. Steffey, here, that is particularly useful.  It is used to arrange class material.  It contains rubrics, rules, study guides, assignments, and a lot of literary resources.  I find it useful that she keeps all of this organized and available publicly for her students and parents (and other teaching students like me).  There is even a tab for missed assignments.  

Using Blogs in High School English Classrooms

I found an excellent comprehensive blogging resource for teachers by Bill Ferriter of the Center for Teaching Quality available here. Among the resources is an annotated list of classroom blogs. Mr. Ferriter believes that viewing examples of actual use will relieve the fear that blogging is to difficult to incorporate. I won't still his thunder. Do follow the link.

Specifically for high school English, Mr. Ferriter led me to Nicholas Provenzano's blog, here. Mr. Provenzano uses blogging as a creative writing tool. Finding that students had enough critical writing, the blog serves as a place to respond creatively to visual prompts. The topic is separate from the content he teaches in class. The most interesting aspect of process though, is that he also completes every blog he assigns as a model and to show students it is not simply "busy work." Students are allowed to respond with words, pictures, videos or songs. What a wonderful way to build student confidence!