Posted in Blogs and Blogging

A Big Thanks!

Summer School is officially over for this year, but the students wanted to express their thanks to those of you who commented on our classroom blog. They were constantly asking me if I knew the people that made comments. They were excited to check, and eager to write back. I even watched their commenting begin to change just a bit within the three weeks we worked on the blog as they began to model their comments after the ones they received. It’s amazing what kids pick up. So, from the Summer Coffey Crew and from me…

Thanks!

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Projects

Summertime Bloggers in Second Grade

I’m in the middle of teaching Summer School to some great second graders, and they have been posting to a class blog to practice writing skills.  They are really excited about the possibility of recieving comments from people, as well as intrigued with the cluster map on the blog.  If you have a free moment, would you mind leaving them some comments?  Click here to visit our class blog! Thanks!

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Salem City Schools

East Salem Teacher and Students Interviewed on GenTech Podcast

GenTech logoKelly Baer and the 4th grade Bloggers group at East were interviewed on GenTech Podcast. The GenTech podcast is a weekly conversation about a particular tool or trend, and how it can be used educationally.  If you’d like to hear what they had to say, click on the links below!

Field Report #12:  Kelly Baer

Field Report #13:  Students Talk About Blogging 

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Links, RSS, Salem City Schools, Tech Tools, Video, Web 2.0

What is RSS?

This past year I’ve noticed that a bunch of educators in our system have started blogging. One of the easiest ways to keep up with all these new blogs (in one place) is to use RSS. Here’s a simple explanation created by commoncraft:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/AwtmOPdrEL8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I use Google Reader, but there are other feed readers out there like Pageflakes or Netvibes. If you want one already set up for you, check out this one on Pageflakes–it’s all set up for Salem City Schools, complete with RSS feeds for the blogs I know about (let me know if I’ve missed yours), local weather, and local news. You can bookmark it and use it like it is or create your own account so you can add your own things.

SCS Feeds Page on PageFlakes

Download Video: Posted by tcoffey at TeacherTube.com.

Update (1/7/08)

I’ve noticed that Pageflakes sometimes runs really slow at school. If you are having trouble, you can use Netvibes instead. I’ve set up the same feeds there too. Netvibes does take awhile to load initially, but if you login and save the page, the next time you visit, it will load a lot quicker. Click here to try: Add to Netvibes After you click on this button, make sure to choose “yes” to preview the page and “yes” to add it to your page, even if you do not have a Netvibes account yet.