Teaching+Ideas

English Companion Ning
[|http://englishcompanion.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network]"A place to ask questions and get help. A community dedicated to helping you enjoy your work. A cafe without walls or coffee: just friends."

Using Visual Texts to Teach Critical Thinking
This Powerpoint presentation makes more sense if you have the handouts I used when I did it "live," especially at the end, but here you have the photos, their URL, and the behavioral definition of critical thinking.

Teaching //The Crucible// with Twitter, Fan Fiction, and More
This article reports a developing unit wherein secondary school teachers use Twitter and fan fiction, among other tools and approaches, to help students understand and appreciate //The Crucible.// It's very well done and only 7 pages.

A Wiki of Glogs Wins Edublog's Best Educational Wiki Award 2010
http://greetingsfromtheworld.wikispaces.com/ Students from around the world create glogs to show their part of the world. The glogs are posted then on this site developed and maintained by a teacher in Croatia. Think of all the ways you could use this site and/or this idea in your teaching!

Educational Videos Freely Available
I went to WatchKnow.org [] because I was intrigued by an article that quoted a 5th-grade science and social studies teacher who uses this site instead of textbooks to instruct. While I think there's also merit in developing the ability to read words, who wouldn't want a huge resource like this one? It's well organized, readily searchable, and growing all the time. And it's all free because they have an anonymous benefactor. What's not to like?

Script-Writing and Film
Two middle school teachers from Florida uploaded their NCTE 2010 Prezi presentation and all the handouts--including rubrics--you'll ever need to teach your own students. You're going to want to see these: []



Visual Literacy and Multimodal Essays
Although this presentation, in my opinion, lacks some of the design elements that make presentations excellent, the information is nonetheless excellent. Two high school teachers show how they teach visual literacy and then the multimodal essay assignments they have students write. You can get a lot of good ideas from this one: []

Google Monsters: Using Google in Ways That Haven't Been Invented Yet
You'll find a ton of useful information from these forward-thinking, young educators. []

**Web 2.0 Tools**
The 2010 NCTE presentation on moving students from static to dynamic tools is complete with student samples and also demonstrates great use of a wiki: http://static2dynamicncte.wikispaces.com/

A school district in Pennsylvania created this wiki of Web 2.0 tools that you have to see: http://etoolbox.wikispaces.com/

Teaching Shakespeare with Digital Tools and Social Networking
This link to a wiki from a high school teacher who presented at the 2010 NCTE Convention will give you lots of ideas for teaching Shakespeare's plays: []

But Wait. What about Teaching Shakespeare in a Socially Just Way?
This teacher raises important questions about a fairly common activity--asking students to re-create a scene from //Romeo and Juliet//. Examining the wealth of YouTube videos under the keywords "Ghetto Romeo and Juliet," he and his students become increasingly upset with the stereotyping and downright wrong images presented. []

Teaching Virtual Students Seems to Pay Off for the Students Who are the Teachers
[|http://bit.ly/aTbKgA]This story describes several research studies in which middle school students teach science and math concepts to virtual students who are online. Because the live students prepare more to teach the virtual students, they learn more themselves. You really have to read it to get the full story. It seems like an exciting advancement that someone could/should apply to English language arts.

Ryan Goble of Mindblue and Making Curriculum Pop describes five types of tech tools that are free and easily used in this New York Times online article: []


 * One of those tools is Tagxedo. The creator has now blogged about it and offers 101 uses: [] I don't know if you have to be a member of MCPop or not, but I strong recommend that you join this ning anyway. It's full of creative and substantive ways to make your curriculum "pop."

Digital Storytelling
Create Your Own Story

Wikis
[]

Journal of Media Literacy Education
(some excellent articles, PDFs available online) []

Web 2.0 Tools for Lecturing in New Ways
[]

Tools for the 21st Century Teacher
[]

Using Twitter in/for the Classroom

 * Your professional learning network []
 * Getting started with Twitter and how educators use it []
 * An excellent, accessible guide to getting started, followed by lots of links for tools and more advice []

Google Apps
CSU already offers this to you, but now the entire state of Colorado has signed on to offer Google Apps in all the public schools in the state. It might be time to learn to use it well. If you're interested, start here [] and don't forget to check out the lesson plans that you'll find from a link on this page.