Create Staff Community & Collaboration With One Blog, Many Teachers

Student blogging in the classroom is great for many reasons. But, the blog can be great for teachers as well. I'm not talking about a single teacher and a single blog. What I'm talking about is one blog for many teachers! One teacher sets up the blog, then invites the staff to be contributors. And there you have it, a staff blog!

There are two ways to put together a staff blog. One is to have teachers post whenever the mood suits them. You could have a few blog posts a day or if no one wants to get the ball rolling, no blog posts for a week or even longer. It's because of this I prefer the second way, to create a schedule where each teacher posts during a given week. That way, you're guaranteed a post a week.  So, for example, Teacher A posts something in week one, Teacher B posts in week 2 and so on.

The first question you may get when asking teachers to blog is "what should I write about?" The post should be about education, not what their weekend plans are. They can write a post about what they're doing in class and share exemplary student work. Teachers can blog about current events in Edtech or education in general. They can share lesson ideas and best practices.

There are a couple of reasons why blogging in school can be an effective tool. First, it can build a sense of community. Teachers can feel like they're in this together as a staff. They are all part of a blog that represents the staff. Commenting and responding to comments can also build community.

Second, a staff blog can serve as a collaborative professional development activity. Teachers can get lesson ideas and best practice ideas from each other's posts.

So, as you can see, there are many benefits to staff blogging.  So why wait? Get blogging!

Three Ways Students Can Annotate PDF's With Their Chromebooks

Paper is out and technology is in! The days of making copies for your classes are over! Why waste time at the copy machine when you can simply upload a PDF to your learning management system such as Google Classroom? Below are three Chrome apps that students can use to annotate the paperwork you would otherwise pass out to them in class. All of the apps below are available in the Chrome Web Store.

XODO: XODO greets you with a straightforward interface prompting you to open a local file (from your Chromebook), a file from your Google Drive, or a file from Dropbox. After annotating the documents, they simply download the file and then upload it to the desired Google Classroom assignment.

DocHub: Simply click “New” from the DocHub dashboard and upload a file from your Chromebook, Google Drive, or Dropbox. Download the document the device, then upload the annotated document to the Google Classroom assignment.

Kami: Clicking on the Kami icon presents the student with a straightforward interface with the options to upload from various options. Kami also provides the ability to create a new blank pdf page on which the student can draw or write. Students can download the document to their Google Drive or to their device. When downloading, Kami provides the option of downloading just the text box annotations, which is good for test taking when the teacher doesn’t need a copy of the questions — just the answers.

9 Apps To Help Get Your Students Writing

Sometimes you’ll find that your students need a little inspiration to get started in their writing. The following apps can give them the push they need.

Tag Journal: Ask students to journal. They can journal about a memory or about their day or week. In some cases, thinking about a memory can spark creativity and give them a topic to write about. Or, ask them to review past journal entries for ideas. The thing that makes Tag Journal unique is that it allows you to “tag” entries. A student can tag certain themes, places, and people for easy retrieval later.

Padlet: Ask students to fee associate things that come to mind and create a Padlet. Have students create topics as headers for columns and then fill out those columns. For example, columns could be titled “Home,” “Work,” and “School.” They can populate the columns with terms that come to mind in each of those categories.

Lists for Writers: A great way to break writer's block. If a student is stuck because they need the right name, place, phrase, or setting, Lists for Writers can help. It is a fantastic resource to help get the writer back into their writing.

Story Starters for iPad: It’s all in the name. Story Starters for the iPad is a fantastic way to start a writing project. A student can simply take a look at the main menu, which includes speeches, phrases, pictures, and settings, and choose which inspiration they’d like to start their story with.

Skitch: A fabulous markup tool. Skitch can be used in many ways in the classroom. For writing inspiration, ask students to take pictures of people, locations, and/or things. Then, using the markup tool, they can describe the pictures, giving them characteristics that can be used in their story.

MindNode 5: Great for organizing ideas. Asks students to write down people, places or ideas. Then, ask them to free associate about those topics. After a certain amount of time, connect those ideas. The result is a skeleton of a story.

Popplet: Another great way to mind map or organize a story. It’s kinda like MindNode in that you can connect ideas and maps. The difference is in the usability and design. Again, have students free associate and connect ideas they can use in their writing.

Prompts: Prompts is a writing prompts app where, upon starting, presents you with a prompt such as “I love it when…” then the student can build something bigger from the prompt. But that’s not where Prompts ends. If you find you’re stuck in your writing, clicking the Prompts icon will prompt you again, making a suggestion on where you should go next with your writing.

GarageBand: record sounds for inspiration. Ask students to record everyday sounds. Then, using those sounds as inspiration, base a story on the recordings. Have students give the voices, the bird chirps, and the everyday sounds characteristics they can use in their writing.

Five Apps to Get Students Excited About Journaling

Journaling can play an important part in the classroom for a number of reasons. Journaling helps students develop their writing skills and become a more confident writer. It's a great way for students to self-reflect. And, in the case of a free-form journal, it may aid in decreasing stress as they are able to pour out their thoughts and emotions. Journaling in the classroom is also a great way for students to reflect on their learning.

As far as journaling tools go, there are the obvious word processors such as Google Docs, Pages, and Word. But the following are five unique ways students can journal in the classroom:

1. Google Slides/Keynote: Presentation apps are an easy way for students to organize their journals and an easy way for teachers to review them. Simply use each slide as a day's journal entry. Let students edit the slide so they might include pictures, themes, and various fonts.
   
   
2. Seesaw: I've written how cool Seesaw is as far as keeping a student portfolio. In essence, it's a journal where students can reflect on their work by including pictures and video about what they're doing in the classroom. Take it one step further and post some of the student entries on the class blog included in Seesaw.
   
   
3. Kidblog: A way for students to not only keep a journal, but develop good digital citizenship skills by creating a blog. Kidblog is a blogging platform tailored for the classroom. With Kidblog, the teacher is in complete control. From who can see the posts to who can comment, Kidblog puts the teacher in total control of the blog.
   
   
4. Tag Journal: An iOS app that can be used for both note-taking and journaling using, text, voice recording, and pictures. The cool thing about Tag Journal is reflected in its name. You can "tag" your entries. A student may want to tag journal entries specific to what they're learning in class. For example, tag entries regarding the Civil War or World War II. It's a great way for students to organize their journal according to topic or subject.
   
   
5.  Paper by Fifty Three:  A unique way to keep a journal. Unleash students creativity and give them ownership of their learning with this iOS app. There's no end to what students can do with Paper. Paper enables students to be creative in documenting their learning by giving them the ability to draw using a variety of tools, annotate screenshots, incorporate photo's, as well enter text.

Rough Draft: A Mac and iOS Writing Tool for the Classroom

Rough Draft is a writers tool that educators using iPads may want to consider.  Rough Draft is a text editor that's been available for the Mac and has recently become available on iOS.  It's the app that constantly reminds you that you are working on, as the name implies, a rough draft. How does it do this? Well, when working in Rough Draft, there is no delete option, only the ability to strikethrough. By doing so, you are constantly reminded that what you're working on is only a draft.

How does this help someone write? By having the ability to see the strikethroughs on the page, you are more likely to continue your work without pausing to figure out just the right line, phrase, or word to include in your document. You can do that later. Right now, the important thing is to your get your thoughts out of your head into the computer. This, in essence, sets the writer free and enables them to be less careful and more carefree when writing their document. All too often we edit while writing, ultimately taking way too long to get our ideas out. The point is, you want to stay in the flow and not pause. The makers of Rough Draft, 96 Problems, say that when you type a document on a computer, you are given the impression that its permanent, so you spend time perfecting your document while you write. Before you know it, that 500 word document you sat down to write has taken you hours. Rough Draft eliminates that.

Rough Draft also provides you with the ability to insert a placeholder in your text. Let's say you want to insert a picture or quote into your document but aren't quite sure which picture you want or what the perfect quote will be, you just know you want one in there. Rough Draft inserts a placeholder where you want to place the item so that you can come back to it later, when you're in the editing process. This is most certainly a timesaver. No longer are you pausing your writing to search for that quote or picture, you continue to write. And that's the purpose of Rough Draft, to keep you writing.

When you're ready to edit, you simply click "revise" and the strikethroughs are removed while the placeholders are kept in place. Your document appears as clean as can be. If you prefer to use yourfavorite text editor to do the editing and publishing, Rough Draft allows you to export your work.

When all you want to do is wrtie, Rough Draft is a good tool to not only have in your writers tool box, but in the classroom as well.