Get on track with TrackStar!

I learned about TrackStar at a conference, and it has become a favorite of mine. TrackStar is a tool for collecting web sites for online activities and lessons. You enter the sites into TrackStar and add directions, questions, or annotations for your students to create an interactive online lesson called a track. Create your own or search the database for one that's already made on your topic. You can search by subject, grade level, keyword, or standard. There is a fun track made for everday of the year, too! The site also allows you to build a website for your track or make a quiz. The tool is free and if you author your own track and a link goes down. The site emails you to let you know. You never get in the lab and get the dreaded message, "This page is no longer available." The view in frames guides the kids through the web pages while displaying your annotations at the top of the frame. The view in text is an online printable version of any text you entered. It makes an instant worksheet for the kids to use to record their answers and notes.

I use my Hispanic Artists and Folktales Track to guide the students through the artists and for kids that are gone during the class presentations to catch up on their own. It cuts the time needed and directs them to the examples I want them to see. (In the case of art, there are pictures I would prefer the students didn't see with every artist.) After studying the artists and reading, watching, and listening to folktales, myths, fables, and legends from a variety of countries, the students create a mural portraying a scene from one of the stories in the style of one of the artists. They present it to the class and explain how and why they connected the two. We also use one on Paris Monuments to take our students through a quick tour of Paris along with a little history along the way. Students can refer back to the tracks as they complete the final projects for the unit.My friend, Kristen, and I taught an in-service class on this tool and now several teachers use it on a regular basis in a variety of subjects.

Now, if you want to make your own, here's my suggestion. Search the database and bookmark sites you like on delicious. Then go in and create the perfect track for your class. That way you are the track master and no one else can change your track or make it disappear. POOF!

Do you have the Audacity to go Podomatic or Jing on TeacherTube?

Okay, I am a world languages teacher, but parts of this chapter made me feel like I was learning a new language. I have heard of podcasts, but had no idea there were multiple sites including podomatic and audacity which allowed you to make your own with just a few clicks. I have several ideas for audio files. I thought I might start with two French conversations, one formal and one informal. The students can listen to the conversations and then write down informal or formal along with words or phrases that support their position . I also thought of recording every other line of a conversation and having the students write down a logical phrase to make a complete conversation. I don't have a good mic though so I am waiting to actually create these later. I did find several podcasts for learning French and Spanish on iTunes. I also found sites that contained a podcast followed by questions like Madrid Young Learners that are great examples of how to use this technology in classes. Librarians or reading teachers could publish book reviews of new novels or interviews with a person pretending to be a character in the bool.

Jing is a terrific tool for staff development. Every year we have training about loggin in to the system, saving to the servers, setting up the on-line grade book. Any of these could be done as a screencast and saved to a group folder so teachers could access them any time they need a refresher. (Maybe we could even eliminate a meeting and just let teachers do it on their own.) Who hasn't had an in-service and by the time they get around to actually doing it on their own they can't remember exactly what to do? Jing will solve that problem.

Finally, TeacherTube, the educational version of YouTube, allows video uploads for class use or professional development. This is the tool I chose to use. Two guys from Madrid, Spain were visiting Madrid, Iowa to shoot a television spot. I was asked to help while they were here and I had my flip video camera in my purse. I asked them to introduce themselves. tell where they are from, and what they like to do. My hope is to post this to a blog or wiki like this one and ask for other native Spanish speakers to send me their introductions. I would love to have examples from all the Spanish countries so the students could hear a variety of people with different accents. If you're interested in helping out. Here are the examples below. Once I have a collection, I would add questions such as; Who is from South America? What country are they from? Who is from Spain? What does the person from Spain like to do? etc. I have also found several fun example projects. One of my favorites is the Celeb Roll Call that includes common classroom expressions, the imperfect tense, and negation in the same lesson. These videos were easy to make and upload. I know we have flip cameras available so next year skits will become videocasts for sure!

Flickin' through Flickr

So , I just spent about three hours flicking through pictures on Flickr. I searched places I have lived, things I like to do, places and people I talk about in my classroom. I could have kept going, but it was after midnight and I thought I should get a little sleep. If you have never used flickr here is a short overview video. My classmate also gave me some cool sites to help search, so check out search me and tag galaxy.

There are so many possibilities with this tool in a Modern Language Classroom. I can find pictures of all the countries that speak French and Spanish. There are also tools to create magazine covers, montages, and movie posters. I found one I especially liked of Marie Antoinette. Any of these could be used for a project in multiple subject areas. I imagine a montage of a historical period or endangered species and habitats or magazine covers detailing life in a country or the important contributions of an individual in history. There were poetry examples where keywords in the poem were tagged with images and I found a whole music video created with flickr images. I think this could be a time saver in many schools. Say you have multiple teachers creating presentations on ancient civilizations, what if they now created a group to share photos on that topic? The pictures would magically appear together and what one teacher finds is instantly shared with the group. I think the pictures could also be used as bell ringers. Put up a picture and ask the students what they think they are going to learn today based on the image you are projecting or as as exit card you put up the image and ask the students to write down how the image connects to the day's lesson. Fabulous!

An idea I have for my class is to have the kids create a photo gallery of the places we talk about in class on our wiki. I am also thinking of changing my Paris postcard project to a video using flicr images. Finally, I found a 365 days of flickr calendar video and I thought this would be cool for a team to do throughout the year as a photo stream and then turn it into a video at the end of the year. I even found a very basic video created by seventh graders on internet safety using pictures from Flickr.com/creativecommons. I think I could easily become a flickr fanatic!

Definately Delicious

This may be my favorite thing yet. I can access my things anywhere. Amazing! No more trying to remember a site or find it again because our in-service is in a different place than my main computer.

Our school is expanding by leaps and bounds. Next year my department doubles in size. Social bookmarking is the perfect tool for communication between department members and within interdisciplinary teams. Just think, all sites for the team could be on one site so when kids are doing homework they only have to go one place for all their subjects. What a time saver! Our PLC's are departments, but our daily work is on interdisciplinary teams so I would see advantages of having both multi-subject grade level sites and subject specific multi grade level sites. I think the multi grade would be a great tool for curriculum articulation and also for differentiation since you would know what the grades above and below you are using. Just an idea. In a couple years, we will split to multiple buildings making it even more difficult to share information. I am also interested in the Diigo software so I could leave comments and sticky notes or highlight important passages.

One thing I haven't figured out, is it possible to have multiple delicious sites on the same email account? I would like one for colleagues, one for my family sites, and one that my students have access to for class? I just haven't figured out the easiest way to do this. Any ideas? Maybe I will try twitter later and see if I can find the answer.

If you don't have an account try these videos to help you set it up Using Delicious and Diigo.