Shop In Person or Online. Online orders will be shipped to BWA and delivered to students by Ms. Rogan. Down the book Fair app to see Book trailers and more. 

I had study hall students play with befunky.com today. I let them download the app to their phones and they loved it, just had to remind them that I couldn't keep looking at their images while I was across the room teaching science classes :)

 

 

 

Slowly getting through the Photo tools, because I LOVE working with my own photos and I love showing students new tools and showing them ways to incorporate them into their work. I am Very visual and try to make all my lessons very visual. so this topic may take me a while!

We do lots with photos in our library, everything from using photos for creative writing to VoiceThreads.

Recently we updated our book spine poems website so check out the photos of our new poems. The kids enjoy it, especially trying to revise and improve their poems, but I for one do not enjoy reshelving all the books that are left out when the bell rings and they fly out the door! Our Book Spine Poems

My own love of photos and photoediting is demonstrated in my FLICKR photostream

Created with flickr slideshow.

Duffy Book Grant

Duffy Book Grant

We were very Lucky to receive the Duffy Book Grant this year. Our Principal Mr. Bailey and Duffy Grant Coordinator Mrs. Linda Miller arranged for us to receive free books to give to the BMS students. Free books to Keep! Your ELA teachers will be distributing the books throughout the year. Thanks You to all sponsors. List Below. Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes, Broadway Middle School-matching funds, AT&T, BDP international, Five Star Bank, Simmons Rockwell, KOST, Welliver Construction, Gerould's, Chemung Spring Water, Parker Landscaping, Cavaco, Horseheads RT and Fab., Jim's Gym, DeFilippo Law Firm, The Coseo Agency, Marino Sign and Awning, Service Machine and Tool, Inc, Cappy's, Drake Heating and Plumbing, Twin Tier Land Surveying Micknich electric, Allstate Arnot Mall, Wilkins, Ameriprise, WJ Farmer Insurance, M-Brace herapeutic Maggage, PiPer. Thank you all so much!

Thing 3                                                                                                                     Fun with Photos

One of my favorites from this year.
We enclosed this photo in Thank You cards
to local companies
who donated new books.

I often display photos of Library/School activities on our library website. After the students edit our photos with sites like www.befunky.com (one of our favorites!), we generally put them in a slideshow or movie using sites like www.animoto,com and www.onetruemedia.com.  Both sites allow you to embed rather than link to the video and students love looking at photos with music.  

My hope is that when they are done with the photos they will use other resources on the library page. Changing the photos often ensures they check by often.

I provide an extensive list of copyright friendly image sources to BMS Students and Staff here.



Social Networking and Personal Learning Communities:



unpacking a shipment of new books

Whoa,  the last two weeks flew by! Trying to finish book orders, teach classes, and complete a grant so I just completed reading all of the "Thing 2" links.Lots of Great information!

The usual way I let students interact is via my website or wiki. For example, Voicethreads with 6th graders and Six Word Memoirs. I also do online quizzes and polls to get their feedback. They love writing for others and tend to revise over and over when they know others will see it.

 I really want to do an online reading group for students. The links you provided have given me many ideas.  

Facebook and Twitter are prohibited in our district, so I do not use those with students, but I do use Twitter all the time for PLC. Over the last 5 years I have found many wonderful resources suggested by educators on Twitter.

 I loved the hashtag info presented on the "Thing 2" page of the Cool Tools workshop and used it to find many other great people to follow on Twitter.   

Unfortunately when I think of Students using Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; I think of tears, arguing and fighting. So many of our students are being incredibly mean to each other. I have had a ton of parent calls asking how to address that, so I have preprinted sheets that I send home telling parents how to block people on various social networking sites.

BLOGGING

I am looking forward to this online experience because I love to use technology with my students. I am curious to see if the Common Core modules will prevent us from doing many of our favorite literacy/technology projects. The scripted nature of the middle school modules leave little time for them.

I was glad to find the information on KIDBLOG. It was suggested to me by a friend and I am interested, but needed more info before I jumped in with an entire 7th grade team. 

 I would love for my students to blog about what they are reading and to post their writing assignments.

I currently link a Reading blog to my library website, but I am looking forward to new ideas for using blogs.