This blog moved again to http://edwigesimon.com/
Sorry for the inconvenience, I am not planning on moving anywhere else anytime soon. 

I just moved!

This blog just moved to http://edwigesimon.wordpress.com/

Alphabetical order

I know I haven't posted in ages but it's about to change after Monday, April 9th! I am defending my dissertation that day and if it all goes well, I will be finished with my PhD and with schoolwork altogether!!
In the meantime, I came across this really useful software that puts list in alphabetical order for you:
http://alphabetizer.flap.tv/index.php

It's really practical...
E.
 

To do lists...

I don't know about you but I am a to-do list geek. Today, I created an account with Smartsheet and I like a lot. I made myself a to-do list with deadlines for my dissertation and I shared it with my advisor. It made me realize that this could be an excellent tool for group project management. The students can generate the list of things to research, write and submit (another good ways to develop good organizing skills), or the teachers can create the list with deadlines and monitor the students progress...For each list items, you can have a discussion or attach a document. Finally, you have the option of publishing the list online if you want to make it public...

Check it out, it's very easy to use and free:
https://www.smartsheet.com/b/home

Edwige.

Create a Teaching Portfolio with Wordpress

Whether you're looking for a teaching job or not, having a teaching portfolio is becoming a must-have these days.

Your teaching portfolio is your digital business card, for schools, parents, students and colleagues. I'm sure it's on your list of things to do or rather on your list of things you never get to!

What does it look like?

Here are a couple examples:

A Chinese Teacher: 
http://shellyfangliang.wordpress.com/

A Spanish Teacher:
http://maggiemccullar.wordpress.com/


What should go in your portfolio? 

• A short bio with picture (visitors will remember you better)
• A short resume (with link to a full version)
• A teaching philosophy (one page, unique to you!)
• A couple of presented lessons (*not* the whole lesson, but an annotated summary)
• A technology-based lesson (*not* the whole lesson, but an annotated summary)
• A couple of students projects (showcase)
• Samples comments form your students evaluation (not a 25 page pdf)
• Optional: an extra curricular page (as long as it is related to your professional activity!)
• Optional: a clip of you teaching (only if it's a very good one, 4 minutes is enough)
  

Top 5 mistakes:

• Trying to fit in everything you do in your classes: choose the best, forget the rest.
• Including full lesson plans: choose your best lesson plan, create an outline of what it includes and offer annotations of why you made these decisions (learning objectives, assessment plan, etc) 
• Including irrelevant information. Your portfolio should offer a coherent picture of your professional identity. Leave out anything that is not related to your teaching: Your rock climbing abilities are only relevant if they are connected to your classroom activities as a geology teacher.
• Having to much text: videos, pictures and small amounts of text typed in a legible font.
• Poor organization/design: label your tabs clearly (choose Teaching over Instruction); choose pleasant and soft colors; choose a font that is easy to read; design clear section, use white space to separate various elements on the page. 

WordPress:

I  recommend Wordpress over Blogger because I think their templates look more professional. Get started today!! Here is the handout.


Thank you for reading!

How to teach children to search the web ?

There is no doubt that children need to learn to search the web safely and effectively. Since Wikipedia has become their primary source of information, more than ever, they need to learn how to locate and more importantly how to evaluate the information they find online.



There are many kidsafe search engines:

http://www.kidrex.org/ (Google powered)
http://quinturakids.com/ (this one is very visual)
http://www.askkids.com/ (kid version of ask.com)
http://www.squirrelnet.com/ (Google safe search)

Ultimately though, children move on to unfiltered search engines and need to be taught how to handle them safely and wisely.

The way we handle this too often is to simply block school access to websites such as Facebook, youtube, wikispaces But burying our heads in the sand does not make the problem go away. As a matter of fact, it might even make it worse.

Many children can access these sites from their cell phones or at home anyway and besides, blocking these sites puts kids who don’t have a computer at home at serious disadvantage: school is the only place they can learn valuable web skills, including learning the ropes of personal literacy (how to present yourself online) and creating a social network for themselves.
According to Pegrum (2011), social networks have become our primary source of information. Preventing kids from developing these networks is like putting them on the bench and isn’t fair.

Of course, there is the issue of training. Teachers and school librarians who entered the teaching profession 10 years ago are in for a loop. Technology is turning the world we know on its head and they are expected to adjust without often enough being given proper training.

In addition to being safe, kids need to learn that the web is an unfiltered source of information. Anybody can publish anything at anytime. Check out these spoof sites:
http://www.dhmo.org/ or http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/.

While these sites are good examples of the unreliable nature of the web, they try a little too hard to trick users. False or erroneous information is often meshed with otherwise accurate information. In teaching the kids to use the web, no matter what the purpose, we need to teach them how to sort the right from the wrong. As Pegrum wrote recently: “There is little doubt that “triangulation” is the future of information seeking” (Digital Education Pegrum, 2010, p16)

So whose job is it to teach children how to use the web? Teachers? Librarians? Parents?

I will go with Levinston’s suggestion: it should be a partnership between schools, children and their parents (From Fear to Facebook). Since there are no rules, we need to make our own.

Sources:
Digital Education  Pegrum: Social Media and Digital Literacies
Levinston: From Fear to Facebook

Date generator for your syllabus

Yesterday, as I was preparing a syllabus for a course I am teaching this summer, I thought that by now, there ought to be a tool out there that would generate a list of dates for each Monday, Wednesday and Friday between June 27th and August 5th....and there is. It's call Random:
http://www.random.org/calendar-dates/

It is very easy to use.

1) First how many meetings do you have (even if you don't know, over estimate a little and you can manually remove dates from your list)?





2) When does the course start and end?




3) What days of the week does the course meet?




4) What format would you like for your dates?






5) Click Get Dates and soon enough, you will have your list created for you....with no mistakes!!!

Note: the advanced feature will generate the dates in an html page....