What is Squidoo? Squidoo is a website where people can create their own “lenses.” A lens is your perspective or favorite resources on a topic. For example, I created a lens on Fractions. It includes websites that have clear explanations of fractions, fun math games and practice, educational YouTube videos and books for further individual study. Squidoo lenses have great potential for teachers to aggregate helpful resources for students on a particular topic. I hope that this article inspires you to create your own and become a lensmaster.
You can build a site for free with the easy to use module-based templates. My first lens on integers took me about 3 hours to build. When I created it, I used my del.icio.us account to organize the different sites that I was interested in including. When I posted a site to my del.icio.us account, I tagged it with the lens topic. I’ve continued to add to it over the months and it’s now an excellent resource for both students and teachers. I’m delighted that it was included in the March National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) News Bulletin in the “Web Bytes” section.
There are a variety of modules that you can add to build your lens, including text/write, link list, amazon.com, poll, make a list, YouTube, Google maps and iTunes. The lens can be made more interactive by adding polls. I added a poll to my Ecological Footprint Education site about the size of people’s ecological footprint.
Most of the modules can be made more interactive with the “Plexo” feature. Plexo is a tool that allows your readers to rank or add to the data in your site. For example, on my Vedic math site readers can give feedback on which resources they found most valuable. The feedback automatically rearranges the sites from most to least popular. I’ve just started playing with Plexo modules this week. It feels like a nice way to help your readers sort through data and become an active learner. Plexo is also helpful because people can add other valuable resources to your site.
As the creator of the site, you can moderate how much interactivity you want. You can allow comments or not. You can also require that additions to your site be approved before they are published. So there is an element of quality control. As with most sites that allow rating, people must have a Squidoo account.
So what would you like to share with your students? What topic would you like to be a lensmaster on?
Del.icio.us is a website that allows you to bookmark sites. It’s called a social bookmark because, unlike bookmarks you add on your computer, you can access them from any computer. You can use social bookmarks to research information, collaborate or share sites with friends and family. The bookmarks are by default public information; however, you can change the settings so that others have no or limited access to what you mark.
Why Use Del.icio.us
Research on the Internet using social bookmarks is easy.
Bookmarked sites are accessible from any computer.
You can tag your bookmarks and organize them. You can use multiple tags for the same site. For example, I tag my Educating Millennials in the Information Age lens with millennials, information_age and squidoo.
Great sites can be shared with students or colleagues because social bookmarks are public.
You can “bundle” tags. For example, in my del.icio.us account I have a bundle called InformationAge and within it I have several related tags including wiki, blogs, squidoo and millennials.
Other people can benefit from your research. Instead of searching through an ever growing number of websites and blogs, I can search within del.icio.us and find what other people find valuable. Hence saving myself time.
You can share sites with other people using various features and tools. Del.icio.us has an easy to follow help section that explains the tools, such as networks, and includes why they are helpful.
You can also keep bookmarks private. You can still access your bookmarks from any computer, but others can have no or limited access to bookmarks.
5 Things to Know Before Using Social Bookmarks
Before you start to post things to del.icio.us, there are several things I highly recommend:
#1: Decide how you intend to use del.icio.us.
Are you intending to use social bookmarks for research or collaboration? Do you intend to share this information with others or is this for your own use?
Deciding whether you intend to have your bookmarks serve as a reference for others or mainly for personal use will impact how you structure your bookmarks.
#2: Choose your tags before you get started.
Before getting started put some thought into key tags that you would use. For me, the main things I was researching were math resources for students, Vedic math, Information Age and teaching technology.
#3:Think about some umbrella concepts that help you “bundle” your tags.
My bundles are EducationalVision, Math, InformationAge and Family. The last category being sites that members of my family created.
#4:Be mindful of the user name you choose.
When you bookmark sites and they are public, you are creating an on-line profile. You are identifying yourself with the information you mark as a favorite. Be thoughtful about the on-line profile you are creating and that this information is public. Even if you choose to use a name different from your actual name, note that the web is an amazing place and that information gets linked and connected. So be thoughtful of what you want identified with your user name, even if it isn’t your actual name.
#5: Allow for Private Savings.
Go to the “Settings” button on the top right and change to allow for private bookmarking. This will put a “do not share” button option on your page when you go to save a site.
As most students and teachers know, school servers block YouTube. Don’t despair. There is a way to bring good educational videos from YouTube into your classroom. You can download a video at home, carry it on a flash drive (or store it on a virtual disk) and then bring it to school.
Anne Bubnic, CTAP Region IV County Specialist, shared this link on how to download YouTube videos. She recommends following the directions exactly. Be sure to use the Firefox browser. One of her colleagues tried it in Safari and couldn’t get it to work. You will also need to download the VLC application for it to work.
If you haven’t heard of Metacafe, you’ll want to read this post about an alternative to YouTube. One fabulous benefit of Metacafe is it isn’t blocked at school. You may want to check if the video you are interested in is uploaded there too.
If you haven’t heard about Metacafe, you’ll be happy to know that there is another company like YouTube on the web. There are a couple of noteworthy similarities and differences between the two companies:
Similarities
You can watch a variety of home, as well as professionally produced, videos.
You can upload videos.
You can rate other people’s videos, if you have an account.
Differences
Metacafe videos are moderated. They aren’t immediately available on the web. I’m not sure how much they screen, but they do have a comment that says, “Do not post p*rn*graphic, excessively violent, illegal, abusive or hateful videos.”
Metacafe allows you to submit your videos for a “Producer’s Award.” If your video meets the criteria and is rated at over 3.0, you can be eligible to be paid for your video. The rating system is an algorithm, which includes viewer rating, comments and some other factors. You can earn $5 for every 1000 views, but payment doesn’t start until your video has reached $100 or 20,000 views.
Metacafe isn’t blocked at my school! So I can use it on my class blog and in the computer lab to preteach and reteach. I’m going to upload all of my videos. (I use rebeccanewburn and newburn as tags on all of my videos so people can readily find them.) I’d be interested to hear if other people can access it from their schools.
Here is one of my videos that I’ve uploaded to Metacafe about Vedic Math, the ancient mental calculating system from India. Whether you are “a math person” or not, you’ll enjoy this one. Promise!
If you haven’t heard about The Secret, it’s a movie that will change your teaching and your life in profound and joyful ways!
The Secret is that our thoughts attract similar thoughts, which then become manifest on the physical plane. This is often referred to as the Law of Attraction. The movie includes interviews with people who have been using the power of positive thought to create their lives. People like Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, as well as quantum physicists, share their wonderful stories. Even Oprah is out promoting it. It’s a must see movie!
Think about all of the people, including perhaps you, who have said, “Teachers are underpaid” (which may be true in this moment), but are we creating more of that in the future? Another one that is commonly repeated is, “Teachers don’t get any respect.” I’d love to have a whole bunch of teachers around the world see this movie and start creating a different reality for our profession and our students on a mass scale. You can start by clicking on the link below and getting a copy at Amazon. Invite over some colleagues and watch it together. Support each other and share the secret.
I’ve been investigating strategies to improve the quality of the cooperative learning group interactions in my math classroom. I figure that if I really want students to support each other, I need to teach communication skills and clearly state my expectations of the group.
This week I decided to have the groups focus on engaging all students in the activity. Here is what I did:
Clearly Stated the Focus Before they started working in groups, I let the students know that I wanted all students to participate and contribute to the group discussion. I also mentioned that at the end of the period, they would have to give me evidence of what was said or done that supported this focus.
Brainstormed Ideas
Prior to starting the activity, we spent about a minute or two as a class coming up with ideas about how to engage group members. For example,
We haven’t heard from you, Michael. What do you think?
Micaela, can you tell us what you got?
Self-Assessment
After completing the task, each group had an assessment sheet that they filled in together. Lots of websites, such as YouTube and Squidoo, have viewers rate things on a 5 star system. I decided to use a similar model. I had a few questions on the 1/4 sheet of paper. They filled in the number of stars that best represented their group’s behavior for the day.
Getting started
Staying focused
Including everyone
Overall performance
They also had to provide evidence of how they got everyone engaged by writing things that were said or done.
Wrap Up
As a class, I had a few groups report out about how well they managed to include others and if they needed any support.
Overall, I heard a lot more people actively soliciting answers and input from group members. There is definitely more work that needs to be done though. I may adapt the survey, but I like the general idea and structure of the assessment. Each week I’d like to have a different focus for the groups until the students naturally integrate these ideas into their interactions.
YouTube is a free website with a tagline of “Broadcast Yourself.” It’s full of junk and gems and it has great potential to support learning.I unknowingly created my first YouTube videos a year ago when my dad gave me a digital camera. For my sister’s birthday, I made some how-to videos on “hooping”, a dance form using a hula hoop. She emailed me asking if it would be okay if she posted the videos to YouTube, and then added, “Well, let me know if it’s a problem because I’ve already posted them.” Jessie received so much positive feedback and requests for additional instructional videos that she created a how-to hoop dance YouTube group and a Squidoo Hooping lens featuring the videos. (You can click on the link to see my first dance video. If you are a PE teacher, you’ll want to check out my sister’s other lens on how-to-make a hoop. Even if you’re not a PE teacher, you may be inspired to learn hooping. It’s fun!)
All of the positive feedback from the dancing videos inspired me to make some math videos. I’ve received dozens of appreciative emails about the videos. Now I have two YouTube groups specifically for helping people to learn math. One group is a pre-algebra group and the other is about Vedic math, the ancient mental calculating system from India. I refer students to these video collections for pre-teaching and reteaching and often post clips to my math classes’ blog.
Warm-ups are great opportunities to have students reflect on what they have learned and what they have yet to master. It is also a time where they can set goals. Here are a couple of ideas on how to use warm-ups to help students reflect:
Summarizing
Sometimes the warm-up prompt I use asks students to summarize the main concepts from the previous day’s lesson.
Goal Setting
It’s easy to have students write a few sentences about an area that they need to work on. It could be an organizational, conceptual or interpersonal skill. If I have them set goals, I usually do this on Monday and then give a minute or two later in the week for them to reflect on how they are progressing.
Identifying Stengths and Areas of Growth During warm-ups, students can also write about what they understand from the current topic and what parts they feel need additional support, such as reteaching.
When I was a kid, I loved the music of Tom Lehrer. His songs were brilliant satire that had me rolling on the floor in fits of giggles. One of my favorites was the song about the periodic table. Perhaps this song planted the seed of inspiration to major in chemistry.
Mike Stanfill of PrivateHand.com has created The Elements Flash Animation video that I’m sure you’ll love. He also has some other videos including “Dr. Art Does Science.” It may be worth checking out.
