Themeefy - My First One

Themeefy is a new way to collect, curate and publish artifacts from the web to a personal theme magazine. You can use the resource tabs to search for items on your topic or include your own links. I made my example in less than three minutes. You have a sign up for a free account.

I could see this being used as an ePortfolio. Oh, if only my 4th graders had email accounts.

How would you use Themeefy?

New Year's Resolution Project for Your Class

Ally, aka as @FlyontheCWall, was on Twitter today asking for an idea of a great way to display her students' New Year's Resolutions.

I remember that I used to have my students write their resolutions on their silhouettes.

Here is how we did it. I would have the student sit on a stool with their shoulder touching the board. I would tape a piece of black construction paper to the board behind their shoulder. Then I would use my overhead projector to reflect their silhouette onto the piece of paper. I would quickly take a pencil and trace around the shadow they were casting unto the paper. Next, the student would carefully cut out his "head" and write his resolutions on it using white crayons or chalk.

Here is one I made using a silhouette clipart and the Paint program on my computer to give you a visual representation.

They look great on display on the windows, bulletin board, or lining your hallway.

Do you have a New Year's Resolution project you do with your students? Please share your ideas with a comment.

1/365Project

Alright I've decided on a theme for my #365Project. Now let's see if I can keep it updated properly. I will try to add a picture of one tweet from the day that helped me learn and connect with the members of my PLN. Sounds easy enough. We'll see what happens. You can follow my progress on my #365Project by visiting my Posterous site. 

Posted via email from Paula's posterous

#YouMatterDay

I enjoyed another lazy day of my Christmas holiday. Finished reading Mockingjay, the third book in the Hunger Games trilogy that I started reading on December 26, and watched the Saints earn a playoff berth by having a great game against the Panthers.

I cooked dinner, ate and then took a long early evening nap. Of course, when I woke up I picked up my computer to see what was happening of this first day of 2012 on Twitter. I read tweets that took me to several great blogposts, and I even left some comments.

A tweet from Joan Young led me to this post by Karen McMillan. After I read it, I tweeted #youmatter to various members of my PLN (personal learning network) and wished them a Happy #YouMatterDay.

Who matters in your life? Remember to tell them #youmatter and Happy #YouMatterDay to you.

My 2011 in Review

Can you believe another year is about to begin? I am finding out that the older I get, the faster the years seem to go. Maybe by writing this post I can see what seemed to zoom by me as I traveled through 2011.

January

Started the 30 Day Blogger Challenge hosted by Edublogs (unfortunately I didn't complete it), but I learned how to add pages to my blog.

I presented a session for the Greater New Orleans Teachers of Mathematics called Being Better at Math.

February

My Skype buddy, Jan Wells, and I presented for Classroom 2.0 Live. We took our presentation Seeds to Success with Skype and had a wonderful time interacting with the live audience during this session. You can access the archive of the session here.

March

I was invited by Jeanne McQueen to be a moderator of #4thchat. I was thrilled to join the team of Jeanne, Nancy Carroll, and Justin Stortz on March 21 and have had a wonderful year of being a moderator for this lively chat each week. Check out the archives and get more information here.

Celebrated my 6oth birthday.

April

I presented virtually by using the screensharing feature of Skype to educators attending InnovatED in Memphis, Tennessee.

May

I was invited to write a guest blog post for BrainPOP. Then I was invited to do a webinar for BrainPOP based on my post. The archived webinar can be accessed here.

I started the #JJAProject with some of my Twitter friends.

June

Thanks to Ken Shelton, I was hired to present to the Tech Coordinators for Region 8 in Monroe, Louisiana. You can read all about this event here.

Made plans to help Newbies at ISTE11 with my friend, Beth Still.

Arrived in Philadelphia in time to attend EduBloggerCon. I love this unconference and I even facilitated a session on blogging with elementary students. I was stunned when I realized my students' best commenter was sitting there in front of me. I had to stop and give JoAnn Jacobs a huge hug. My roommate and fellow JPPSS educator, Tinashe Blanchet, and I had some great late night chats.

During my ISTE days I presented on a panel with Beth Still, George Couros, Josh Allen, and Jason Schrage entitled Get Ready, Get Set, Get Organized. I was approached by some of the METC organizers and invited to present for them in February of 2012.

July

Jan, Len Horn, Kristen Robertson, and I did a two hour presentation called More Seeds to Success with Skype for teachers in South Africa attending the INTEL ICT in the Classroom 2011 Conference.

I was an organizer of EdCamp Louisiana which took place on the campus of UNO on Saturday, July 9. It was a great day and I was thrilled that Dr. John Hadley Strange and some of his students from the University of South Alabama attended.

I flew to San Diego that same evening to attend the Discovery Educator Network Summer Institute (DENSI). I couldn't believe that I was finally going to meet Jen Wagner, one of my first online mentors, face to face. She picked me up from the airport and got me to my dorm room that I shared with Jeannine Shields. It was a wonderful week of learning and bonding with other DEN members.

I was thrilled to present with William Chamberlain about the Power of the #comments4kids Hashtag for Reform Symposium 3. You can access the archive here.

August

Began the 2011-2012 school year by doing presentations for other teachers in my district at our inservice day. One of my presentations was called Using the 4C's in Math. I also presented to the 3-5 grade math teachers at my school on tools to help cover our GLEs (grade level expectations).

Began the year with an About Me lesson I shared with my PLN on Twitter.

I wrote about our great first week of school here.

September

My first attempt at flipping my classroom I shared here.

We celebrated Constitution Day with my friend, James Adams, being our guest speaker.

We connected and collaborated with my friend, David Craig's class. I wrote about it here.

October

I also got to connect with my friend, Joan Young, as we participated in our first Mystery Skype Call.

My students and I hosted a Blog Commenting Party for parents.

We celebrated anti-bullying month by having Joey King, the star of Ramona and Beezus, Skype into our classroom.

Returned to Monroe and did three presentations for LATM (Louisiana Association of Teachers of Mathematics). Shared the ride and a room with Tinashe again. We had a great time.

I was very surprised to find out my blog was mentioned on page four in Open Book: A K-12 Tech Playbook for Teachers by Dell.com/Connected Classroom. I wrote about it here.

November

I presented three session at LaCUE, which was held in New Orleans this year. One of my presenting nightmares came true when I lost Internet connection for the last hour of an hour and a half hands-on session. Everyone of the participants applauded how well I handled the situation.

Erica Shepherd, another fourth grade teacher in my district, and I co-presented from Paper Blogs to the World at LaCUE. Read about it on Erica's blog.

December

Jan Wells and I presented for the K12 Online Conference again this year. Our presentation, Playing with the 4C's in an Elementary Classroom can be viewed here.

Found out I'll be presenting on a panel again at ISTE12 in San Diego in June and will be spending a week in a fantastic house with some great members of my PLN. WooHoo and thank you, Beth.

I was nominated for the EduBlog Award as Best Individual Tweeter.

I graduated from Southeastern Louisiana University with a Master's in Educational Technology Leadership. Here is my portfolio of the courses I took.

Wow, what a great year! What were the highlights of your 2011?

Nominated for Best Individual Tweeter - 2011 Edublog Awards

How sweet it is! Thank you to Patti Grayson, who nominated me for the Edublog Awards of Best Individual Tweeter. I am humbled and honored to be included in this short list of 40+ tweeters. All I have to say is I'm in a win-win situation. If I don't win the category, and believe me, I truly believe there are more deserving people in the category, I still win because I get to reap all of the wonderful resources that these incredible tweeters share each day on Twitter.

If you are new to Twitter, blogging, or social media, the Edublog Award list is a great place to find wonderful blogs to read, innovative educators to follow on Twitter, great free web tools to use in your classroom, and more. If you have been doing this for a while, remember to share the links with your friends and PLN members. I just sent the link to the Best Administrator Blog nominations to my principal and assistant principal.

So head over to Edublog Awards 2011 home page and vote. Voting is open until 11:59 pm EST on Tuesday, December 13, 2011, and the winners will be announced on December 14.

Christmas Countdown Ribbon

I have done this craft activity with my students for years and just realized I have never blogged about it. Well, I'm fixing that today.

Each year at the end of November, I have my students bring in 24 Hershey's Kisses. They don't know ahead of time what we will be doing with the Kisses, so there is a lot of excitement in the air as they speculate about what project is looming in their future.

I supply the other materials needed for them to make a Christmas Countdown Ribbon.

Material Needed

1 piece of wired ribbon 30" long for each student

1 8" piece of small ribbon for each child (this is the hanger)

1 small bell for each student (purchased from Michael's)

24 Hershey's Kisses (or similar wrapped candy)

hot glue glues and glue sticks

1 cellophane gift bag for each student (purchased from Michael's)

card stock to print poem on

pinking shears (optional)

piece of poster board for each table

Step 1: Type up this poem in your favorite font using a word processing program. Click here for my Google doc version.

How many days till Christmas?

It's mighty hard to tell.

Take off a candy every night

When the Sandman casts his spell,

And Christmas Eve will be here

By the time you reach the bell.

Print it on the card stock and cut them apart with the pinking shears. (Using pinking shears is optional.)

Step 2: Review (or teach) hot glue gun safety.

Step 3: Plug in the glue guns.

Step 4: Explain how to lay the candies out on the ribbon. Space is needed at the top for the poem and at the bottom for the bell.

Step 5: Have one student demonstrate how to place everything on the ribbon.

Step 6: Put a piece of poster board on the tables being used before anyone starts gluing. This will protect the table tops from getting glue all over them.

Step 7: I set up 4 working stations. I have my four best listeners place everything on their ribbons and then start gluing everything in place as I closely monitor. They write their names on the back of the poem card which is glued to the top of their piece of ribbon. I glue on everyone's bell at the bottom of the ribbon because I find this difficult for my 4th graders to do without getting hot glue on their fingers. (Ouch!)

Step 8: I will glue the small piece of ribbon (used for hanging the Countdown Ribbon) on the back of the poem card. Again I find it easier for me to do this and I don't get kids with burned fingers. Use Plenty of glue to attach the ribbon hanger.

Step 9: Gently lift the ribbon off of the poster board. Yes, there will be some sticking. Just keep pulling and you will get the ribbon off the paper. If a candy pops off in this process, just glue it back on.

Step 10: Lay the ribbons somewhere safe to thoroughly dry.

Step 11: Now my four students become a monitor at each working station, as the rest of my students take their turn putting their countdown ribbon together. I continue with the rest of the class working on our regular lessons.

Step 12: Curl the countdown ribbon up carefully, place it in a cellophane gift bag, and send it home with the students on December 1.

We always make some extra ones for the office staff, lunchroom ladies, and custodial staff. Have fun with this craft and Happy Holidays.