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.

My First Popplet

I finally tried out Popplet after watching this video from HP Teacher Experience. Here is my first creation. Zoom in and scroll around. If you create a free account you too can start making Popplets.

If you have an account and are logged in, you can click on the blue gear at the top and scroll down to view, and then over to presentation mode and click it it. A pop-up appears in the lower left. Click on the blue Present arrow and then use the left and right arrows on your computer to go through my Popplet presentation.

I Feel Special

I received an email from my friend, Joan Young, informing me that my blog was mentioned in a publication. I opened the PDF entitled Open Book A K-12 Tech Playbook for Teachers by Dell.com/Connected Classroom. It is a 12 page booklet explaining social media and tech resources to teachers. There on page four is a box titled Hot Blogs for Teachers and a list of 11 blogs to check out - and mine is one of them. I was blown away by that mention. My blog is included along with the likes of Steven Anderson, Tim Childers, Chad Lehman, and Richard Byrne, who are all good friends of mine.

I don't know who authored this publication, but I would like to thank them and Dell.com for mentioning my blog. I feel very special. Thanks Joan for letting me know about this.

Primary and Secondary Sources Using 9/11 Resources

My students are learning about primary and secondary sources in social studies class. As a nation we are also approaching the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. When I found this YouTube video that is explaining primary and secondary sources by using speeches, pictures, artifacts, books etc. about 9/11, I thought it would be a perfect way to cover the two things. Unfortunately we can't watch YouTube videos at school, so I am requiring my students to watch this at home with their parents. I am putting the video in our Edmodo group. I wonder how many will watch it? I wonder how many will watch it with their parents? Well, I am asking them to respond to the video by posting a comment on Edmodo.

My Twitter Timeline Inographic

I visited Paige Graiser's twitter stream after Nancy Blair tweeted that Paige was in New Orleans teaching teachers about Twitter. I found Paige's blog and was intrigued by this post. When I visited the site that creates the infographic and entered my Twitter handle here is what is created

Built by Cartridge Save, providers of Epson Stylus Photo ink