Good Morning!

I didn't find anything on the blogs that I frequent that interested me from the past week or so but I did find a post from this time last year on Lisa Nielsen's blog, titled "Not Letting Teachers "Friend" & "Follow" Kids Online? Think Twice!" http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.co.il/2012/04/not-letting-teachers-friend-follow-kids.html and felt I must comment.

Lisa bascially tells the reader how policies preventing teachers from friending and following current students are wrong for a number of reasons.

• She claims that in the same way that potential employees are checked out via Facebook, students need to be prepared for this experience and teachers friending them "helps youngsters keep their behavior in check."
• Furthermore, Lisa claims that teachers interacting with students on social media encourages them to learn how to use it constructively.
• She thinks that the policy of forbidding teachers to interact online with students is not ok- why, she asks, are they qualified to work with the students face-to-face for hours on end but not interact with them online?
• Another argument is that there are cases of teachers behaving inappropriately in "real life" which, Lisa claims, is far more traumatic than inappropraite online interaction.

I disagrred pretty much with her whole stance- I think there do have to be clear boundaries between teachers and students- if teachers want to "friend" past students then fine but friending current students is, in my eyes, inappropriate. As far as her arguments concerning vetting the students- those students have parents- I am not their parent and I do not need to vet their behavior outside of the school grounds. Parents are the primary educators in a child's life and they need to take responsibility for their children offline and online. Additionally, I think that online interactions can be far mroe dangerous than "real life" ones ...I could go on but am short for time. This article just annoyed me and I just wanted to say that we , as teachers, can try and educate the students about safe internet use, etc but, at the end of the day, parents need to step up and take responsibility for ther children...

Happy Friday Afternoon to you and brownie points to me for posting earlier than late Saturday night :)

I would like to comment on a post on Steve Wheeler's website "Learning with 'e's" from April 9th http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.il/2013/04/the-future-of-reading.html about the future of reading. Wheeler speaks about the beginning of projects whereby people can loan books digitally in England. The English are checking out such projects in smaller pilot schemes at the moment to see if such a project would be worthwhile. Mark Taylor, the head of The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professions" believes that such projects may result in a revolution in the reading behavior of the general public as they will have access to materials that they did not have access to previously.

I'm not sure how I feel about this post. On a personal level I grew up in a family without a television (until I left the house at eighteen when my parents invested in one- was I their source of entertainment beforehand and my leaving the house left an abyss that could not be filled? perhaps ;) and we would make weekly trips to the local library, with each member of the family taking out ten books a week. Yes, really. We would shlep home over seventy books a week and sometimes more depending on how many kids were at home that year. But we were, even back then, quite an anomaly. I believe that nowadays this would be considered even stranger behavior when attention spans are shorter, entertainment is more instant and less and less children are being brought up with the library as a part of their culture.

I do think that their are immeasurable advantages to growing up reading books- I know that my ability to skim material quickly was definitely influenced by my reading large amounts, my vocabulary (before I moved to Israel and found myself for quite a time with weak Hebrew and equally weak English ;) definitely grew on account of the huge amounts of reading I would do, etc, etc. On a separate note, as a bilingual I also believe that children and teenagers learning a second language should be encouraged to read as much as possible in their second language as I see for myself the advantages of such behaviors.

 I simply think that such projects as the ones mentioned in the post are not really addressing the root of the problem ( I feel like my social worker hat pops up every time I say that phrase). I am not persuaded that making books available for Kindle-owners is the answer to increasing reading tendencies in the general population. I don't see many teenagers with Kindles- I see far more older people using them. I think there have to be other attempts at encouraging the younger generation- be they monolingual or bilingual- to read. Any suggestions?

Shavua Tov. Gosh this is a familiar situation- late Motzash, getting up in a few hours and cramming h/w that i coulda/shoulda/woulda done days ago...

Well the topic for the week is using technology creatively in order to create listening/speaking exercises. Seeing as the blogs that I follow have not been updated since I visited a few days ago I'm going to blab about the tools we have been happily exposed to this week. whoop.

I just want to put it out there that the lady who pronounced the Letter Sounds in the tab "listening to sounds" made me cringe and i had to turn it off after hearing "A". thank-you for letting me get that off my chest.

i think the TTS software- sounds like a fantastic idea for all students and especially those with learning difficulties who do better hearing instructions/materials/etc.

oh and i came across www.voki.com and although it seemed familiar and therefore made me worry that perhaps we learnt about it last week and i already forgot in which case i'm making a fool of myself ;), i found it to be quite an entertaining option for use in the efl classroom. unfortunately past 9pm my creative juices run dry so i couldn't think of some fantabulous use for this tool but a quick search came up with some options such as using it for creating stories or even for creating online characters for pupils...me thinks this has lots of potential.

well then i'm signing off for now- have a good one folks

Hello world.

It's Thursday afternoon and after some incredible procrastination it's time for me to post week four...i know, be quiet we're already in week six. oh, before i forget PLEASE someone tell me how to stop me receiving every single dastardly post posted on the class forum to my email  inbox- it makes me nervous, plays on the Jewish guilt that I'm so behind and makes me excited that I have many friends emailing me only to discover that i have hard-working classmates who keep on target much better than i do....whoever tells me how will be my best friend.ever. thanking you in advance.

On March 25th the author of Blogging About the Web 2.0 Connected Classroom wrote about the Classroom Champions initiative in the US and Canada. The project entails connecting school classrooms with top performing athletes and the pupils and they interact via blogs and live chats several times a month. The overall goal is to inspire and motivate the pupils and allow the athletes to make a real difference in average children's lives in America by sharing with them their personal journey, their hard work and working together with the teacher to work on stuff like letter writing, reading, geography, math, technology, goal setting and leadership. This project appealed to my social-worker side which got very excited by the idea that athletes- the kind of role models that so many kids look up to and idolize- can play active roles in the kids lives and actively give back to the community. This project, in my opinion, is a fantastic, positive way to use technology in the classroom as a way to break down barriers, use real-life role models to help push the class forward and inspire the pupils to dream big. Just fab. Although this is an American project there is no reason why such projects can't be incorporated here too- if I was a bit more in-the-know regarding popular culture I could give examples but you get the gist- big names give back, inspire the younger generation and motivate them to reach for the heavens....ok ok I'm coming back down to earth now....oh and here's the link http://blog.web20classroom.org/2013/03/why-everyone-needs-champion.html#disqus_thread

"Learning with 'e's" had a post from March 28th entitled "Technology won't replace teachers, but..." I'll be honest with you- I liked this post because I found the lead-in spot on- "Technology won't replace teachers, but teachers who use technology will probably replace those who don't" and because the author spoke about lecturing in Manchester, my birth town. Yes I have a fantastic talent of focusing on the absolutely irrelevant information in any given situation. Well seriously I think the post could have ended after the lead-in quote- it's quite clear that this statement is both true and powerful and any serious educator needs to get using technology creatively because as the writer put it at the end, "If you were a headteacher interviewing new teachers and there were two candidates of equal standing but one was digitally literate and the other was not...who would you appoint?" 'nuff said. http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.il/2013/03/technology-wont-replace-teachers-but.html


Lisa Nielsen at http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.co.il/2013/04/flashmobs-social-media-unite-to.html#more shared a great little piece about a school that choreographed a flashmob in a
Brooklyn, New York that started off with the parents and staff surprising their kids in the morning as they lined up for class with a flashmob and ended as one huge dance party for the staff members, parents and kids. This appealed to me because I love ridiculous randomness that makes people feel good and would love to be part of a flashmob myself...oh and of course the "social media fest" that followed the flashmob is the technological side of things that interested me- no, that's a lie- I just liked the flashmob thing to be honest :)

Well, be good and I might even be back soon with Week 5 ;)