Category Archives: Technology

Teaching Grammar, Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing, Technology, Web 2.0

Back to School Contest

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For the first time ever, I am having a contest. It is my hope to help one of the English teachers who reads this blog get a bit of a jump start on the school year.

What do you have to do? Share a lesson plan in the comments.

Rules:

  • Your lesson must be appropriate for grades 9-12 English or easily adaptable for that level.
  • Lesson ideas must be your own original ideas rather than ideas published elsewhere on the Web or in print UNLESS you have sufficiently remixed the idea so that is substantially different from the source material.
  • If you have a handout that’s important, you should upload it to an online filesharing host such as Slideshare, Drop.io, or Scribd, or you can upload it to your own website if you have one. You must share the link to the handout in your comment.
  • You can enter only once.
  • You must be willing to share your lesson with all my readers; therefore, access to any additional resources should not be password-protected and must be accessible at the time of judging.
  • The contest will run until August 10 midnight Eastern Daylight Time.
  • Lessons can be grammar, writing, or literature or combine all three. Lessons can incorporate technology. If Web 2.0 tools are needed, please link to them.
  • You must use a valid e-mail address when you post. It will not appear on this site.

Award:

I will select one winner from the entrants who will receive a flash drive with a ton of my personal handouts for the various English courses I teach including quizzes, assignment instructions, writing assignments, questions, and more. I will notify the winner via e-mail and update this post after the winner has been notified.

Your comment may go into moderation if it has several links or if you’ve not commented here before. Please be patient as I post it. Feel free to contact me with questions.

Good luck everyone!

“It’s a Major Award!” image credit: Cyndie@smilebig!

Blogging, Technology

I Have a Blog Problem

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I definitely have a problem. Do you know I have been telling myself for about a week now that I do not need to start a blog about apps and products for Apple’s Mac and iPhone? I mean, first of all, The Unofficial Apple Weblog and other sites do a much better, more thorough job than I would. Second, I already have several blogs, and I don’t update any of them with any regularity. And yet, I find that I do occasionally want to discuss some of the apps I’m using, even if they’re not education-related. To that end, I have decided that I will occasionally use this space to discuss education-related apps or products, but I will not, and I repeat will not respond to requests to review products unless I am interested. I have received quite a few requests from companies to review books or Web sites, and even been asked if I would link to products or allow advertising on this site. I want complete control over the content, and I want you to know that if I am discussing something here, it’s because I wanted to—because I either really liked it or because I didn’t—and not because I was paid to do so.

Because you perhaps are not as interested (if you’re reading this blog) in apps not related in some way to education, you understandably might not want to read posts about those apps. Therefore, I won’t subject you to them here. However, if you would like to read them, you might want to check out my book blog. I do allow myself to go off topic over there. In the sidebar to the right, you’ll see an RSS feed for that blog.

Issues, Technology, Web 2.0

Some Thoughts on Twitter

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I was cleaning house on Twitter today, and as I made some decisions, some thoughts occurred to me.

Reasons I might not follow back:

  • You follow so many people that you can’t possibly be keeping track of all your conversations unless all you do is read Twitter.
  • You don’t share valuable information or links.
  • You’re obviously scamming for followers and are hoping I automatically follow back, even if what you do and what I do are in completely different spheres.
  • Even if you’re not scamming for followers, you and I do completely different things—I primarily use Twitter to learn from colleagues and follow very few people who aren’t in education (most of those people are personal friends, some are celebrities).
  • You followed me at a really busy time for me, and I haven’t yet had a chance to check out what you have to say. Give me some time before you decide to unfollow me—unless, that is, you are following me only in the hope that I will follow you.
  • You have protected your updates, and I don’t know you, so I’m not sure whether or not your content will be valuable to me.
  • You’re a business, and I need to watch for a while to see if what you tweet is valuable to me.
  • I don’t recognize anyone in your replies or retweets, which tells me we’re not really tweeting in the same circles.

Reasons I might unfollow you:

  • You stop tweeting.
  • You tweet too often, especially about information I don’t find useful or valuable.
  • We never engage in conversation. I am not sure either of us is really listening to each other.
  • You are more often negative than positive. We all need to vent sometimes, but all the time is excessive for me.
  • You are rude or confrontational (not necessarily to me, either).

Reasons I might block you:

  • You’re on Twitter to advertise your webcam/dating/porn site.

Not good reasons to unfollow (in my opinion):

  • You don’t follow me back. If I find your content valuable, I follow you. Period. I’m not looking for a backscratch.
  • We sometimes disagree. If we always disagree, maybe, but some healthy difference is OK.
  • You don’t always reply to me or acknowledge retweets. I don’t always do either of those things.

Ergo, some reasons I might follow:

  • We have the same interests.
  • You provide valuable content.
  • You regularly converse with people I follow, so clearly we’re tweeting in the same circles.

I tend to give people a fair chance once I’ve followed them. I like to get to know who they are through their tweets. If I’m still not learning from you after a while, or if any of the other issues here apply, I might unfollow. Sometimes I think long and hard before I do it because a lot of people are sensitive about that kind of thing. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone’s feelings. On the other hand, my time is valuable, and I need a return on its investment. I tend to think people are generally too hung up on followers, and not just on Twitter, but everywhere you see social media. You need to engage in social media because of what you get out of it.

Professional Development, Technology

Professional Organizations for Instructional Technologists

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Early on, the IT blogosphere seemed to be populated with folks who were members of ISTE. When I started my ITMA program at VA Tech, I joined ISTE, but I didn’t join any of the other educational technology organizations. My last assignment for Instructional Media included some reading in our text about different organizations. Some of them seem appealing to me. I am curious about my readers’ experiences, however. Are any of you members of professional organizations for instructional technologists? Which ones? What do you like/not like about them? Which ones do you recommend?

Professional Development, Technology, Web 2.0

Hanging Out a Shingle

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Defender Approaching DefeatI have begun research into consulting, and I have decided to hang out my shingle as a consultant in integrating technology (especially Web 2.0 tools) into instruction and perhaps backwards design planning. I registered a domain for my Web site, which I began building using iWeb. I may play around with Dreamweaver or do some handcoding–not sure yet. At any rate, I wish this domain had been available when I purchased huffenglish.com, which I chose because the one I wanted was unavailable at the time. I will provide more details once I’ve done more research, planning, and development, but I am fairly excited about going in this direction, as some of my colleagues have been trying to convince me I should for some time. It was very helpful to pick Jim Burke and Angela Stockman‘s brains about getting started, and both were helpful (especially Angela, who hung out her shingle about a year ago and is doing very well).

I am certainly open to suggestions if there is something you have identified that you think I have done well and would be able to teach others to do.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Vicki & Chuck Rogers

Technology, Web 2.0

BookCast

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One of the features that I admired in Penny Kittle’s classroom as shown on the DVD accompanying Write Beside Them is a regular book talk in which Kittle shares good books with her class and has them write down titles that sound interesting in their writer’s notebooks.  I tried it out, and realized my students weren’t getting the point.

I understand I was a very weird kid, but I liked book recommendations from my teachers.  I got what we call in my family “a wild hair” [crazy idea] about getting ready for college by reading all the recommended books.  I craved book lists.  I wanted someone to tell me what to read so that I could be ready for college. I asked my eleventh grade teacher Mrs. Patsel for a reading list.  Now that I’ve been teaching about 11 years, I totally understand her reaction.  After she picked her jaw off the floor, she promised to bring me one the next day.  When I asked for the list, I was presented instead with a box of discarded books that used to be used in the school’s classrooms.  I didn’t know what to say.  I just wanted reading suggestions, but she gave me the actual books.  And you know, if a kid asked me for the same thing I asked Mrs. Patsel for, I’d probably do exactly what she did.

At any rate, my point, and I’m getting to it, is that I decided to create a podcast to share these books instead of using the class time.  I don’t know if it’s a good idea or bad idea, but my thinking was that if you decided it didn’t suck, maybe you might want to use in your classroom, so I decided to publish the first podcast here, too.  I will recommend that you subscribe to my podcast feed f you want the whole shebang I provide for my students, including links to Amazon so you can buy the books, links to information about the authors, and other interesting links, as well as a podcast transcript.  Through the feed, you can also subscribe via iTunes or another podcatcher.  I spent an hour or so trying to figure how to create a feed just for the podcasts.  I feel accomplished, but I am also nervous it wasn’t worthwhile.

Here’s my first ever podcast, warts and all:

Mrs. Huff’s BookCast: Episode 1

I probably won’t update this blog each time I post a podcast, so check out the feed if you decide you like it and might want to be notified when it’s updated.  If you want to download the podcast, try clicking through to the feed to make it easier.  I have downloading audio disabled here on this site.

Technology

My SMARTBoard is Currently Misused as a Glorifed Whiteboard

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*Sigh*

I just realized how much I don’t know about using my SMARTBoard.  I essentially use it as the title indicates — a glorified whiteboard.  Oh, it’s great.  I save notes.  I can use them to help students supplement their own notes or download notes if they’re absent.  But I’m certainly not using it to its capacity.  I have to admit the reason is that I don’t know how.

I downloaded a SMARTBoard lesson from the SMARTBoard Lessons Podcast, and it was amazing — I think I can even use it as is in one of my classes.  But I couldn’t have figured out how to create what Ben and Joan created.  I feel frustrated by my lack of knowledge, but I’m going to try to rectify it.  One thing I did was download the SMARTBoard notebook software on my Mac, so I can play with it at home.  I also searched for tutorials, but the ones I found were fairly basic — I already know how to save notes, change my handwriting into text, and pull pictures into the notebook using the gallery or copy/paste.  I had tried to use the recorder without much success in the past, but I found this video that explains the process really well:

Does anyone know of any other sources for SMARTBoard tutorials?  I am looking to learn how to use this tool to its fullest capacity.

Technology

Embedding YouTube Videos in PowerPoint Presentations

5 Comments

I learned something new today.  I found a really good YouTube video about the Bayeux Tapestry.

I was sharing some historical background on England from 1066-1485 with my students, and I wanted to show them the video, but I hadn’t thought about the possiblity of embedding it, so I wound up switching from PowerPoint to the video and back.  Not a huge hassle, but later on as I was reflecting over the lesson, I wondered if it might be possible to embed a video in PowerPoint, so I did a Google search and disovered this helpful video:

Even though I have Word 2007 on my computer at work, I was able to figure out how to embed the video following the instructions.  Here’s what’s different:

You must be connected to the Internet for this to work.

Here is the PowerPoint I created.  It is licensed under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike Creative Commons License.

The Middle Ages in England

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: tapestry bayeux)


I strongly recommend downloading this presentation because it probably won’t work for you on Slideshare, or at least all the features won’t work. I cannot get embedded videos to work on my Mac.  Does anyone know why or how to make them work?  It’s not a huge problem, as my work computer is the one I use for my SMART Board, but I am curious as to how it might be done. If you have any problems downloading it, please let me know, and I can work on it from my work computer tomorrow. Our dinosaur desktop here at home won’t allow me to open the PowerPoint without freezing, my husband’s Windows laptop doesn’t have PowerPoint, and my daughter’s already let me hog her computer enough.

Issues, Technology

The Value of Floundering Around

9 Comments

Searching the NetI have been plagued with a question over the last few days.  When students ask me questions about computers (mostly software, how-to type questions), I most often take the easy path and show or tell them.  But they don’t remember how to do it later.  So the question that’s been on my mind is how much should I let my students flounder around and try to figure things out?  I mean, that’s how I learned my way around a computer.  I poked and tried until I got it to do what I wanted to.  Sometimes it took hours.  But later on, I was able to do it on my own.  I value that learning in myself, but I don’t think I am fostering it in my students.  If they ask me answers to problems or issues that come up with their reading or writing, I don’t always show or tell.  Sometimes I throw the questions back or tell them to think through it a little harder.  So why don’t I do that with computers?  Should I do that with computers?

To that end, I began a new feature in my classroom blog called Tech Tips.  Each week, I will explain how to do something.  I have already subscribed all my students to the blog, so ostensibly, they should have access to the tips and can make of them what they will.  One of my frustrations as a teacher is how little my students appear to use the classroom blog.  I haven’t yet become so frustrated I felt I should just quit, but I have come close.  Which brings to mind another frustration I have.  Students are willing to learn how to use Facebook or IM, but it frustrates me that they won’t poke around my site and learn to use it as well as they do other tools.

I do think it’s valuable to flounder around and even fail for a while before you get it.  So how do I put that into practice without feeling like I’m being unhelpful?

Creative Commons License photo credit: macluke170

Technology, Web 2.0

Educational Podcasts

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What podcasts do you listen to?  Do you have any recommendations?  I currently listen to Grammar Girl’s podcast, but I’m looking to expand my horizons now that I finally have an iPod (which I know is not required to listen to podcasts, but does make it easier).  I am interested in recommendations on the following:

  • Technology in education
  • Writing instruction
  • Literature instruction

I am not really interested in politics, NCLB rants, policy, administration, and the like.  I want to know what I should be listening to that will help me learn more about English Education and integrating technology into my curriculum.