Troy Hicks

I just finished reading Troy Hick's book entitled, The Digital Writing Workshop.  I found it very helpful when learning about how to use digital writing in the classroom.  What I really loved about this book was that he used the writing workshop concept that gurus like Lucy Calkins, and Donald Graves to name a few, have long been talking about, and weaves the digital concept into it.  Below is a link to a video where Hicks explains his thinking about these two concepts.
http://youtu.be/Y20ACwt4eck

I thought this was great advice from Stephen King about writing! ;)

http://youtu.be/hqp7A0B7abc

I found this blog on a classmate's blog and thought it was great! A lot of interesting and helpful ideas!

http://lifein4b.blogspot.com/p/thoughtful-logs.html

Laura Ingalls Wilder and the stories that she has written about her life have always been favorites of mine.  I was in third grade the first time that I heard one of her books read aloud to me. From that day on I was hooked!  I have read and reread all of her books many times over the years and continue to share her work with my own students.  I hope that you find this blog interesting and maybe decide to read and pass her books on to a child in order to insure her books and story live on.

http://lauralittlehouseontheprairie.blogspot.com/

Thought this was interesting.  Since I am now teaching 4th grade, I have been looking to learn interesting tidbits about Maine.

http://acadiamemorials.blogspot.com/

Oh so this is what a wiki is!!

This is a great site that has information about the Common Core Standards, Digital Literacies, and Podcasts among other digital tools!

http://bloggingonthebay.edublogs.org-/category/podcast2/

More from Aimee!

Here is another great blog from Aimee Buckner!

http://thereadingzone.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/new-from-aimee-buckner/

A Couple of My Favorite Aimee Buckner Books!

I was lucky enough this past year to go to the University of Maine at Orono to hear Aimee Buckner speak.  She is an amazing teacher of writing and reading.  I have two of her books, Notebook Know-How:  Strategies for the Writer's Notebook and Notebook Connections:  Strategies for the Reader's Notebook that I use all of the time in my Multiage classroom.  Her ideas are very useful and her thoughts very helpful.  Below is the link to her blog.  I hope you find some good ideas there!

http://thereadingzone.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/new-from-aimee-buckner/

Photo-Essay Documentary

I thought this was a very interesting project!  While it was done in 2009, I still had fun navigating the site!  I found this blog because of a book that I am reading:  The Digital Writing Workshop.  Students from the East Oakland area took a look at the San Francisco Bay Area  and put together this photo-essay.  Hope you enjoy!

whysupoakland.blogspot.com/

Feeling Better!

I am finally beginning to feel better about my online experience.  I must admit I was severely overwhelmed at first.  I had no idea how to create a blog, and now I not only have created one but am beginning to figure out how it all works.  Once I had accomplished that, I then had to figure out how to find other blogs.  This again threw me for a loop!  I had no idea where to even begin to look for blogs.  And once I found them I realized that blogs don't actually look like I thought they would so I actually had found them right of quick just didn't realize that I had.

I must admit, my husband has listened to my grumbling for about two weeks as I fumbled my way around.  However I am glad to have fumbled because I have learned a lot.  Hopefully I can keep fumbling in the right direction and continue to be successful in my endeavor to master the online world!

This blog is one that the students in our district use.  One of the clubs that they can participate in called Culture Club.  Culture Club is a club that explores different cultures around the world.  Last year the kids at my school studied Africa and we were able to have a student who had gone to school in Africa come in and show us some of the cultural things that she learned about while she lived there!

http://vrscultureclub.blogspot.com/

Random Acts of Kindess

http://www.366randomacts.org/2012_01_01_archive.html


This is a really nice site to visit.  I was really inspired by this whole concept!

And Yet Another Mystery Solved!!

I had no idea how to search for a blog.  Therefore I did a search and came up with the following clip.

One Mystery Solved!

This is my first attempt at using the digital environment.  I look forward to learning and exploring various online tools.  As I read through our course syllabus my first thought was..."What have I gotten myself into!"  Reading about blogging, hypertext, and RSS I felt totally out of my element.  However I felt this video explained one mystery to me.  Hope it helps some of you as well!!

Video: RSS in Plain English »

http://commoncraft.com A short explanation of RSS and how it helps you save time reading the web. This video comes in an unbranded "presentation quality" ver...