Using Student Doodles

Google Doodle from 3/31/11

Seeing Google's Doodle for today jogged my memory of an idea I had while brainstorming with a teacher a while back for new and creative ideas for book projects. With all of the creative ways graphic designers and artists have dressed up the Google logo over the years, why couldn't students do the same thing with a book title? Have the students start with the title of the book on the paper and use the letters to draw something to represent the book. This image could represent the main characters, the conflict, an important scene, the setting, a theme -- the ideas are endless. As part of the assignment, the students would present their "Book Doodle" to the class and explain why they chose what they did.

If you want to see some examples or show your students examples of Google's various Doodles over the years, Google has them all collected here.

This could easily be adapted for almost any subject. Instead of a book title, one could replace it with a concept, a vocabulary word, a country, a person's name, or an event. If the assignment was for a country, the letters of the country's name could be transformed to represent the main religion, the top industry, the government, the flag, and other facts for that country. For a concept, the students could transform the words "life cycle" into a doodle to show the teacher that they understood the concept. I'm sure you could think of some fabulous ways to adapt this to use with your students.

Diigo for Educators

Over the years, as the Internet expanded, I became a champion bookmarker. If I found a site that I thought had good information or that I just wanted to explore more later, I'd bookmark it. After a while, I learned how to export my bookmarks and import so I could share between home and school. When I learned about online bookmarking sites, I was thrilled. I'd only had to save it once and I can access my bookmarks no matter what computer I'm using.  I used Delicious until I learned a few months back that it was no longer going to be updated by Yahoo. I began searching for a replacement and what I discovered was actually so much better -- Diigo!

I use Diigo for more than just online bookmarking. I love being able to highlight information or add a sticky note on sites that I bookmark. When I go back to the site, I can see why I saved it. I'm slowly adding friends that share the same interests as me and joining educator groups through Diigo and I have access to the bookmarks they share.


Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! from diigobuzz on Vimeo.

I would strongly recommend that you sign up for one of Diigo's educator accounts, where you will have access to some premium features for free and the Teacher Console. One feature that I haven't used yet, but hope to use soon, is the student accounts. Under your account, you can create a class and add your students where they can use and share info as a class. Diigo has limited access to the student accounts so they aren't out there in the wild. For more information about Diigo Educator accounts go here.

Web 2.0 for Teachers

Does the term Web 2.0 have you scratching your head? Still pondering a Personal Learning Network (PLN)? Watch this Prezi to get answers about both.

(Isn't Prezi a fun, updated way to do presentations?)

Web 2.0 for Teachers on Prezi

Thanks to Paul Hill for his excellent Prezi and to Steven W. Anderson for bringing it to my attention.

More on Twitter for Teachers

Wesley Fryer on Flickr

After posting yesterday about using Twitter as an educator, I found Joe Bower's post on this topic -- Twitter for Teachers. If you were strongly considering using Twitter but needed just a tiny bit of encouragement to try it, listening to these two guys share how they use Twitter is all you'll need to take that final step.

Using Twitter for Professional Development

twitter.com

When I first signed up for Twitter, I started off following some authors I read and some of the companies I patronized for materials in the library. After a while, I thought ... is this it? Basically, I was reading promotion for this or promotion for that. This wasn't going to be useful for me. You see, I had it in my head that I could use Twitter to promote items and events related to the AMS library. But, I sure didn't know how to start doing this.

One day I just happened across the #edchat hashtag (a hashtag is like a label, tag or keyword) on Twitter, and my eyes were instantly opened. I'd discovered hundreds of educators discussing what's relevant in today's classroom, how to use technology with your students, a way to ask questions or just get feedback on ideas. It's today's professional development for educators. You don't have to travel to a workshop, sit for six hours, and leave lesson plans for a sub. You can join this professional development at your convenience. I love that I can sit down for five minutes to read posts from some of those I follow or read a few posts that contain some of my favorite hashtags.

My suggestion for those that want to try out Twitter is to start out slow. Just follow a few people. Once you find a person whose posts you find useful, look at who he follows. Read their bios and you will probably find a few more to follow. Before long, you will have developed a network of educators whom you can use as part of your Personal Learning Network, or PLN. Oh, and if you start following someone and find that his posts don't add to your experience, there's nothing wrong with unfollowing. 

I hope those that are curious will try out Twitter expressly for the purpose of creating their own PLN. I've found that it has energized me and allowed my passion for teaching kids to bloom again. Well worth the time and effort I've put into it.

Click here to read this excellent post for spelling out the step-by-step process when starting out on Twitter.