Smith,+Robert+Q

__ Cool Tools Review __ Rob Smith **Cool Tools Session One:** As we moved around the building, we saw a few neat things to bring back to our staff. Time however, was very short. A few of the first sessions were just too fast for me to comprehend, but I was very impressed with Creatively Synthesize, Evaluate, Publish & Share run by Laura Fogle. Her approach placing different tools head to head was captivating. From her session, my partner and I took ToonDoo and then used it for our design studio.

-Lesson: ToonDoo will work well in social studies or language arts type classroom. I envision using this Web Tool to allow students to create their own political cartoons with a thematic unit evolving the language arts teacher. The language arts teacher will teach on literary devices such as symbolism, irony, sarcasm, etc. The social studies teacher will provide examples of previous historically significant cartoons, depending on the grade level or focus of the class, the material will vary. ToonDoo is rather friendly web based program, because of this it helps keep a minimal amount of class instruction directed at its operation. Students can decide to create a cartoon from a recent topic or a historical one, again depending on the lesson. Students also have the choice of making it a strip or a small as a single block. The presentation aspect of this project will be both teacher and student evaluated. Each student will be able to embed ToonDoo into Edmodo. Here students can do a virtual gallery walk, then take a poll on their favorite one. Teachers can grade individually based on a rubric, or just an overall grade based on his or her evaluation of comprehension.


 * Cool Tools Session Two** (Tuesday): What a waste of time. I will be blunt; I took nothing away from Mark Otters, Global Connections. He showed us works-in-progress webpage’s with very little for me to take back to my students or staff. He did show us the Kiva website, and gave some ideas on how to integrate it into a lesson, but it was a far fetch. It was also nothing new, as most educators already know of this site and its purpose. He also showed the CIA Factbook web resource, but again this is old news to Social Studies teachers. I do apologize, but I have no framework for a lesson here.


 * Cool Tools Social Studies Wednesday:** What a gem this session was. John Lee presented innovative ideas to social studies teachers. First, he showed us how to use a variety of tools to depict and decode primary historical documents. Then he challenged us to change our way of thinking with Wikipedia and allowed us to edit one using the primary document as the feature. Here, he had us hooked. Teachers were diving into their content, using search engines to find background information, and writing a brief synopsis on the material and then publishing it. So much of the info we were learning was new to us, that we all wanted to share. We also analyzed mood and tone of the document, this brought in the reading-for-content focus very well. Mr. Lee then switched focus to another tool to help us in the classroom, Gapminder. This was a visual tool that uses different types of statistical data, anaylyzes it, and then charts and graphs the information. From here the data can span time, allowing for animation of data change. John then took us, very quickly due to time, to a just launched, interactive online timeline. So cool.

- Lesson: From this session, I liked GapMinder as something to take directly back to my colleagues and my classroom. This will work very well using the math teacher to help teach charts and graphs beforehand. This tool works well with looking at global trends and their shift over time. Therefore, this tool will work better as a wrap-up and discuss. For example, the chart we looked at was comparing GDP and PDP with population trends spanning 200 years. Say I was teaching India. We would pull this particular chart, highlight India, and watch its movement. Then we will slow it down, make notes, make predictions to the charts movement for India, and discuss. I have a feeling with the amount of data out here, and on this site, much more can and will be compared and analyzed. Thanks to Mr. John Lee for such a great presentation.


 * __Reflection Questions__**

1.When I came into this, I was assuming this was something to do with aligning the new common core and the new reading guidelines that follow it. Literacies was a loosely fit term teaming around new ways to lead and teach in all subjects using new technological tools. I felt as if the focus was not as much on the tools, we can get that at any trade show, but more on how to teach the larger concepts and have an open mind for the next new one.

2. So much was thrown at us, but not all is expected to me used. Teachers need to learn how to take new ideas, adapt the ones they find work best for their way of teaching, and run with them. The Webtools session with John Lee was the best of the new literacies. Not only did he show cool neat ways to do old things, but he also challenged me to think on these tools differently than I had before.

3. Technology is the new way to learn and interact with information. It is the new hands on approach. Technology is the delivery and hook method of education.

4. Documents (primary and secondary) are much more accessible than they were previously. These documents are changing very quickly with any person being able to publish information for the masses, and prompting change. Hence the Arab Spring. Students and people are creating history with vast amounts of documentation, who doesn’t have a voice now, and how do we decide which to listen to? How is this new information being presented to students, or are we just ignoring it until an outcome is presented? How much leeway are administrators giving for this content, because the test is far from the new literacies content, information is changing faster than multiple choices can keep up? New literacies are making new questions, I guess you can all it inquiry based, no?

5. Number four and five are very intertwined. I think the new thing is how to deliver the information using the new literacies. Or as much that we need to accept it is the new way to deliver the information to our students. Students are unable to sit and soak lecture type instruction any longer. Much to the same way teachers need to take just a few tools and use them, we need to allow for students to have multiple angles of information and allow them to grasp and grow on what they are best at.

6. Some will take, others may not. Most will be used to piece a greater new theory I am sure. We need to understand that civics and personal education has developed into a new realm. As we teach information to our students, and also attempt to mold them as people, we need to understand that this new concept of online etiquette is fast approaching. These ideas need not be taught individually, but as a twisted rope of linear progression.

7. Questions lead to more questions. It is the simple process of human curiosity and progress. Without questioning, improving, then questioning again, humans will become stuck progression. Each student you teach, must become smarter than you at the time you taught them. So that when they reach the age at which you taught them, they can then use the information, with life experiences, to make advancement somehow for humankind. Even if that advancement is that they learn at a faster pace, that opens the door to later advancement in older ages. Education is ever increasingly faster at each generational shift, and these generational shifts are becoming closer and closer together due to the faster educational environment of people.

8. Manage. As a teacher, you must protect yourself. I do not have online personalities nor use social networking because of being scared of repercussions. A teacher must maintain online etiquette because of the public spotlight.

9.-I would like to have John Lee give some more insight into new ways of teaching Social Studies.