I was looking around at other blogs, found a gem, and of course the blog had a widget I thought was great. I don’t have many visitors yet, but I have to admit, I am curious.
Before discussing the widget, I would like to point any readers to the site where I saw it, the Langwitches blog. In the site’s own description, Langwitches:
…includes standards, ideas, projects, tutorials, and software reviews. The goal is to encourage foreign language and ESL teachers to learn and experiment with technology and at the same time, become comfortable enough to expand their teaching methodology to include different kinds of technologies into their classrooms.
I may not be an ELL or foreign language teacher, but the site is very rich in technology resources.
So, what is the almost scary widget that I found there?
If you hadn’t noticed, it was the live feed on the left that told you are here. It’s not personal information, just what location visitors are in and what link they followed to come here.
Feedjit’s live traffic feed shows statistics on your website in real-time.
It shows:
Feedjit widgets are updated in real-time. Your traffic feed is updated as each visitor arrives on your site. The update occurs before the widget loads which means that each of your visitors can see their own location displayed.
How frequently is the data updated?
What does the live traffic feed do?
- Which city and country your visitors are in
- Which website they arrived from, if any
- Which page they visited on your website
- Which external link they clicked to leave your site, if any
I saw a link to a site for display ideas on Cindy Putnam’s blog. Teachers, we really love looking at what someone else has done and adapting it for our classroom, don’t we? As I was told over and over again by mentor teachers my first year, “Don’t reinvent the wheel.” Well, I will admit, I like reinventing the wheel now and again. If we didn’t, we’d never come up with novel ideas; however, looking at great things other teachers have done doesn’t hurt anyone, and it might spark the next Great Idea.
Primary Resources Classroom Displays
For some reason, the majority of classroom display photo archives tend to be from the UK or New Zealand. Perhaps one of us American teachers needs to start a collection…
Edit: Well, now that we have completed our first student project exhibition as a school and district-wide initiative, I’ve got some photos of displays from our school.
This page has pictures of student work under “Student Exhibition 2008.”
Edutopia posted this:
Seventy-one percent of teens say the Internet is their primary source for information for completing their most recent school project or report.
In relation, TeachClever has come up with 12 ways that we can teach students to organize online the information that they collect while doing research on the internet. It sure beats sitting at the computer with a notebook and index cards.
After reading a post in Alvin’s Educational Technology Blog, I thought I would try out LEGO Digital Designs.
Well, it really is fun. Who doesn’t love LEGOs? Not only that, but it requires some planning and critical thinking. Plus, you aren’t just slapping bricks together, you are learning how to manipulate them virtually. Also, LEGO has a simpler online version called Creative Builder, which has a blank slate builder, a planned builder, and a speed builder (yikes!). Not only that, but kids can join LEGO.com and become part of a LEGO enthusiast community with virtual building challenges, games, and lots of really fun and creative activities. The parents page says:
The My LEGO Network is a safe online play environment for kids. Learn about the precautions we take to ensure your child’s security. Read more…
LEGO also offers free downloads of activities designed for various ages in the classroom.
For early year’s we focus primarily on helping youngsters to develop their creative, social and expressive skills, as well as encouraging them to develop a general knowledge and understanding of the world around them. For schools our focus is on Science, Technology, Design, Engineering and Mathematics.
This is the official website: http://scratch.mit.edu/
For anyone interested, here is a page with links to news reports featuring Scratch.
And here is a video to give the basics about Scratch.
