ELLEN+BAETEN

Hi there. I am currently teaching 5th grade. I have taught continuously for 4 years here in Topeka, KS. I love to read and listen to music. My first love is being actively outside--biking, running, swimming, wakeboarding, etc.

Here is one of my favorite wikis. It is about using picture books to teach reading skills: Picture books

This looks to be an awesome site about all angles of the 21st Century learning revolution: 21st Century

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING NETWORK PLN started 6/20/11: I have accepted the 30 day PLN challenge on the edublogs site. Am working my way through. I have an account on edublogs http://baeten5.edublogs.org and a twitter account. I am ebgrade5. I am very excited about the world wide possibilities of both the blog and tweeting.

6/30/11 I have been checking my twitter account and the edublogs as others have responded to my comments. I am being followed which is kind of weird for me. I tweeted about using google sketchup so we'll see what that brings.

7/2/11 Nothing on twitter. Finished PLN challenge 4. I like the idea of being able to find "experts" on twitter that can help me with things I would like to do in my classroom. For example, I am following Kathleen Morris and she has done a great deal of student blogging. She will be my expert when I start again this fall. I intensely dislike the amount of time this is taking. Not being familiar with Twitter, for example, is like learning a foreign language. I have to set the kitchen timer so I don't end up hours on the computer. I will continue to post about the challenge for PLNs after class is over if anyone is still interested.

GOOGLE TOOLS I already have Google Earth and I used igoogle to set up my homepage for Firefox. I have personalized Google News so I get news about hurricanes because we study them at the start of school in science. The results for the students is that they get a better understanding of weather phenomenon that we don't experience here in Kansas. A side benefit is the students grasp of where they are on the planet by locating where the hurricanes occur and the relation of that spot to where we live via daily geography lessons when we plot said hurricanes.

WEB 2.0

For each of these lessons, I would show the students how it works and some basics on the projector first, then give an example and then have them work on the mobile lab computers on their own.

Big Huge Labs: Math using THE CUBE: As a review game project give each pair or threesome a topic and have them make a review. Screenshot web images or have them make their own pictures to capture with school camera and upload. Example: Geometry. One dice could be pictures of objects and the other dice questions about faces, lines, vertices, etc.

Glogster: Dickens literature unit for A Christmas Carol: students can create a glog around the topics of child labor laws, a bio of Dickens, music of the time, etc.