Mystery Accounts??

What is the opposite of deja vu? If deja vu is feeling like you have done something before, what do you call it when you apparently have done something but feel like you have never done it before? You know, when evidence presents itself that you have completed a task, yet you cannot remember doing it at all? I just had that experience with Gliffy. I signed up for a 30 day trial, only to find out that I already had an account. Hmmm.

I rediscovered Gliffy on the E-Engage power point on the http://tech4class.pbwiki.com/elearning site. Gliffy looks like a pretty cool tool for making graphic organizers, and I am a big graphic organier fan. Two teachers at OJHS applied for a grant for Inspiration software, but they did not get the grant. I wonder if Gliffy could be a cheap substitute for them?

Another thing on the E-engage site is cartoon and trading card generators. They look cool and I am sure they would be very popular with the kids. BUT I think there is a danger here that if we are not careful, we stray to far from serious academic work. A cartoon is brief and can be a good assessment tool of basic facts, perhaps some inferencing, etc. But just so we don't go overboard and that becomes our "writing" assignment.

I also got a Twitter account. I found Barb on it, but no one else from class yet. So I went out of my comfort zone and replied to someone else whose post said she also just signed up. (I refrained from saying that in my tweet, as I had heard on MPR that that is one of the most common tweets.)

Here's an idea: create a Delicious account and have students save their favoirte internet stories to that account. Then other students could log on at home an read some of their peer recommended stories as homework. Currently I pass out a non-fiction article that kids are required to read using certain strategies. This way I wouldn't have to be the one to find all the readings. Of course, it might take some effort to make sure the stories are not offensive. Most kids would probably be okay with that. In fact, I might even try to set this up for Monday, the start of our next quarter. That would be a logical time to start