Book Bag Blog

Mystery Book Discussion via Videoconference

Our first virtual summer book club meeting was Monday night.  Using WiZiQ, a web-based teaching platform which allows live chat and audio-video sharing, nine participants discussed the basic characteristics of mystery books and shared examples that each had read prior to the meeting.  Although, the technical end - sound, was pretty rough at the beginning, the group seem to enjoy sharing a variety of mysteries, some that have been around a very long time and some that are hot off the press. What was especially great, was connecting with friends during the summer and sharing good books. 

Some of the books shared were:

• Mary M.: Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
• Gabriel D.: Sammy Keyes and the Wild Thing
• Natalie D.: The Trap & Bella At Midnight (Natalie could you let me know the author of The Trap)
• Mrs. House: The Mailbox
• Scott T.: Goosebumps:
• Erika T.: The Invention of Hugo Cabret
• Mrs. Branson: Room One: A Mystery or Two & The London Eye Mystery
• Mrs. McDaniel: Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew Mysteries (shared these two series)

All of these sounded wonderful and I can’t wait to check out a couple of them myself because there were four shared that I haven’t read yet.  Our next virtual summer book club meeting will be on July 28, 2008 at 7:00 pm and we will be discussing realisitic fiction books.  Get to the public library today and check out your book for our meeting.  Don’t forget to keep up with the number of pages that you are reading even if you don’t get to join us online.

Happy reading,

First Video Conference Book Club Discussion

The 6th grade lunch bunch book club just participated in our first video conference with another middle school today. We held our joint lunch bunch book club meeting with Sullivan’s Middle School in Rock Hill, SC. Our discussion was about the book Crossing the Wire, a novel about a young Mexican boy, Victor, who found himself the soul provider for his family after his father dies. Victor has always been happy at home growing and selling corn, but the with the produce prices dropping significantly, he realizes that his families’ only hope for survival is to “cross the wire” into the US and find work. Life in the US promises good jobs and a better life. Victor feels this is the only hope he has to earn enough money to support his family.

It was heart breaking to read about the difficult and dangerous struggles he faced as he attempted to cross into the US. This novel brought to light many controversial issues, including the current debate over regulation of immigration laws; the prevalence of “coyotes” and “mules” and how their reputation and illegal trades have affected so many of the Mexican population; and role of border police and vigilantes. Our students found a greater understanding of the desire to come to the US, illegally, even if the trip is life threatening.

A good read which offered great controversial topics for discussion.

Creating Your Own Quizzes

Check out this free software http://www.mystudiyo.com/ that is designed to let you create quizzes online and post to your blog.  It’s called StuDiYo.  You have to register, then decide if you want to add quizzes that end with a banner promotion or an email form or you can even let your users add questions, of course with your approval only!  It scores quizzes, supports various media inserts (video, podcasts, pictures)  Your quizzes can be multiple choice or short answer.  You can even provided immediate feedback to the questions and a time limit. WOW!  I suggest you use this to create quizzes and add to your website or blog because the actual website may have some more mature material than your students need to see.  Let me know if you have any success with this.

Minyanland

MinyanLand  is an online game designed to teach and entertain children about the financial market. Gamers have to make purchases. obtain services, donate to charities, buy food, stay healthy and other financial activities that will help keep the economy balanced.  It is totally free, funded by sponsors that you may see throughout the communities in MinyanLand.  Great educational online game!  Learn more about at Keith Jarret’s Blog.

New Tech Finds

Another Friday night, watching Law & Order and playing online.  It’s been about an hour and half and look at these neat Web 2.0 applications I’ve found so far.

Boolify - a cool search engine that simplies Boolean searches for students.  Really cool and easy to use!  Beautiful way to demonstrate Boolean searching.

Jamendo - a new site to download and upload free music.   Be cautious when using with students.

SchoolTube - Education oriented videos.  Our filter doesn’t allow access to YouTube and if you’re concerned about outside access to videos you can create your own “SchoolTube” area for sharing videos. Students can upload videos and link them to a video blog created in blogger or other blogging software.

DigiTales   provides ideas, resources and inspiration for merging of storytelling with the enrichment of using digital tools.

Open Media    free open source to video or audio clips for podcasts.

Moodle is a software designed to help teachers create quality online courses. Moodle is an open source and completely free to use.