Today's Thoughts

Today's blog is going to be a rambling of thoughts.

Thought 1: Twitter: Let's start with my continued love for Twitter. Some of my students have been using Twitter to ask questions to other classrooms about their country for our research project. They seem to think it is neat seeing the responses. On a professional level Twitter is amazing. I participated in my first Twitter chat tonight with the #Edchat session. It was great seeing all of the ideas and thoughts come out on it. I found it hard to keep but up , in time, I think will catch on.

Thought 2: Another student discovery: I love when students discover things when using technology. One of my students discovered that if you clicked on a button on an iPad app that you could hear the national anthem on the iPad. This excitement spread like wildfire in the room as the students all got out their headphones to listen to the national anthem of the country they were learning. What a cool learning experience!

Thought 3: Plagiarism in Grade 3, really?: Today it came to my attention that a poem that one of my above average writers blogged is really from the book Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The way I found this out is quite interested. We are connecting with other classes by commenting on their blogs. One student from the class we are connecting with in Ontario commented on this student's  blog and said it was from Diary of a Wimpy Kid but that it was good. I immediately copied and pasted the poem into Google and sure enough it was from the book. This brought the question of where do I start with this teachable moment. Soon I realized that I would connect it  to our discussion on being digital citizens. We will review how we know that we can't copy word for word when researching in books or on the Internet and then I will jump into how responsible citizens don't post or claim other written work to be theirs. It should be an interesting discussion. Oddly enough the student who made the iPad app discovery is the same one who blogged the piece from Diary of a Wimpy Kid. 

That's enough rambling for now. More thoughts later!