New Adventures in Technology

I have been attempting to use some new types of technology including Notestar & Blogger. 

Ms. Burks turned me on to Notestar (notestar.4teachers.org) as a tool for helping students organize and save their research notes.  I believe it will also create their Works Cited page for them when they are completely finished with their research.  We believed this would be beneficial since:
1. We & our students do not enjoy creating Works Cited (besides work smarter, not harder right?).
2.  Our students have difficulty keeping their materials in a safe place.
3. It allows them to copy and paste a quote which may help them incorporate outside info. into their papers.

Helpful Hints from my fumbles:
*Email students their username & password AND have them save it to a sticky note on their Dashboard
*Be sure you have created a Project for students AND assigned it to them
*Be sure students have put in their topics (in the Topic Box & the Description Box)
*Be sure students click 'Create' to really create & save their note
* Also, as a way to prevent plagiarism and force students to think more about their research, I require 3 parts on each 'Notecard': quote, paraphrase quote, how this info. relates to your topic


Ms. Burks also turned me on to Blogger (seeing a pattern here?- I think it's obvious who the expert is).  I have decided to have my freshmen respond to their journal prompts on Blogger.  Now, I will definitely try to help you avoid some headaches with this process.

1.  Have students create Google Accounts
                       *Some of my students needed a verification code via a text message.  I used my phone and borrowed another student's phone in order to obtain these.
                       *Make students save this info. on a Dashboard sticky note (Re-inforce the fact that you cannot access this information for them!)
                       *Create a Google Form with the following (required) fields- Name/ Email/Hour (make sure they put in an accurate email address/ spelled correctly) Make students write down which email they put in the Google Doc
                       *Create a Blog
                       *Copy and paste the emails from the Google Form into the "Add authors" box on the Blog.  Be sure to put a comma after each email. Send the invitation.
                       *Have students check the email account they put in the Google Doc (thus why you had them write it down, esp. if this is done in a later class which I would recommend).
                       *In the email from you, students should find a link.  They will click on that link and it will take them to another page.  On this page, there will be a link at the top- DO NOT CLICK (this is just the view the blog- they won't be able to publish anything to it).  Under that link you will see a statement similar to this: To join this blog as an author click here (the 'here' will be in blue).  This is what students need to click on to be an author on the blog.
                        *Have student do their post in a Word Document (you may want to assign a word count requirement)
                         *Have students copy and paste their post into the blog and publish
                         *Encourage fellow staff to visit the blog and respond to student posts
                         *There is a way to remove a post if it is inappropriate or if you want them to revise it first (I think you just change it to a Draft- but like I said Ms. Burks is the expert)

Hope this helps & I will keep you abreast of our progress:)