Digital Doors was created as a place for me to blog and share resources that I think would be helpful for teachers integrating technology in meaningful ways in their classroom. My goal would be to write a blog post a week, but with my busy schedule, that doesn't happen. I write when I can and rely on nifty tools to help me share what I am finding when I don't have time to write.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

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Getting Connected with the Global Read Aloud

Photo by Lyndsay Craven
Several teachers in our district joined over 100,000 teachers and students across the globe this week in an exciting global connections event.  Teachers and students are connecting with other students via Skype, Edmodo, Kidblog, Twitter and more to share their ideas and impressions about common books they are reading in their classrooms.  This project is the brain child of Pernille Ripp an elementary teacher in Wisconsin, originally from Denmark.  She started this project with her students in 2010.  they chose one book and she connected with her Professional Learning Network on Twitter and asked others to join in.  The response was great and the students were able to connect with students all over the world reading the same book at the same time.  Each year, the project has grown.  Last year, they had over 30,000 students participate.  And this year, the number is well over 100, 000 students from all over the globe.  Books and authors at different reading and interest levels have been chosen to expand the project.  There are even groups participating in the project in Spanish and French.  This year students will participate in a variety of global collaborative activities, over the next 6 weeks while reading either, Eric Carle books, Marty McGuire by Kate Messner , Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper and Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach.

I am really excited about this opportunity for many of our teachers to take their first dip into this type of global collaboration with their students.  Lisa Condran, Library Media Specialist at Lincoln Elementary is quite tech savvy, but she has taken on the new challenge for her of connecting about half of the teachers in the school with different classrooms around the world  using a variety of collaborative tools and reading a variety of books.  The classroom teachers will read the books in class and Lisa and Tech Instructional Assistant Mark Johnson will make the connections with tech in both the library and the lab.  Students will be connecting with students across the country in Canada and even as far away as Indonesia.  Deena Franklin, 3rd grade teacher extraordinaire at Jefferson, is doing what great teachers do.  She is modeling new learning to her students and continuing to challenge herself and grow as a teacher.  Tech is a scary word for her, but she is facing her fears head on with support from her peers.  Her students will be connecting with a class in Wisconsin via Edmodo and sharing with tools such as Padlet.  As the project continues, I hope to be able to share how this project is impacting our students across the district as they join together and learn from students and teachers around the world.

For more information about this project and to follow along visit the Global Read Aloud Project.
To explore some of the tools that teachers will use to connect and share visit these sites.
Edmodo.com (MountVernon.Edmodo.com within our district)
Kidblog.org,
Skype in the Classroom
Twitter for Educators Pin It Now!

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