// Langwitches Blog

I have been enthralled watching the following TED Talk (Ideas worth Spreading) How to Listen to Global Voices by Ethan Zuckerman: Sure, the web connects the globe, but most of us end up hearing mainly from people just like ourselves. Blogger and technologist Ethan Zuckerman wants to help share the stories of the whole wide [...]

I am seeing more and more “InfoGraphics” springing up everywhere. They are catching my visual eye immediately. As a native German speaker, I love compound words and it comes naturally to me to want to take them apart in order to create meaning of the word: “Info” and “Graphic”- Information that is written or drawn… [...]

Using visuals to create and support stories is a skill we should encourage and nurture in our students . It should be obvious by now that I consider storytelling an integral part of a teacher’s toolbox. You can read about the Need for Storytelling and Why Storytelling Can/Should Be Anywhere/Everywhere and will understand why storytelling [...]

As I was writing my last blog post about “The Need for Storytelling Skills“, the connection to the problem of Information Overload surfaced. Wikipedia attributed the term “Information Overload” to Alvin Toffler: which refers to an excess amount of information being provided, making processing and absorbing tasks very difficult for the individual because sometimes we [...]

During my first year of teaching, I also assembled a teaching portfolio of my work. I wanted evidence of my work in planning, in the classroom, at professional development opportunities as well as projects I created and participated in. I wanted to grow my portfolio as my teaching experience grew. I used a binder and [...]

I have created several charts for my students with the table feature of SmartBoard Notebook. Although working with tables is not very intuitive, nor can they be as easily manipulated as in MS Office products, they have produced nice results with students. Students took ownership in their own learning and were actively involved in creating [...]

After the success of Skyping in Author and illustrator Mike Artell (from Louisiana) into our sixth grade classes this past February, the fifth grade classes had the opportunity to visit with Jan and Phil Huling (from New Jersey). The Hulings are the author and illustrator of “Puss in Cowboy Boots”, a remake of the traditional [...]

We want our students to start creating… We want them to use different media to express themselves, demonstrate their understanding, learning and connections to the world. So, the teacher has agreed to the substitution of the traditional written book report (from years past) with allowing students (5th Grade) to create and record a PhotoStory based [...]

I fell in love with Mafalda when I was 15 and just started learning Spanish. On Wikipedia you can read: Mafalda is a comic strip written and drawn by the Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado (pen name Quino). The strip features a girl named Mafalda (5 years old at the time of the comic’s creation) [...]

Fourth Graders in our school study the state of Florida and “Explorers”. Traditionally they would research and create a written book report. THIS YEAR… The social studies teachers assigned one explorer to a group of 3 students. They did their research in the Media Center from a wide variety of sources. The teacher created an [...]