// Langwitches Blog

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 [...]

I am guest blogging on My Wonderful World Blog (National Geographic Education Foundation) in honor of Geography Awareness Week 2009 the week of November 15 – 21!
This year’s theme is “Get Lost in Mapping: Find Your Place in the World”.

I wanted to share a successful geography lesson that continues to grow throughout the school year.  [...]

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 on a [...]

While in Bangkok visiting Kim Cofino from Always Learning and Chrissy Hellyer from Teaching Sagittarian, I attended a session of CoTaIL (Certificate of Technology and Information Literacy) that is being taught at their school (International School of Bangkok). Jeff Utecht, from The Thingking Stick and co-teacher of the course,  had asked me to share with [...]

Why is our first impulse to believe something that we see, read or hear? Especially if it is in print, online or comes in an “officially” looking packaging?
How do we teach ourselves and our students, that another impulse has to follow the first one immediately: Evaluate…critical thinking… learn to listen for and to your own [...]

This post title is “Teaching Information/Research Skills in Elementary School”, but this post is as much for adults and older students.
Many adults are overwhelmed with the quantity and new kind of media that is available and accessible through technology. Older students in High School and College might not feel overwhelmed, but have never been taught [...]

Many times there is pressure to teach the “traditional” Office programs (word processing/spreadsheet/presenting software) in school. Parents and administrators have something tangible to see/say that their child/student is learning/getting computer skills. It is harder to recognize/put your fingers on skills like communication, collaboration and connections.
So far, we had started first graders out on using PP [...]

Information is ALL around us. Actually there is SO much information, that most people are overwhelmed with locating, saving, organizing and then later on retrieving it.

Searching and research skills are becoming more and more important. Even first graders at our school are being asked to research in order to produce some sort of report.
Most reports [...]

All of our teachers at my elementary school maintain their own classroom blog.  As I wrote about in Blogs vs. Static Website and Changes in Classroom Blogs, we still have a long way to go as we need to move forward from merely a one sided communication tool to an online learning space that encourages, [...]

In the information age, it is becoming increasingly important that our students have the literacy skills to:

access
analyze
evaluate
store
retrieve
record
communicate
remix
produce
distribute

information. As an elementary school teacher, I believe that we need to START teaching these skills early.

We need to integrate these to introduce and develop  media literacy skills from the beginning. It is important that we develop a [...]