Category: Parenting

The Pout-Pout Fish

Our youngest and I had a lot of fun reading The Pout-Pout Fish this evening. It’s a fun tale about Mr. Fish who always has a pout on his face despite many efforts by his friends to cheer him up. The artwork and surprise ending made us laugh with enjoyment.

Educational Connections

  • Younger readers will enjoy and benefit from the repetition of verses.
  • The author incorporated some clever rhymes and introduces interesting vocabulary to youngsters.
  • Provides great opportunities to play with rhythm, alliteration, and dramatic reading.

A Teacher’s Influence (Quote from Haim Ginott)

I have come to a frightening conclusion.
I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or dehumanized.

–Haim Ginott

Empty Classroom

Kids Get Creative with AudioBoo

In episode 3 of Thinking Out Loud I pondered ways that AudioBoo might be integrated with teaching and learning. I shared a few ideas that sprang to mind and invited you to share your ideas and examples. I want to share a couple of AudioBoos that our two youngest children put together.

Listen!

Listen!

It is important to note that these 2 kids are young. They selected their topics, identified the major points that they wanted to share, recorded their interviews without rehearsing, and selected the title and images for their boos. They did this with minimal assistance from me. They learned to use the AudioBoo iphone app, planned their interview, and recorded and published both boos in well under 30 minutes. It was a fun and educational activity for all three of us!

Educational Uses
I encourage you to join me in exploring the potential classroom uses of this technology. Please share your thoughts and examples as text, audio or video comments. Together we learn more!

Google Error Compromises Privacy

I’m not screaming that “the sky is falling,” but I do think users need to be strategic about the files/data they choose to put in the “clouds.” This very early morning post from TechCrunch is another cautionary example.

In an apparent privacy error that underscores some of the biggest problems surrounding cloud-based services, we’re hearing that Google has sent a notice to a number of users of its Document and Spreadsheets products stating that it may have inadvertently shared some of their documents with contacts who were never granted access to them.

According to the notice, this sharing was limited to people “with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document” – a vague statement that sounds like it could add up to quite a few people. The notice states that only text documents and presentations are affected, not spreadsheets, and provides links to each of the user’s documents that may have been affected. (Source)

The full article is available here.

What Perspective

The Bush twins decided to share some advice with Sasha and Malia Obama about living in the White House. I believe their letter speaks for itself and requires no comment from me.

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Favorite Theo. LeSieg Story

I recently mentioned that while building My Google Library I decided to identify my very favorite Dr. Seuss story. It didn’t take me long to narrow the list down to Too Many Daves (from The Sneetches and Other Stories) and Wacky Wednesday. Wacky WednesdayBoth of these stories grabbed my imagination as a child and hold fun memories. While agonizing over which of these tales I treasured the most (I’m exaggerating a bit.) I was thrilled to realize that Theodor Seuss Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss) had actually authored Wacky Wednesday under the pseudonym Theo. LeSieg. This realization spared me the dilemma of choosing which of these two beloved stories was my favorite Dr. Seuss tale. I admit it’s a technicality but it works in my favor, so I’ll take it (hahaha).

I’ve included Wacky Wednesday in my library because… well, because it’s wacky. It’s all about a boy’s zany adventures on a far-from-normal Wednesday. My friends and I would sit in the library trying to find all the wacky details in the illustrations. We were exposed to figurative language, creativity, word play, imagination, and so much more without even realizing it. Perhaps the best thing I can say about Wacky Wednesday is that I’ve read it over and over – and isn’t that the greatest testament of a good book?