Since I teach in Baltimore County our students only receive username and passwords and are never given email accounts or access to any type of email. You may be asking yourself why this is a problem, well the real problem lies when you sign up for a timetoast account. When you sign up they require you to make up a username and password and you must also give an email address to get the activation code. Therefore if you teach at a school which does not allow or provide students with email accounts here are some alternatives to still using timetoast.
If you create a timeline you would like to share with the class to have them discuss you can actually embed the code into a wiki or any other site that allows you to share or embed html or javascript.You can also create a timeline as a class or let groups use your account to create the timeline and then embed them to the wiki.
Embedding a timeline into a wiki is pretty simple. First: Choose the timeline you would like to embed, at the bottom it says embed/share. Second: Copy the embed code. Third: Make sure you are in the edit section of your wiki and click on the Insert Plugin. Fourth: Under the HTML and Gadget section, choose HTML/Javascript. Fifth: Where it says enter code here, paste the embed code. Sixth: Click Next, then Insert Plugin, then Save. When you go back to View your wiki you should see the timeline.
Education Ideas:
- History Projects (chapter topics or the life of specific historical figures)
- Science (to keep track of how different plants grow or the evolution of different species/theories)
- Personal (have them do a personal timeline about things they have done)
- Math (have them do a timeline on their allowance and see how their money grows or decreasing depending on if they spend their money)
- Reading (Discuss how a character changes over a period of time in a specific book or reading)
- Music (Have the students log their practice hours to reflect on how they have gotten better by practicing more or the evolution of different instruments)
These were just some ideas of how you might be able to use these timelines to increase the discussion and to help students become more reflective learners, when they look back over what they have accomplished or learned. Here is a useful timeline for Math teachers as an example of how to use timetoast in their classrooms.
What are some other ways you could incorporate timelines into your instruction?
Along the lines of your idea of using a timeline for personal things in the students' lives...I have my 5th grade students create a number autobiography in PowerPoint at the beginning of the year. They number the slides from 0 to 11 (or whatever age they are when they complete the project). Each number represents a year in their life and they write a phrase about something memorable from that year along with a picture. I think a timeline would be a great tool to use with my students as another option other than PowerPoint.
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher I think using timetoast to create timelines for projects that students may be working on could be a great organization tool for more visual learners. For example, when students are working on their science fair projects and have deadlines for different parts of the project, a timeline could be created for the due dates and then posted to the school's wiki for students to refer to whenever they need to check a due date.
Here's a thought to get around the email problem...Could you create the accounts for your students and activate them yourself? You might be able to do this by using one email account (preferably, not your regular email account), or you might have to create a bunch of dummy email accounts (if they require distinct email accounts for each user). You would have to balance the value of doing this with the amount of time it would take to create so many accounts (especially if you have to have a different email account for each.
ReplyDeleteHere are two more ideas related to getting around the email account problem:
(1) If the system lets you use the same email for multiple accounts, have the students create the accounts using the email you established for this. Then, you only have to deal with activation. You can even deal with this in school if you set the email account to forward to your school email.
(2) If you own your own domain (this costs money, but is quite useful to have), you can have catch-all forwarding. That is, you can set it so that any message to any address at your domain is forwarded to a single account. That way, you can give everyone in your class dummy email addresses (that don't actually exist). The activation email will automatically be funneled to one address and, again, you only have to deal with activation.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteAnother idea we could use timetoast to have the students summarize each chapter we have studied. Each student can pick their "favorite" or most memorable experience and talk about it. This will help them reflect when it is finals time on what they said they liked or remembered the most of during the chapter. :)
Dr. Marcovitz,
I looked more into your idea about using the same email for multiple accounts (number 1) and timetoast does not let you have more than one username and password for each unique e-mail address.
I have been looking into maybe making a connection with the maker of timetoast to see if they could work with me (and other educators who's students aren't given email addresses) to be able to use this program!
Thanks for the tips!
I've tried using the site by simply having ALL of my students sign-on to my TimeToast account at the same time. It worked for about half of my class. The other half waited and waited for the site to reload. I just ended up improvising and using a different website to make timelines. This is something BCPS definitely has to look into for students. Most counties have an email account for each student- it's something we could really use!
ReplyDeleteOne of our requirements when teaching Maryland history is to work with a timeline. Next year I am going to look into this website to have students make a Maryland timeline about all that we have learned. Thanks!
ReplyDelete