Concetta Gotlieb's blog

This week I've had to deal with a significant mental health issue with someone close to me. It's one of the first times that I've had more than a day off work in a row. Because I'm working with kids with emotional disorders it's even more important that I deal with the situation and

Some of the things I'm trying to work on so that I can get through work:

Communicating honestly with colleagues
Exercise a little bit each day
Relax in the evening instead of doing more work

Some of the resources I have used to investigate dealing with stress and mental illness include:

Blackdog Institute - depression and bipolor
BeyondBlue - a variety of resources and links
Headspace - specifically designed for teens

Also the Red Cross has created a booklet for the Bushfire Victims called 'Coping with a Major Personal Crisis ' to help individuals understand how they can take care of their mental health in this tough time.
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Tags: work resources mentalhealth
Posted at 06:44PM Feb 22, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb |

Sunday Oct 26, 2008

Christmas Carnival of Learning

I've been inspired by different online festivals such as the Student Blogging Challenge, the Comment Challenge, the Digital Storytelling Carnival and other educational community building activities to use an event to inspire sharing and communication. Christmas is a great time for having fun, sharing and finding cool resources. Let's help each other and our students use Web2.0 tools and our online communities to really connect with each other this Christmas.

You can upload or share your links using your existing blog or you can create a teaching blog here at me.edu.au or a student blog using edublogs. Then add your links to the Christmas Resources community. By adding the Christmas community to your profile you'll be able to see whenever new things are adding just by looking at your profile. You can also tag your Christmas stuff in delicious or Diigo with Christmas and add your feed to your me.edu.au profile.

Activity ideas:

Create a Christmas animation that other students can use or copy from using GoAnimate Post links to any cool animations on your blog or in the Christmas community.
Get students to create a Christmas game in Scratch
Send a school in a different state a Christmas message using email
Get your students to create an end of year video message about what they've learnt this year. Upload it to Blip.tv or Teachertube and share it on your blog or in the Christmas community.
Get your students to create a video to send overseas at Christmas telling them about Australia. Upload it to Blip.tv or Teachertube and share it on your blog or in the Christmas community.
Look at Christmas in other cultures using ...
Participate in a Christmas web-quest
Share songs you like to play at Christmas on your blog or make a playlist to embed in yoru blog
Christmas craft ideas - upload your pictures to Flickr when completed. You can also use flickr.com groups to get ideas. Check out this Christmas Gift Project group.
Helping other people at Christmas time. Improve your vocabularly and give people rice at Christmas by playing this game.
Write a Blog posts for Santa. I might even set up a Santa blog to reply if there is some interest.
Find favourite Christmas foods and recipe videos or post recipes on your blog.
Find blogs or information about other things that are going on in the world at this time of the year.
I'll be adding more to the Christmas community as I find things.

There are lots of other ways of sharing, posting ideas on Twitter, Edublogs or any of the other Educational communities around. Or you can just add a comment on this blog.

Christmas is an awesome time for using technology that helps us communicate with each other let's really make the most of it.

Wednesday Sep 24, 2008

Literacy Resources: Audio Books

After listening to Tim Noonan speak at a conference I became aware of the importance of accessability when designing websites. I'm beginning to think that thinking about accessibility can also help us understand how to design learning activities that are suitable for learners with a diverse range of needs. I work at a school for children with emotional disturbances and intellectual disabilities, it seems like a good idea to use technology to make learning easier for them.

Mp3 Powered Literacy

In our class we have kids with very different literacy abilities some can read and write pretty well, some are still at a basic level. They are all able to think and respond verbally though. So I have uploaded stories from the Libri-vox collection onto an mp3 player. Libri-vox is a collection of books that are in the public domain that have been recorded by volunteers. At this stage we have used Alice in Wonderland but I want to look through and find more books. The player cost $30, copying the files are as easy as copying files to a usb drive. You can also purchase audiobooks, available as instant downloads from the iTunes or The Audio Bookstore.

Using this method some students complete a written comprehension and other students listen to a story and then answer questions orally. For me it seems like a great idea, it still allows creativity, critical thinking and a different type of focus than for example watching a movie. For students of all levels I think this kind of interaction with text can provide a way to scaffold deeper thinking about writing and a way to read above your usual level. I recently listened to Stephen Hawkings The Universe In A Nutshell, I love reading but I would never read a book like this in the conventional way, listening to the audiobook was a really mind expanding experience.

How would you use audio books in the classroom? What books would you recommend?

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Tags: allgrades literacy library resources librivox teachingideas links
Posted at 09:53PM Sep 24, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb |

Tuesday Jun 17, 2008

10 Fun and Free Teaching Resources

Going to Sweden? Check out this Guide Map created by Year 2 kids. AMAZING! Then subscribe to their blog here. Remember you can subscribe by email or using an rss reader.
Use Brian Tune to train your brain to remember important facts. For example I learnt the capital cities of the world in 5 mins. Go on test me. Actually I was hopeless. But I did find it pretty addictive.
Take a break and give them an education. The Story of Stuff. A well produced if somewhat political description of how we get the things we buy.
Computer-based literacy activity for little kids in reading groups. Read a story online. The navigation page might be ugly but the books are cute with vowels and things in different colours.
Fun with data. Use Tablefy to create web based tables. The best thing is if you have a class blog, you can embed these tables right in the content. Check out this one created by TechCrunch on the difference between web-based email providers.
What kind of internet user are you? Take the Pew Internet and American Life Quiz. I'm an ominvore.
Astonomers find super earth circling a star. News...
If you have a 4 computer classroom make the best use of those computers by getting students to watch a demonstration created by you and then complete an activity. Screencast-o-matic is pretty easy to use.
Watch videos by young students. Don't worry if you can't reproduce the same quality. Even with a regular digital camera you can put together something watchable like this. A step-by-step guide to creating multimedia projects is available from KidNetSoft.
Me! Comment on this blog. Ask a question. I'll find something for next time.