Newsletter

This is my newsletter that I created. It is not an introductory newsletter into my classroom... It's more of a make believe classroom mixed with factual things of my class that I am interning at. This can be very useful because like Marilyn said, some schools are not letting you print out newsletters for the kids to bring home. So a digital way to do this can come in handy.

Voice Thread

This is voice thread. I think we could be able to use voice thread for many different types of lessons. People in my PLN suggested learning a foreign language, learning the pledge of allegiance, and I suggested learning how to count, especially by bigger numbers (i.e., 2, 3, 5 etc.) I also suggested using voice thread as technological vocab cards. I think this could be a fun and interesting and effective way of learning (especially those who learn by listening rather than reading or writing).

Wordle Example Movie

Here is this embed code... Let's see if this works!

How to use Wordle

To make my screencast video I used Camtasia. And it is demonstrating how to use Wordle.Net. I originally tried to use Copernicus and it did not work. But this worked much better. I don't know if I would necessarily use this in class... But it definitely could come in handy. It was easy to use, and the video works, but I am having trouble trying to GET it places!

Glogster

Here's my glogster about the weather cycle. It is not too fancy, or even very informative, but it can at least be a starting point for other lessons. So this could be good for a starting point. I don't know if I would want to jam-pack one of these things to make is GREAT.

Xtranormal

This! Is my xtranormal.com BRIEF movie. Just testing out some fun stuff. I can see how you could use SOMETHING like this with a certain age group. But like you said earlier, you'd have to really search through the site before you let kids use them in class because of the some of the inappropriate material you can find.

Rubric Making

I created a rubric for Google Earth Tours. It was a really easy site to use! I would probably use it in the future.

Google Earth Tours

Let's see if this works! This is my google earth tour! After I got used to working with the program, I started enjoying it a little bit more. I think kids would be so interested in using this program. It is very interactive, and keeps them busy with the different things you could have them do. (So I had to Jing it because I couldn't upload the video. :) )

Flickr

This is pretty cool. You could do something cute for the kids. You could create a collage of the kids without saving it, and Jing the picture, and give them a sheet with everyone on the picture sheet. Like a yearbook type thing.

Spelling City

I just created a little spelling quiz (also matching my SMARTboard lesson) and it's really cute. It says the words, and can recognize the words to create sentences from it's database. It could really be good for the kids because it's says the words for you to spell and then you can print out a spelling card or certificate.

Webquest

This is our webquest that is teaching about the alphabet. It was really easy to put it together but we can't figure out how to get it any other places. We tried to put in the URL and it didn't work. We tried to embed it, and we couldn't. We tried to Jing it, but we can't Jing the whole page. So... We'd have to really play around with it to figure it out.

Quizlet Quiz

This is my quiz that I created on Quizlet. It happens to match one of my lessons that I created on SMARTboard.

Animals

ASL YouTube Video

This is where I found how to learn about sign language! :)

Online Art Games

This is a featured livebinder! This is all about education and art. I played a few games of matching sounds and then another matching textures. I think potentially this could be another resource like we tried to find teachers' blogs. We can steal things from them and use them in our classrooms. These are other interactive games that kids could play with and still learn.

search engines OTHER than Google

I liked these search engines. Mugurdy gives you a picture of every website, so you can briefly see what you are going to go to. Quintura is nice as well because it gives you other options; you can type in what you think you want to search for, and it gives you other relevant topics that you can click on. Spezify is kind of cool, but it's also a little crazy. It is a little unorganized (at least as far as I can tell). But it gives you pictures of every site too. So it gives you the picture so you can see where you are going, but it's a little bit crazy.

Interactive SMARTboard websites

I've looked at a bunch of different math games at the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives website. They have a bunch of different types of games, as well as a bunch of different types of games within one category. So I played different math games involving fractions, money and color patterns etc. A few of them that I played I could totally see how kids could learn and be interested in them. However, I found one game that I couldn't even solve... So you would definitely have to pre-test these games before introducing them to the classroom.

Oak Street Elementary has a a science interactive list on their website. You can look at temperature, animals, and other types of science things. Now these websites were for the primary aged students. So some of them are a little cheesy, but some of them could be really cool.

Blog about internet safety and copyright information

I think internet safety is very important because you never know who is on the other end of your screen. You can be talking to anyone, anything, anywhere, doing anything. When researching information it is really important to double check your sources and the information you find because anyone can put anything on the internet. Copyright information is very important as well, because as technology advances, the easier it is for teachers to know you didn't do your homework but doyourhomework.com (who stole their info straight from wikipedia) did. :) There are machines now that scan through your homework and pick up any words combined together to make someone else's sentence. Even if it is a common statement like "the sun is hot!" Someone somewhere has said it, so you may not have to quote that, but be ready to stand up for your information.

It is also very important to watch and keep track of where children are going because even if they stumble across a website that isn't too "friendly" for them, they need to understand why they can't go back there, even if they didn't know they were there in the first place. Many kids (depending on age) won't know what is right and what is wrong (they just think they are exploring) unless you tell and explain to them why it is.

Differentiation.

So I used thinklinkr.com to comply my definition of DIFFERENTIATE. Thinklinkr doesn't seem that special... It seems pretty straight forward, and less complicated than Word so maybe that is a plus. But if I were to use Word I could just import it straight from Word into Blogspot. I Jing'd this photo, and I don't know why it is small because it is supposed to be importing Large. So, the definition, No two children are alike. No two children learn in the identical way. An enriched environment for one kid, may not be enriched for another. In classrooms we should teach children to think for themselves.

SMART Board

These are two images from two of my lesson plans. The first one is for 5th graders about United States monuments. It shows the monuments, gives facts, and shows the state. At the end, there is a work sheet that the kids would do recapping what they learned.

The second lesson plan is for 1st graders. It's matching animals, with letters, and has a couple facts to go along with it, with some flashy things to get the kids excited. At the end, it also has a video, a crossword puzzle and tells the kids about the zoo. It also gives them a worksheet to work on as well.

I enjoyed using SMART board, but it was a little tedious. I couldn't get some things so I had to find them elsewhere. The clicking, moving, coloring, grouping, got a little old, but doing one lesson every once in a while could be good, and keep the kids entertained.