Reflection on 11 Tools assignment

My favorite tools that were new to me were the Google Reader and the social bookmarking sites. I'd like to try blogging with my students this year, hoping that with my team-mates' help, I can do this successfully. I can use Google Reader to keep up with the student's posts and to see if they're using the technology safely and appropriately for school.This coming year I would like for my students to have blogs.


2. I'm beginning to feel more confident about using technology in the classroom; I know it will take some time, like everything else that is worthwhile ;-). It always feels good to learn something new, and I've really enjoyed the process of going through the assignments.

3. I've learned a lot of new things about technology. The professional development format here has helped me to move through things quickly and to get a good idea for how the various tools work. It's been very fun and quite educational -- a nice combination in my book!

Tool #11

Digital Citizenship deals with safety, rights & responsibilities, etiquette, literacy and other issues we face while living in a digital age. As educators, we have a responsibility to the children we teach to keep them safe from inappropriate content, unsafe websites, and from others who may compromise the children's privacy.

This becomes a huge issue in schools where internet access is attained at will by wireless technology (practically everywhere now!). We've set up rules for internet usage, but enforcing becomes the difficult problem when students have almost unlimited access to content at home as well. This is an area where we need to stay focused on what our expectations are concerning good citizenship.

Tool #10

Usitng ipad, itouch & iphone apps with students can be educational and entertaining at the same time. Since third grade doesn't have regular access to these tools, we could collaborate with fifth grade to work on projects together. We did this last year for our Solar System unit, and I can see expanding this idea for the coming school term.

In particular, I looked at 1) GoogleEarth -- a fun geography app which would be useful when we're learning about LandForms, geographic terms, and States. 2) Birthdays in History -- a nice way to tie in history with our current topics 3) Starmap -- a cool app for use with our Science unit on the Solar System, stars, planets, etc.

Tool #9

Using Jing & Skype:
I've just downloaded the Jing software, this one will be interesting to try out with the students, as will Skype. I can easily envision using these 2 resources in the classroom; here are some examples:

-- connecting with students in another classroom miles away who are studying the same things
-- communicating with other teachers and educators for CEU's and topics, ideas, learning resources they've found useful with their students
-- embedding videos in e-mails for information purposes to communicate with parents about what their children are learning
-- and many, many others yet to be explored ....

Tool #8

conjunction junction from schoolhouse rocks

http://www.hulu.com/national-geographic-environment?c=Green

Tool #7

This is my photostory of a recent vacation to Carmel, Paseo Robles, and Santa Barbara, CA. with Norm and our friends Erin and Don Scherner. We had a blast driving, shopping, eating, wine-tasting and just hanging out on the beautiful beaches.

Tool #6

Wow!! I love Wikis! So, I knew all about Wiki sticks, but Wikis for blogs are just as cool ;-) and can be manipulated just as easily by children. There are tons of interesting wikis already available for educators and I know these will be useful to explore when I have more time to do so.

As far as planning and sharing with my marvelous 3rd grade team, I feel confident that together we can use the "wiki" tool to become better teachers on our grade level.