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.

Tool #5

I used delicious to tag some interesting sites for personal growth and renewal. This will help me be stronger as a person and as a teacher. I feel these ideas will be easily shared with my school colleagues and with the students. I'm thinking it will be fun to tell the children about things I enjoy doing, especially at the beginning of the school year during community circle.

Tool #4

Using Google Docs and Google Reader in my classroom will definitely add to our shared learning experience. The students can find topics that they'd like to learn more about for various classroom assignments and can easily utilize these tools for projects, etc.

This is a fun, easy way to learn and to share with each other.

Tool #3

I used Image Chef because it was easy to embed the pictures/graphics onto my blog. This would be a fun tool to use with my students as they would have a blast creating their own word images and pictures to go along with our thematic learning units. For example, I can see using this particular tool with our Solar System unit in Science. The students could utilize this tool in creating a presentation about their chosen planet or star.

Tool #2

The personal learning network is important because we are all connected to each other as educators and as students due to the expansion of the internet and all the technology available to us now. This video was great at explaining how we can stay connected to other teachers and students.

Comments about commenting on others blogs -- this is really fun and gives us the opportunity to see what other teachers and friends are doing. Everyone has a different take on the ideas and it's interesting to see how they choose to show their work!

The five blogs I commented on were:  Sarah C., Delia D., Erika W., Jenny M., and Karyn L.'s. I enjoyed reading everyone's take on this assignment and what they've learned. ;-)

this is fun, but a bit weird ....

because I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I totally love the idea of journaling on-line though, and that seems to be what this is about. So, I'd say, I think I'm going to like this blogging thing (possibly) .... goodbye for now! ;-)