Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Thing 21


I am always on the look out for new tools to use with students.  Sixth graders are completed embedded in technology form cell phones, e-readers and even the TV they watch.  Having creative ways for them to express their learning using technology is really engaging for them. 

I have several favorite discoveries from the course.   Diggo and Feedly were my personal favorites.  Setting up a blog was also very helpful and I discovered it was much easier than I thought. The self paced format is huge for me this year.  My kids are all over the place and this has really helped.  I could see a version of this class being taught in the summer.  It was a bit difficult with the beginning of the year to find a groove with the course. 

I found the class to be very helpful and worth my time.  It helped me find even more tools for teaching both for use with students and for managing resources. 

Skype

Skyping is great fun.

I use Skype many years ago when teaching in 4th grade in 2009.  On Veteran's Day, we connected two current military officers.  Both are from Branson and in the same National Guard Unit.  One was in our classroom home on some leave and the other was still in Iraq.  It was an amazing opportunity for the students to have a presentation from one in the classroom and then be able to see Iraq at the same time.  It was one of my favorite teaching moments.

Feedly reader

I do like the Feedly reader.  I downloaded the app to my phone and it makes keeping up with blogs much easier.   I find it especially helpful in keeping up with the administration blogs.

Photo Peach

field trip 2014 on PhotoPeach

Here is a link to Photo Peach quiz
I found it a bit challenging to navigate but figured it out.

Picasa Slide Show


These were three easy to use tools.  I am a huge fan of Animoto.  My students use it frequently.  Photo peach is also another option we could look at using as well.  The slide show in Picasa is a great idea for bulk photos and I like being able to store online as well as share.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

thing 20

I visited Prezi, the scholastic classroom organizer, and comic creator at Read Write Think.  These will all e be very valuable to me.  The one chose to spend a little more time with was Domo.  Powered by goAnimate, it says that it is the school version of goAnimate which is one of my favorite activities to use with kids. Domo is visually kid friendly.  I really like go animate so I am a hard sell.  While the kids would probably like Domo better because of the types of characters, I think that maybe I will go back to goAnimate.

Week 6 Play Week

I know that I skipped around a bit but I am glad that I came back to do my play week.  As I looked at the 3 book sites, I chose good reads to set up an account.  I can see the benefit of looking up books for your class to get some honest opinions on the book.  For giggles and grins, I looked up Divergent.  That was pretty comical all the negative reviews for such a popular book.

My 8 year old and I played with Flickr.  I think there are some times when it could be used in the classroom and have some end of year projects in mind.  I am very intrigued by jing.  I have it and other software used and I like the format.  I likely won't learn the nuts and bolts of it until I have a real purpose to use it.