BP12_201013_One_Min_Mess2

BP11_201013_Comment_on_Stacie

http://stacie-tech2teach.blogspot.com/2010/01/bp12-2010013-oneminutemessage2-ekoloko.html

BP10_201013_Comment_on_Joe_Huber

http://jhuber2pointoh.blogspot.com/2010/01/bp112010013one-minute-message.html

BP9_201013_Web2.0T3_wordle.net

Tool:
This week I wanted to pick a Web 2.0 tool that I thought would be fun for my kindergarten students to use. Something that they could do on the computer and something that they can personalize and be creative. The tool that I have chosen is www.wordle.net/ . This website generates “word clouds” from the words that you provide. Kindergarten is where the student begans to learn how to spell words. Wordle.net is a great place for my students to use their words in a fun setting. It’s very easy to use and it’s fun. I would as a class take my students to the tech lab and do a couple of examples together so that they can get the hang of it.

Assignment:
In kindergarten, my students work a lot of memorizing their sight words or Dolce words to become a proficient reader. Each child in my class is on a different sight word list depending on their ability level. What I would do with Wordle is, each time a student memorizes their sight word list, I would allow them to make a “word cloud” using Wordle. I would want them to personalize as much as they would like. I would then, allow them to print out their “word cloud” and let them get it in their folder. This activity will help them with spelling their sight words and also with their technology skills.

I am excited about www.wordle.net and cannot wait to use in my future classes!

BP8_201012_oneminmess1

BP7_201012_comment_JoeHuber2.0

http://jhuber2pointoh.blogspot.com/2010/01/bp52010012web20t1-watchknow-etc.html

BP6_201012_comment_aneverydaylookintoAbbieToy

http://abbiesadventureemdt.blogspot.com/2010/01/bp52010012web20tool2.html

BP5_201012_Web2.0T2_Neok12.com

http://www.neok12.com/

The Web 2.0 tool that I picked this week is neok12.com. NeoK12 is a website that provides educational videos, lessons and games for grades kindergarten to twelfth grade school kids. All of the lessons and videos have been screened so it is 100% kid safe. This website covers many subjects such as physical science to math. What I love about this website is that is it free to sign up. Have you ever spent numerous hours online trying to find a quick educational video to show your students? Then this is the website for you. I am assisting in a kindergarten classroom so I geared my exploring this website for kindergarten. When I looked at the subjects I saw that there is an area for English. In the English part, there is a link for a Phonics section. When I clicked on the phonics link, it took me to a page that provided me with pictures, school presentations, videos and lessons all to do with phonics. How great is this! Not only does it search for all the “phonics” videos and lessons but you are able to create your own slide show presentation with the pictures and articles that is provided for you. When creating the slide show, you select a photo (the source is Flickr), you read the article by learning more and copying the facts to the presentations, then you edit your presentation by putting photos and text together and save it which allow you to share it online. The only limitation that some of you might have is that most of the videos are provided by youtube.com.

BP4_201011_RSSFeeds

RSS Feeds-

Edutopia:

Edutopia is a great resource to have, it provides educators with “what works in education”. We have the subscription at my school but I like the site a lot better. You can search an article, video or blog on the subject that you are trying to look for. I am really excited to have this is my RSS feeds because it saves me time searching the website.

-quoted off the logo on the website

K-12 Learning:

K-12 Learning is a blog site that other educators post lesson plans and experiences in their classroom. It is very help to see what other teachers our doing in their classroom. For example: in the “Must Read” there is a kindergarten unit on ocean life, I can pull lessons and activities for the unit and use them in my classroom.

Educational Technology:

This is a site where educators can blog about their strategies, actives, lesson plans, experiences and etc about anything that has to do with technology in the classroom. This website is not just teachers posting but it is also magazines and newspapers articles too.

Teacher Tube:

Teacher Tube is like You Tube but all for teacher resources, lesson plans, strategies, show and tell and etc. I Love it! Check it out!

Teacher Magazine:

Teacher Magazine is a site where they post articles about news and information for teachers about schools around the United States. To me, I love to know what is going on in other states about other schools. Its very informational and helpful.

BP3_201011_Web2.0T1_GameClassroom

Web 2.0 Tool: Game classroom

The tool:

Game Classroom is a web 2.0 tool that provides educational games for grades kindergarten through sixth grade for all subjects. Game Classroom is very easy to access. All you have to do it go to http://www.gameclassroom.com/ and click on the grade that you are interested in. GC (Game Classroom) is very interactive where all three parties (teacher, parent, and student) are a major role in successfully providing the student with help in any. What I love about GC is that is it completely free!

The lessons that are available for your use provides the skill, goal, skill description, sample problems, learning tips, online resources, extra help problems and related games all in one page. The figure bellows shows an example. This saves a lot of time for educators by just looking at the skill description to see if the games are appropriate for your students. What sold me onto this web 2.0 tool is that it has practice that the students can do at home.

Kindergarten is a challenging level of students to jump on the computer without providing them with help. I would feel comfortable about setting up the computers with the game already up on their screen so that all they had to do is click and play the game. Most of the games provide a follow up to either at home or whenever they get off the computer. I am a type of educator that always provide follow ups on independent work. I would defiantly like to use many of these games during their center time.

BP2_201011_EducationalUsesforBlogs

Beldarrian (2006) states “blogs are collection of writings that are easily published and accessed through the internet” (pg 140).

Communication has changed drastically over the years. Writing with pen and paper to typing on a computer to actually posting your thoughts online so people can read your ideas all over the world and they can comment to your posts. Blogging is a communication tool that is used to share ideas and thoughts by posting text, files, images, audio and embedding video to your posts. Blogging is a concept that I have heard about and understand but really have not explored a lot with. I have used blogging in the Education Design and Evaluation course at Full Sail University and became more familiar with the aspects of what blogging really means and how to use it in your classroom.

If I had my own class, I would defiantly use blogging for a language arts assignment. Instead of using the “traditional” journal assignment with the black and white composition notebooks and writing each journal entry, I would replace it with blogging on a blog site where they have to type and communicate about their ideas on a particular site. Flierl and Fowler states that blogging is used as a mostly as an online communication journal (pg 1). I would defiantly use it the same way by creating “blog” topics that the students have to post their ideas about the topic.

There are many different blog site out there but its up to you as the educator to research each site and see which one bests fits your students needs and you as the facilitators needs. Flierl and Fowler’s article “Educational Uses of Blogs and Wikis” provide many different sites with overviews about each site. Please check the article out if you are interested.

References

Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. 27(2). 139-153. Retrived January 9^th, 2010 from http://www.dastous.us/edtechadvocate/2.pdf

FLIERL, R., & FOWLER, H. (2007). Educational Uses of Blogs and Wikis. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(3), C3. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Retrieved clip art from http://www.wpclipart.com/computer/people_on_computers/At_Computer_silhouette_LCD.png.html

BP1_2010011_iGooglescreenshots

Here are a few screen shots for my iGoogle. I am in love with iGoogle. I love how everything such as Facebook and Twitter is all in one place and is updated everything three minutes. I love how everything is accessible in one spot. It is very easy to set up and to add different gadgets to the pages.

Check it out!