Web 2.0 Class Reflection

When I first walked into this class I thought I knew so much about technology.  Boy, was I wrong! Within the first class I wanted to run out screaming.  I had no idea what Judy was even talking about.  After that first class I was nervous for the next, but after going to that next class, I realized I could learn how to use this “new” technology and be good at it.  This class has opened my eyes to using technology within my classroom more than I ever thought it could.  I have learned so many new and exciting thing to incorporate with my curriculum in third grade.  Each week through these eight weeks my students have got to experience everything that I have learned and they have loved it!  I know that I will continue to use many of these resources within my classroom each year.  

Dr. Jean's Site

So a colleague at school showed me this site!!  There are a lot of great songs on here that go along with phonics and stories that include movement for your classroom.  What a great site!  I just thought I would share with all of you !!!

This is also the link to Dr. Jean's Blog for so more info.

Literacy Project

So for my literacy project, I decided to attempt a voice thread.  Overall, I feel it came out great.  My students are just starting to look a poetry so we did an acrostic poem with our names to begin.  The students took off with this poem, and it came out fantastic.  They loved recording their poems, and even getting time to comment on each others.  I could definitely see myself using this tool again!1  My students really enjoyed it.  The only challenge I came across was getting the microphone to work at school, as you can see though I came over that hump and we got the microphone working, from there it was a piece of cake!!  I hope you enjoy our poetry.

Voice Thread

Just a trial of Voice Thread

Blogging in the Classroom

When searching on the web, I came across this video about blogging in the elementary school classroom.  When watching it I realized those doubts I had about using blogging with in my 3rd grade classroom, started to subside a little.  This teacher puts a lot in to perspective and makes me realize that it is possible.  I thought some of my fellow teachers might like watching it as well.

Trying it out

WEEBLY....it's actually really cool!!!  I wanted to try this for next year as a basic website for my class for next year, thus the reason for the name change.  My thought for this site is to keep it very basic for now to get used to it.  I would like to put information for my parents on this site so that they could just pop on our website and see what is going on in out class.  This is just a start but I could definitely see myself using this for next year!!!

Weebly???

So I was looking at some of the weebly's that Judy put on our course work for class six.  I came across Christina's Weebly.  I actually think I could see this being a great way to use the weebly.  She has been posting all her papers for certain course on the weebly.  A great place to put all your important work from undergrad and or grad school!!!

Voice Thread...Literacy Project???

Alright, so I am sitting here thinking about my literacy project.  I am thinking that my students are starting poetry and I thought it would be a great idea for my students to start with an acrostic poem using their names.  I will them have them illustrate their poem too, and record it using voice thread!  I think that they will really enjoy this!!  Any other thoughts if this is a good idea??  I really want to make sure it comes out great!!!

Digital Storytelling....what I would change.

After looking at my story Super Brain, I have realized if I was to do it again, one thing I need to work on is trying to keep my mouth away from the microphone.  I am sure this is something I would have to remind my own students of as well!  Live and learn right!!

Super Brain....Digital Storytelling

My class and I have been working on telling stories that have a problem and solution with in them.  We have also been working on making sure the character or characters really come alive in our stories.  For my digital story I wanted to work with my class to incorporate all those aspects in our story.  We worked together as a class to create the story of Super Brain, and then as you can tell my class created all the illustrations for our story.   The idea of the story started from one of the boys in my class and then it all just came together from there.  If you think about it the story is very similar to Superman.  Overall, I felt our story came out well and my class loved doing it together.  I am thinking about using this feature of technology again when my students do their Diary of a ....books for our Content Area writing unit.  That time I will have them create their own narration and be the narrator of their story.

Diigo, Diigo, Diigo I LOVE YOU!!!

OK so MY LOVELY DIIGO is still a work in process, and I would love to figure out how to put things in lists to make it more organized, but overall I really do love it!!  to have all my resources in one place is great!!!  I am huge fan of pinterest, so this came so easy to me!!!  Please follow my diigo!!!

 Equals   


P.S. If anyone can teach me how to put things in to list I would OWE you big time!!!

Debbie Diller

I know how much this class loves Debbie Diller!!!  So I was on Pinterest and happened to stumble upon her blog!!!  I thought I would post it on my page, so all of you could go and look at it!!!  I have already found some great things just from perusing the blog a little!!!  I think I am in LOVE!!!

Story, Story, STORYBIRD!!!

Well once again my school is not in session!!  We are hoping to go back to school tomorrow!!  Please all cross your fingers, because right now I have played around with way to many story apps for our projects!!  I was sitting here today and decided hey what the heck let me try this whole STORYBIRD thing!!  I did it and I think it's pretty cool!!


Thank you Mari Beth for helping me embedded this!!!!

I definitely could see myself using this in my classroom , to help my students that have difficulties getting ideas flowing for writing.  We have always had those students who struggle to get an idea started on their own.  I could see Storybird being a huge help with that.  Now that they would have the pictures there for them, I think it could be a great tool to help guide a student who is struggling.

Digital Story

So I am all about trying new things this weekend!!!  I really thought that I would just attempt to make a silly move!!!  This is what I came up with now!!!  I was totally just playing around and literally made up the story out of now where!!!  I am not going to lie this one too is also really cool!!!

Anyone else try this yet???  What are you thoughts????

Pup Talk

While being trapped in my house I figured I would decide to do some school work.  So I went through our class notes and decided to peruse some websites.  I went on to the PBS Kids website and found the game Martha Speaks PUP TALK.  So of course I had to try it out!!!  I loved it!!  It may not be the most beneficial for my third graders, but I thought definitely for younger grades.  Also there are years that I have lower students.  I loved that it lets you record your own voice to the story.  I also like that is stresses that a story must have a beginning, middle, and end.  What a great way to reinforce comprehension, yet allow your students to express their creativity!!!

First Voki

Not sure I did this right, but I figured it was worth a shot!!!

Voki 2

Went to go sign up for a Voki account, do you really only get a free 15 days???  I am confused can anyone help me out with this???

Voki

OK, so my personal opinion of these are that they are great!!  I am going to try one my classroom tomorrow with just saying what the students need to do to start their day!!!  I think they are going to love it!!  I loved the way Taini used in her classroom as a way to go over the school rules!!  I am thinking about using this as my possible method for my literacy project!!!

Animoto Project

After thinking about this project, I thought the best way to attack it would to be to do something that would be very beneficial in my classroom.  Right now my class is just starting plane figures in math.  This is one of my favorite topics, however there is a ton of vocabulary.  I would use my animoto at the beginning and end of the unit to help review vocabulary for my students.  I think it would be a great way for my students to practice remembering all that vocabulary!!  I could even see myself making a second video to go along with this unit going over the vocabulary with angles, vertices, etc!!!

Kid Blog

OK, so tonight after hanging curtains in my living room I decided to do a little school work.  So for tonight I decided to make my way onto the Kid Blog website!!  I have heard so much about this website and had to see what it was all about.  So after some perusing of the website, I must admit I am still scared of the whole idea of allowing my third graders to have a blog.  You can call me old fashion, but the thought of being in control of monitoring what students or others will post on their blogs scared me so much.  Also, it scares me to have to be in charge of what my students are posting too.

So since I was feeling that way, I figured my next step to better understand this great technology tool was to go onto You Tube and see if I could find a video to better explain this great site!!!

Although this is a little dated, it ended up making me feel a little more comfortable about the idea of using Kid Blog within my own classroom!!  :)

What are your thoughts?????

Xtra Normal

So we had a staff meeting last week and our art Teacher decided instead of getting up there and just talking out ears off about a project he would like to have at our school, he decided to use technology.  He made a video for us from the Xtra Normal website.  Since I am in this class I of course decided that I needed to take a look at it for myself!!  It is amazing.  I am still new at it but for fun during snack time my class and I played around with it a little!!  I think it could be a great way for a student to do an oral presentation without having to stand up there and talk the whole time.  I just see many possibilities to it and I am glad our Art teacher introduced us to this!!

Here is my attempt at one:

Voice Threads

 WOW!!  This whole idea might be the craziest.  Wasn't sure what this all meant but stumbled upon this Voice Thread website, which gave a great tutorial to me!  The idea of using this kind of makes me think of a Wiki except that you have have this conversation at present time!!  What a great way to do a group project!!!

Digital Storytelling

This whole idea of digital storytelling is still very new to me!  I have taken time to do some research and looking around the web to learn some more information about it.  This blog Digital Storytelling Part One gave me the most information about using digital storytelling within the classroom.  I love on this blog when the author expresses, "New technology tools allow us to connect, communicate, and collaborate with others around the world."

I love the idea of taking the stories our students create and having them connect with students around the world.  By using this it would allow the students to share their differences and similarities that they have in a world of technology.  We always say some of the best learning a child can have is from their peers, well now we are just taking that idea a step further with technology.  Now instead of students learning from just their peers within their classroom or school, they can learn from peers from the other side of the world!  What a fascinating idea!!!

Richardson Chapter 3 and 4

Wikis and Blogs!!!  Oh my, is there a lot for me to learn.  While reading these two chapters, this quote by Richardson stood out to me: “Regardless of how educators feel about the potential of wikis, and I can understand the hesitancy many teachers feel, one thing remains certain: The collaborative environment that wikis facilitate can teach students much about how to work with others, how to create community, and how to operate in a world where the creation of knowledge and information is more and more becoming a group effort” (p. 69).   I would say that this quote definitely expresses my thoughts on wikis. I am nervous about them, yet, at the same time, I am quite intrigued with the idea of them.

 I have had many thoughts floating through my mind.  The ideas of wikis are still very new to me, yet I am beginning to see how great they could be.  For example, while searching for examples of wikis I came across Mrs. Ballweg's 3rd Grade Class wiki.  I could definitely see myself, at some point, doing this within my own classroom.  I love the idea of student learning being collaborative.  I like the fact that they can go in and work on this “working document,” adding and taking away what they feel is best.   Seeing students working and learning together is something that is extremely important to me.  I have a lot to work on before ever putting something like this into play within my classroom, but I could definitely see the benefits of using wikis within the classroom.

Animoto Thoughts

When thinking to myself about animotos and how to use them within the class room I came across a great blog that had an animoto that I could really see myself using.  Plant Vocabulary was great video of exactly how I see myself using this feature within my classroom.  I would love to use this across the curriculum from science to math.  Looking through some ideas of different animotos definitely open my idea to how I could use them in my classroom, as well as some idea for my project within this class.

Richardson chapter 1 and 2

While reading Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classroom, I really began to look at my own classroom.  As a third grade teacher, I struggle with the idea of a child having too much technology.  I feel as though sometimes these children are around technology way too much.  .  However, this is our future and I believe that I need to embrace this within my classroom and incorporate technology as much as I can.

            One thing that Richardson (2010) wrote that caught my eye was, “The National Technology Plan released in January of 2005 went as far as to admit that ‘today’s students, of almost any age, are far ahead of their teachers in computer literacy.  They prefer to access subject information on the Internet, where it is more abundant, more accessible, and more up to date’” (p. 7).  I must admit though, with-in my own district, unless I teach myself, there are not tons of classes on technology within the school.   However, I would say that I completely agree with Richardson’s comment that teachers don’t have the same level of education with technology like the children of today.  I am 27 and my third graders, at times, know more than me.  The reason is that since they were born, technology has ALWAYS been around them.  Would you consider this a good thing or a bad thing??  I have a huge issue with that.  Many students of today do not go outside and play, they go home after school and sit in front of some technological instrument.  I am not sure this is the best either.  However, I am a realist and I do realize that as educators we do need to incorporate the technology to help our students be prepared for the future.  I do, however, also believe that the technology does not need to be on in the classroom all the time.  Let’s get a good combination of using technology for these students and working on being able to sit and listen to a lecture or lesson and take notes, because whether we like it or not there will always be people (bosses, etc.) who are not fond of technology.  I feel there needs to be a nice balance of both.

NETS

New literacies to me are the future!  Technology is coming into full force; it is changing the way the world communicates, learns, and gathers information.

While reading through the NETS for students, I could not help but think that there are so many standards here that we don’t even touch upon.  I truly try to bring technology to my students; however, in my district we don’t have the most up-to-date technology for these students.  One section that I really thought was great was the Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making standards.  I think something our future generations are going to have to do every day is within this standard!  So we as teachers need to start molding it now!  Future generations are going to be around technology at all times, so how will that play into critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making?  I see some of it happen already, but I am sure it will play in more and more as the years go on. 

            When looking at the NETS for teachers,  I felt as though the main idea is to create a learning environment that is rich in the digital world.  Which I believe is a great thing, but at the same time, I feel sometimes too much of the digital world is not a great thing either.  When looking through the standards, I loved the one of Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity.  This is how I think every teacher feels; I know we are heading towards a completely different world with technology surrounding us.

I guess my biggest question is: How are we in the education world going to help with this?  I am only in my 4^th year of teaching and I am going to get to see this all unwind, which is something I am excited to see happen.

My World, My Everything!!!

This is my first try at an Animoto!!  But I mist admit I really enjoy it!! Now how to use it with in my 3rd grade class???

Make your own slideshow with music at Animoto.

First class

OVERWHELMED!!  I thought at one time that I was really good at technology, however after sitting through this class I have realized there is so much more out there for me to learn! :/  I am excited to see what this class will teach me and what I can incorporate in my classroom!