Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Googling... (tool 4)

Some of these Google tools were absolutely new to me. They also seem pretty easy to work through. The Google Docs seems to be a good way to share information with others and it's neat that when you chose who to share with , you can also allow them to edit. I have set up my google reader with 5 11 Tools blogs that I am following. Time to move on to Tool 5.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Finally... (tool 3)

After putting it off for quite some time I have completed tool 3. In keeping with the "summer" imagery and theme of my blog...I created a Wordle on fun things I am doing (or want to do) this summer and also an Animoto short video. Wordles look great for getting kids to expand vocab. and use mind maps. Animoto seems like a fabulous tool for presenting projects and/or writing descriptively (especially if they use their own photos). The pictures in my video were courtesy of istockphoto/animoto.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Connecting...(tool 2 )

I wish I was as fast as some of you moving through these 11 tools. As I stated in my first post, I had created a blog on cultivating the love of reading in children (especially third graders). I knew that by blogging about it I would have a chance at connecting with others that held the same interest, but more importantly, that had more ideas to collaborate on the topic. So it was an attempt at a PLN. I believe PLN's can be a great resource because you can reach out to more people in order to share and gather ideas about important and relevant topics on educating our little ones. I am already enjoying reading some of the suggested blogs on the 11 tools page, as well as some of the ones written by colleagues (campus and district).
The tips on commenting remindend me of when we hold conferences with our students about writing, projects etc...We can't just say simple things like "good" or "I like it" because students gain more learning with specific feedback about what they are sharing or working on. I think we can take a similar approach when commenting on other blogs...be specific. I commented on the following blogs...
The Little Blogger that Could
The Blooming Blog
4th Grade Tech and Ed
Summer Thoughts
Using Technology in the Classroom

Thursday, June 10, 2010

So I begin...(tool 1)

Here is my first post. I'm pretty familiar with blogging in a personal form, as I follow 3 blogs online and have even created a couple on my own. Unfortunately I've been unable to maintain them because life in teaching and, especially in mommyhood, require my total presence. It will be interesting using it as a teaching/learning tool. One of the blogs that I created before was to network with other third grade teachers on ideas for teaching kids to love reading. I'm looking forward to working with this program with my students. The one challenging part was creating the Avatar as the voki site is slow and kept logging me off.