Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Websites I like

http://www.khanacademy.org/ - great for math and science games and tutorials

http://wallwisher.com/   adding sticky notes to a page with a proposed question

http://www.tutpup.com/ great for math games



Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Tool 11

1. Some of my favorite tools are tutpup.com, todaysmeet.com, and dropbox.

Tutpup.com is great for math games, which my kindergarteners will love using in math stations.
Todaysmeet.com will work well for professional meetings and team meetings.  I would also like to try it with my students when we are working on projects.
Dropbox will help me be able to work from home and will also help me share info with my teammates.  

2. I am so excited to have new technology to work with my students. Now that they will have more of it, easily accessible, I will really have to work on holding them accountable for their work.  I don't just want them playing games.  Some changes I will make will include a lot more modeling and peer practice with our new devices.  
3. Nothing really surprised me, but I have learned a lot in a short amount of time which I think I can easily take back to my classroom. 

Tool 10

1.In kindergarten we think its most important to stress using the internet safely. I would want to discuss copyright laws and also stress that technology is used for learning time not play time.
2. Brianpop.jr.com is a great recourse to teach anonymity to protect their identity for safety reasons.   The kids would watch the video and comment about what they learned on todaysmeet.com.
3 I would use brianpopjr.com and youtube.com to share videos for digital citizenship.  We will also have many classroom discussions regarding digital citizenship.
4.  I will post videos and informational websites about digital citizenships on our class blog.

Tool 9

1.  Children love using technology, which is why it is so important to tie technology to the objective.  Technology should not be used as play time, but as learning time.

2.  Students absolutely need to be held accountable for time using technology.  Using technology for assignments is no different than doing paper and pencil tasks.

3. I love http://www.tutpup.com/. Its got great math games for kindergarteners.  I could easily rotate this into my math stations.   I also like http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/, as it covers a wide variety of subjects.  This website would be beneficial for the students to use in both literacy and math stations.  One way to hold them accountable is to have the students take a screen shot of what they have completed using the ipad.

4.Some of the apps I liked are:
ABC Tracing lite - It allows  the students to trace letters, using proper letter formation.
Cute Math - the children solve math problems, working on concepts, like addition and subtraction.
Again I would rotate these through math/literacy stations and have them take a screen shot at the end to make sure they completed it correctly.  I would also have them check with a partner.
5. The students could make videos of themselves reading a book, take pictures of work, & use apps in stations.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Tool 8

I love that the netbooks have webcams!  This will make it easy for us to skype with other classes and make vodcasts for our classroom blog. I am so excited to have an ipad!  I know my students will love it.  One of things I learned today was how to make a website appear as an app on the home screen.  I did this for my students' favorite website, starfall.com.

In order to make the netbooks and ipads work smoothly in our classroom, the kindergarteners will need lots of modeling and practice before using these devices. Since the students will likely all want to use these devices,  I will rotate them in stations, so everyone gets an opportunity to use it.   I will train a few students to help other students when they are struggling with a device.

Tool 7

This year My students will participate in the O.R.E.O. project.  Information about the O.R.E.O. project can be found on at http://projectsbyjen.com/.
Objective: 
* TLW collect information about objects and events in their environment:
* TLW pose questions; collect data; and record the results using objects, pictures, and picture graphs.

Date:
Sept. 17 - Oct. 12

Tools:
The students can use the ipads and or mini's to record the number of oreo's they were able to stack on wallwisher.com.

Description:
Students will observe how many oreos they are able to stack before the oreos® tumble.  Students are encouraged to speculate how many oreos® they think they will be able to stack and then compare actual results. Once the entire class has stacked their oreos®, they will average all their results to turn in ONE class amount.

This project is open to all schools all over the world.  My teammates will also be participating in this project.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Tool 6

I love that you don't have to log in to use todaysmeet! This will make each much easier for my students to comment!  I envision myself asking the students a question, giving them time to solve the problem, and then allowing them to respond and compare responses.  http://todaysmeet.com/muraskinders

I am looking forward to using skype with my class this year. The children would love to skype with their book buddies and with other classes on campus.  It would be fun to skype with teachers and students at other schools.  I have looked around the web and found some authors who are willing to skype!  I have signed up for skype in the classroom.  I found that it has many people to skype with such as other classes, other teachers and even guest speakers.