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.



Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Tool 3

Just set up a Dropbox account! Love it! I can now easily access the same information on my tablet, home computer, work laptop, student laptops, and i-pad. This will make it easier for me to work from home! I really love knowing that I can find safe, kid-friendly videos on teachertube, schooltube and kidstube.  My kids also love discovery education.  I like how you can show clips, rather than watching the whole movie.

 




I know that I need to use copyrighted material for educational use only.

Tool 5

I really liked tikatok.com.  I think this would be great for kindergarten because it has a lot of book already laid out and the children just have to fill in things to make it their own.  It also gives the students an option to start from scratch.  Our students would love to publish their writer's workshop books here.  It also gives you an option to buy an e-copy and a hard copy of the book you created, which I am sure parents would want.

http://www.tikatok.com/view/book/best-friends-2591


I love bookr.  I think it is much easier for  kindergarteners to use than tikatok.com.  I think I will use this when we study mammals.  I know the children would love to publish a book on bookr and I could share it on my blog.  The only problem with bookr is in order to find the pictures, you must spell correctly when typing in the tags.  Since many kindergarteners spell based on sound, this would be an issue for them.

Tool 4

I sent my teammates a spreadsheet asking them to comment about memory books.  Using Google Docs will help my teammates and me share documents quickly and easily. I love using Google Forms for quick surveys.  It is great to use in group situations, where everyone can see all the responses, like at faculty meetings.  I could send this to my parents asking them to bring various items for class parties, and the other parents could see what items have been taken.  I could survey my class to have them pick a favorite character in a book or, since its time stamped, have them race against each other to answer a math fact.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Tool 2

I signed up for Google Reader and am now following three blogs. Google Reader allows all the new feeds from the blogs to come straight to me. I am excited to have all of the new information in my PLN, rather than going out and searching for it. When viewing the blogs of others, I did not found many comments that were helpful. The comments usually reiterated the bloggers points. I found two great blogs on The Daily Five, which I highly recommend visiting. http://livelovelaughkindergarten.blogspot.com/2012/06/kindergarten-daily-5-book-study.html http://delightfuldaily5cafe.blogspot.com/

Friday, May 11, 2012

Tool 1

I could use a blog to keep my parents informed about classroom happenings. The kindergartners could use the vokis to make book recommendations to classmates. We could post our vokis on the blog to give reminders to our parents.