11 Tools Reflection-noicelfeR slooT 11

What are your favorite tools you now have in your personal technology toolbox? Briefly describe a particular activity that you will plan for your students using at least one of these new tools.
One of the tools I really want my kids to use is photostory. I am thinking of first making one with them as a Who is who in Miss Fairchild’s kindergarten and Who’s who at Sherwood. We would take each student’s picture then assemble the picts, they could each say Hi my name is *** I like +++. The second one would be people in our school. I would either take the micts myself or let pairs of student go find different people ( or find them on our tour) people like librarian, principal, custodian…. Then we would add the recording of who they are and what they do. The, I would want them to each make one about themselves like Jenny’s favorites. She would have her picts, then 4-5 favorites ( color, food, pet, lunch…) after all are complete we could share. Some of my other ideas are catagory book using either Photostory3 or Bookr. It might be a book of rocks, or farm animals, blue things or things that start with b.
I would also want them each to make their own avatar to be on our blog or class webpage
My favorite was Bookr but is loads very slowly so it is harder to get excited about the end result.

2. How have you transformed your thinking about the learning that will take place in your classroom?
I was really excited about getting the new technology in my classroom but I was also a bit skeptical about how to use it with 5 year olds many of whom have not been in school before or have access to technology. After this intro to what is out there, I have more ideas about what we can do with our iTouches and Netbooks. I am thinking that I will start the first few weeks with my ‘guided reading’/math groups to be how to use and care for our technology. We will learn how to use them, how to use the apps on them, what to do if something happens. I am hoping there will be continued communication with other early childhood teachers on new apps or other ways to use the tech. I am so excited to go from no technology in my room (my one student computer stopped working more than a year ago) to having the itouches and netbooks!!

3. Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
My most surprising outcomes is that I am really hyped up about using this with my kindergarten. I found a lot of stuff to use with older kids and as you noticed, My 8 year old nephew enjoyed all of the tools too. This gave me an idea of what kids can do (even though he is older than my kinders.) I hope that all of us at SWE will share not only cool tools and activities with each other but also management type ideas too. I have really enjoyed learning all these tools and I hope that even if my students cannot use them on their own, I will use them and hopefully I can get some mentors to help my kids use them.

Tool11 DC

Three things I would want to teach my Kindergarteners:
1. What to do if you end up on an inappropriate site.
When showing the students sites I would show them how I got to the site and sometimes make a mistake, then show what I would do. Think aloud style. This would show them how to search appropriately but also what to do if you make a wrong choice. When this happens to a student talk about what happened and let all students know how the student handled the situation.
2. If you would not say it to someone’s face, do not say it on line. If we do blogs or other communication, talk about /role play what happens when someon. e says mean things. Talk about how to be polite, kind to all relate to how we talk to each other in the classroom What info to share not share( including logins and passwords). When going to sites that require logins show them how to give minimal info or give school info if needed. Make sure teacher/parent OK’s sites that require any personal info. .
3. Just because it is on the internet does not mean it is true. We would look at different sites on one topic - see that they do not always tell the same thing. – this would be taught in the process of a topic search.

Tool10 Free Apps

I have been looking at a lot of Apps for the Itouch. There are a lot of free ones but a lot of those are just mini versions of an app that costs. One I liked was called ABC Maze. it shows a word then the student has to move (by tilting the itouch) the chick to bump into the letters in a maze to make the word. I thought it would be fun for my letter learners ( it says the letter's name as if bumps) as well as my kids woking on words. BUT the lite ( free) version only has 3 words ( frog, horse and duck) very limited!! ABC Shakedown is like flash cards but it will say the letter name, the sound and a the word depending on where you click. If you go to ABCShake down plus( $) you add more words and some games. I like Faces Imake . you make faces using objects like foods, toys, tools... it has a really fun tutorial that encourages creativity and thinking outside the box. I love I-spy Spooky Mansion. but it did cost 99Cents. I like Doodlebuddy for little drawings. I like Poke ( you poke penguins) to practice using the touch screen.( I don't rememer if it was free or 99). I also found a few free or inexpensive books to download. most of the more current books cost almost like real books though.
I have really enjoyed using my itouch since getting it at teh end of May. I use it for weather( weatherbug), dictionary ( dictionary.com), quick lookups( safari), and fun and relaxation( Jumbleline, Trippingfest, Allis Jigsaw, Physics, Flyaway FingerPiano, Shanghai Lite( Mahjong), Tap Tap Revenge 3).
How would i use it on m classroom? well, I am still looking for new apps, but right now I see using it for the following:
1. letter and letter sound practice
2. counting, numeral ID
3. listening to stories
4. use voice memo or other to have students record observations or commnets,
5. research- for example they may use Chirp USA to look at and listen to a variety of birds then tell about their favorite. ( I am looking for other apps like Chirp but about differnet kinds of animals)
I continue to look for new ways to best use the itouches in kinder. I do not want to just use them as flash cards, I want to really use the technology to help my kids learn better.
I hipe that through out the year we will all continue to share what we find.

Tool9 Skype

Well, I did not make a Skype account but I did read about what it can be good for. My neice is working in Germany this summer on a graduate project. she has been using video Skype to communicate with her family. She said she would not have made it without it. I think it would be really cool to get an author to read then have students be able to ask questions. For kinder, it would even be cool to have someone like a zookeeper or police officer to talk to the kids on skype, The learnign another language is also a great idea. I do not think I would use it in kinder but it might have been a good way to help ease the trasition for my Farsi student I had last year.

Tool9 Jing first try

OK that was really easy!! I made a short video on how to use Kidpix. How to Kidpix
http://screencast.com/t/NDEyODVmY2I

It was relly really easy!! I can see making thies for my kids hom how to use new program especialy for new kids who have missed instruction. How else could it be used? well, I like the idea of video field trips. It would be cool to talk with authors or experts on topics of interest. I am still tinking of other ways to use this cool tool.

Tool8 Video Resources

OK There are a lot of vidoes out there and some are appropriate for school use.
The first clip I found that I might use is: Eric Carle reading I found it in a hulu search for Eric Carle(an author we study)It is from PBS, Mister Rogers neighborhood show. Eric carle reads his book Head to Toe a nd makes some comments as he reads. Very appropriate in content and lenght for Kinder.
My second video is http://news.discovery.com/videos/animals-prehensile-tailed-porcupine.html I also found it on hulu. it is a short clip ( ~2 minutes) about prehensile tailed porcupines. It gives basic info and very cute and entertaining video of a porcupine. I had a hard time in most catagoies finding stuff I could use. I searched for George Washington and found a lot of weid stuff butonly a few actually about president george.
In Blinxx, I searched zoo animals ( like I did in hulu) and it immediatly comme up with many videos but the proble was that the first one started plaing automactily and it was full of foul language. I would not let my students (if they could read) use this search. it could be that at school those would be blocked but at home... welll. I dolove to use vidoes in my teaching I think it brings some of the real world into the classroom when field trips are so sparse. I usually use you tube, then douwn load what I want to use in class, ot United streaming (discovery) But these other resources might ( with more practice at beter searcing) get me more resources.

TOOL7 Digital Storytelling

I enjoyed playing with Photo story. My Nephew Aaron was again learning with me. We thought of a lot of ideas to do with it. We were going to do an expos`e on 24 Hours in the life of a 13 year old boy.( his brother) but we have not gotten the picts yet. Aaron is also working on "24 hours in the life of an 8 year old," but is still working on the angle to use. While watching Say yes to the Dress, I started looking onthe internet for ugly wedding dresses. My neice is hoping to get married soon so I decided to make a photostory for her- Really Ugly Wedding dresses and bridesmaid dresses. I have it made and saves as a wmv but I can not find anywere that says what to do next- to get it on my blog. I feel really dum but I just don't know what to do.
I thought if using this as a vocabulary building for kinder. I could collect a lot of pictures in a catagory or topic then have it go through naming the things- farm animals, zoo animals, reptiles, school things..
I would love to hear how to upload my photostory!! Thank

TOOL6 Wikis

Wikis are really neat. I loved the Greetings From Around the World and Educational Oragami. In the Greetings, you can see that the kids learned things abouut their topic and then creativly showed what they learned. I looked at the one where a 1st grade class wrote a story over a period of time but it had been so edited by others I could not see what the 1st greaders did. The one that third graders did was like a pick your own ending type story - that was cute.

This looks like a easy place to publish student work. For my KinderKids I could post their work. I think that maybe more at the end of the year when they are writing a little more, we could maybe do report type with different students putting up different parts. I will contune to look at others ideas and see what else my kids could do with Wikis.

Tool5 Tagging

Tagging sounds like a great idea until you have tags and lists and bookmarks everywhere. I get very confused and overwhelmed with it all. I guess if I just chose one it would be better. for older kids I think it could be useful when doing research,especially with a group, they could collect sites, highlite what they like ( Diigo) and share them with each other, then decide what to use. One website I found using the tag kindergarten was
http://www.time4learning.com/reading/kindergarten-reading-program.shtml
it has good teacher infoand a cool chart that show reading development skills from 3yearolds - 5th grade.
The other site I found was http://www.kindersite.org/Directory/DirectoryFrame.htm
this site has a lot of fun math games for kinder. some links are old but the bus addtition game works as well as most of the others.
I am not sure how I would use Diigo or delicious with kindergarten. I will continue to watch others blogs to get ideas.

Tool4 googledocs and reader

I have used google docs before. this time I created a document to share with my teammates to compare our possible schedules for next fall. It was easy to put it up but does not have a lot of flexibility. I could not easily adjust the colum size and such like inn word. I showed my 8 year old nephew how to make an igoogle page and to use google docs. he thinks it is really cool he had me upload the book he is writing on to google docs. now he want his best friend to get an account so he can share it with her and he is hoping that she can add pictures to it as they work. He think it is a great tool. the big thing I noticed when editing was that I had to click 2-3 lines below the line I wanted to edit. I do not know if that is common or if it was just a problem with google docs today.
I also made a google readeer page. It will be helpful in keeping track of a variety of blogs without having to search all over for them. this could be helpful for students too if they are asked to follow several blogs or other feeds.

Tool3 continued

I just love Bookr. I can see my kids making ther own online books (with some help.) It is so easy and it looks so great. I searched different words for rocks and came across only appropriate pictures, but I wonder if other searches might come up with inapprorpiate ones. I could make a library for the kids after I know their topic, then use a username that they can search instead of tags.
I did make a word cloud but although they look cool, when applied to just a paragraph of text, it doesn't really mean anything. It might be cool to have all the kids add their own words that describe a character, place concept, put it in a word cloud and see what words come up the most(biggest). That would be interesting-kind of like a random graph.
My question now is- How can I make my spell with flickr smaller. I could make it into a jpg and just make it smaller, but int he html I do not see a place to change it's size.

Tool 3

So with all those image tools you would think I would find some I liked. Well,I did but not many. Moatly I did not see a educational use for them except maybe to keep thekids more interested. For kinder, they are too hard for my kids. well some they could do but not the embeddeding part. Well, maybe I am not giving my 5 year olds enough credit, maybe they could after a lot of help??
I tried all of the image editors some were easy to use(spell with flickr, FX, jigsaw, walk of fame,sidewalk) some were more difficult ( mappr.) Many required ( for all I could see) that you upload your images to flickr before you could use the tool ( imapflickr, flikrriver.) On my blog, I posted my example of spell with flikr, sidewalk( image chef), poetry blender (image chef.)
I thought logomaker was really dumb. maybe I missed something.
I think the cartoom maker and bublr could be used to retell in cartoon form but too hard for kinders. maybe we could do it as a small group.

Post 2 Online communities

Online education communities can be a great tool for sharing with students in other places or at times other thant classroom time. It kind of makes me think of the old fashion pen pals with a turbo charge. I have heard it used to relay messages about assignmnets, to do assignments and to just pass on new information. I thing at my school there are still many who do not have internet access to have blogging as an out of school assignement but kids could be given time to work on it during the day or afterschool in the library. In Kindergarten I would use a group blog for either the whole class or small groups. then we can do shared reading /writing while blogging. then share with other kinder groups in our building( or out).

2. What point stood out to you from the commenting advice? Use commenting as a way to teach tech etiquettely . I liked the way both talked about how to not only make better coments but also how to elicit better comments.
3. What five blogs did you select for your comments? so far Jill Sherrill, Maria/Alejandra Palermo,

Tool #1 Just beginning, again!

I am having many technical difficulties- many errors trying to create an account for voki. I still haven't gotten that resolved. But I think I have my girl up. I am trying to figure out how to use blogs in kindergarten or if there is someting else.