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.
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