Thing #21 Slide Share

I created my slide share on Ning, because I thought that it was a great resource for teaching to use when planning lessons for their students. However, I noticed when I uploaded my picture from my computer to SlideShare, the transitions didn't come over. That's good to know for future SlideShare projects, that way I won't waste time finding the "perfect" transition. PowerPoint presentations have been used for a long time now, and SlideShare can help make those PowerPoint accessible to everyone! It beats having to email the PPT file out! You can just share the link! You can use SlideShare in the classroom to introduce a topic, or you can have the students create a SlideShare presentation!

While exploring SlideShare, I found some great slide shows on animals. One I found was on funny animals. I thought that my first graders would get a hoot looking at all the funny pictures. But, to incorporate it into the standards, I thought they could pick an animal and write why it is the funniest animal of them all. This ties into the persuasive writing standard for this nine weeks, as well and the science standard. You can see all the funny animals below!

My favorite tool from itec 7430

View more presentations from rachelrtree.

Funny Animals Want Photo Shoot

View more presentations from Thaman Chhetri

Thing #20 JING!

Jing was a lot of fun to play around with! I did my Jing screencast on Glogster, because I thought that would be something that the teachers in my school would use! I had to try it several times though, because something would happen, like I'd get an email, and you'd see it on the screencast, or a phone would ring, etc. But I finally got it right! Jing is a valuable training tool for our peers. We can create tutorials that they can watch anytime! We can use Jing for not only teaching other teachers, but we can use Jing to show our students and their parents how to use these internet tools. We use skills tutor at my school, and I thought that it would be great if I had used Jing to show parents how to used Skills Tutor at home, then I probably wouldn't have had so many questions about it! A third way to use Jing, is by having the kids create one! One of the standards is to have the students create a how to writing. This is a perfect tool to help the students create how to writings, because they can show and tell how to do something first, using Jing. For the younger ones, we can create a screencast as a class, and the students can write about it! Here's my screencast on Glogster:

Thing #19 Google Docs

I have actually been using Google Docs for a while now. I found it helpful when creating documents from home that I want to use at school, or somewhere else. I have flash drives, but I seem to lose them! Since I can't lose the internet, I upload my docs there. I like that I have that option, but if I want to do special fonts or formats, I usually save special formatting till I get to school, so I don't waste my time initially. While I use Google Docs often, I'm ashamed to say I just used it to upload files I create in Word, and I have not created any documents or presentations in Google Docs.
I'm really excited about the forms part of Google Docs! I thought this would be a great assessment tool!! I could make it short and sweet and to the point. It can be used as a collaborative tool because a team can create a presentation on a specific topic so each person adds more to it. That's the great thing about Google Docs. It can be updated from anywhere by whoever has permission! This helps save work from one person, to being a team effort to create an awesome presentation! You can also use the Google Docs Spreadsheet as a collaborative tool- it can be used to keep track of class data, student data or even field trip information.
In the classroom, we can use Google Docs to create a class presentation. The teacher can create the outline and the students can "fill in" the blanks. I thought in my class we can create a "Never Ending Story" using presentation, where the student can continue with a story, add pictures, drawing and more!

THing # 18 NING!

Before I started exploring these social networks, I already had a negative outlook. I just couldn't see social networking sites used in the classroom. However, I had NO idea there were so many other social networking sites! I just thought there was Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. But once on Ning I searched "First Grade", since that's what I am teaching this year, and found a whole site dedicated to first grade teacher with resources, forums, and more!! I requested to join, because I am excited to see what other First Grade teacher are doing and I am eager to try new things in my class!! I couldn't see much because my membership has to be approved first, but from the home page, and what I could see, I know this will be a great resource for me!

While checking out Classroom 2.0, I came across a great discussion post on what technologies we teachers are using in their classroom. I found several Web tools that I haven't heard about yet. It was fun checking them out and deciding which would be good for me and my team. I love how Classroom 2.0 has weekly shows. That way, if there is a topic that I am interested in, I can tune in! There are so many great resources out there for Social Networks. I feel bad that I was so against them in the beginning. I really can't wait for our next team meeting so I can share these resources with them. This should help make lesson planning easier, and finding new ideas more fun! I get bored with doing the same thing over and over, and instead of trying to reinvent the wheel each year, I can check out what others are doing, and share my ideas as well!!

Thing #17 YouTube and TeacherTube

So, I first starting looking for videos that I can use in my lessons. I'm all about killing two birds with one stone! Anyway, in YouTube I just searched first grade, and right away found several "Hooked on Phonics" videos. I watched a few, and they were actually pretty good! I thought they would be great for some of my struggling readers to watch on the classroom computers, just to help them more with their phonics! Here's one on -sh and -ch:

Since I found a video for language arts, I wanted to find one for Math. This was considerably more difficult, I found lots of songs or parts of songs, but I thought they were too cheesy for me. Then, I found this song for Skip Counting. I know that my first graders had a hard time counting by 2s at the beginning of the year this year, and it would have been great to have. It's a very catchy song counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s! Check it out!!

I have been trying to knit forever! I know the basics, but I haven't been able to start a project! So for my how to video, I found several videos showing how to knit!! I watched some show how to cast-on and knit and purl and cast off! Lots of great videos to choose from too! There were over 600 videos on knitting! I don't have the time for all of them, but it's great to know where to go when I get stuck! The last video I looked at in YouTube was my fun video! This year the teachers at my school are singing a song for the kids to get the pumped for the CRCT! So I looked up some songs other schools have done! I found a great one a school did to Lady Gaga's Poker Face! It's Test Taker Face, it's too good not to share!

I've heard of TeacherTube, I prefer SchoolTube, but they are both very similar. While at TeacherTube, I thought of searching for items that have to do with Folktales, which is what my WebQuest is about. I found a cute video where children make coffee portraits of Johnny Appleseed.I thought that my students can create their own portrait of Johnny Appleseed, and write what they have learned about Johnny Appleseed on his "hat". This is similar to what the young children did, except they will be required to show what they've learned! I even think that this would be a great project to share with our parents! I've made a few videos and posted them on my classroom blog. One of the last ones we did was when we were learning about Teddy Roosevelt. I have my students create a Teddy Bear and write 3 facts about his life on the belly of the bear. Then I took a picture of the bears and made a movie for our blog! The kids love seeing their work, and their parents love it even more! I'm glad I checked out TeacherTube, because I never thought of using it as a way to get ideas!

Thing #15 Podcasting

I checked out a few Podcasts on iTunes. I found one, that I didn't subscribe to because it had not been updated since 2008, but it was Why? The science show for kids. I liked this show because, Dr. Dave takes questions kids have about Science, like "why do we have five fingers", and answers it for them! Kids are so curious and I loved how Dr. Dave wasn't afraid to answer those tough questions. Many of the questions deal with weather, animals, and other science topics. This would be a fun podcast for the class to hear, or a small group of early finishers. Another Podcast I found was a video Podcast that would be perfect for Kindergarten and early readers. It's Super Why from PBS Kids. This I found from Learn Out Loud. It's great because it combines a great story (this particular one was the Three Little Pigs) and phonics skills like blending and decoding. Plus it's a cartoon video podcast which will be appealing to the younger kids! The only challenge with this, is that it's not available on iTunes, unless you want to purchase episodes of the TV show. I liked Learn Out Loud better than iTunes, I felt like I had to filter more with iTunes than I did with Learn Out Loud. Plus it had other great Podcasts that I am interested in! I've never used Podcasts before, but I'm looking forward to learning more ways to use Podcasts in my classroom!

Thing #14 Delicious

I first heard about Delicious in a training session at my school. I wasn't too impressed during that training. I think it was because I didn't have the chance to really explore it. It took me a while to figure it out how to use it, but once I did, it was pretty cool! I used it this time to bookmark websites that will go along with my Multimedia Project for ITEC 7445. I was able to browse links and decide which ones would work best with the project. I can see Delicious being a great tool for bookmarking the links that we come across when researching a topic or looking up great sites to share with the kids. I like that with Delicious we can organize the bookmarks with tags, which makes it easier to find. I also like that I can search delicious and find sites that other educators have found. So it makes it easier to find good, quality sites instead of sifting through sites and spending the time just to find a few good sites. Delicious is also a great place for sharing! I can see using this with my team, so whenever we're out on the web, we can just "tag" a great site we've found and then our teammates can see what we've found. This is a great tool for collaboration and a great resource to turn to when looking for great sites!

Here's my Delicious URL: http://www.delicious.com/rachelrtree

Right now, I've just added sites that go along with my Multimedia project, but I plan on adding more!

Thing #12 Web tools

So, I had so much fun exploring many of the tools listed in Thing 12. I had the most fun with befunky. I took a picture of my dog (he won't mind being on the internet), and changed it! I spent a lot of time playing with this site, and had to share it right away with my family and friends! Here's a little bit of the fun I had with Miles' picture!

This is the Original.

This is the "pop art" version

This last one is the "old timey one" I did a couple of things to the original to make this photo look like it was taken a long time ago!

Now, that was all fun, and I think we can use befunky.com when our students are learning about long ago and today. They can even create their own picture, and make it look like photos would after 50 years! The callenge with this site is making sure the students are following directions. There are so many cool things to do to photos, that it would be easy for students to get off task. A solution to this challenge would be to have this assignment done in small group, so that the teacher has more control of what they are doing.

I had so much fun with Wordle that I had to share! This gives itself more to classroom use than befunky.com because it essentially is a word wall online! I thought that this would be a lot of fun for my first graders. We could create two word walls. One at the beginning of the unit. So the students would list words and things that they know about a specific topic. Then we'd create a second wordle to show what we know after the unit. It is a great visual for the students to see how much they have learned about something. Here is an example of a wordle I made about George Washington Carver:

There are many different designs, fonts, and colors to choose from! I also like that once published, it comes with an html code, so I can embed our wordles in the class blog for the parents to see what we've learned as well! I've learned that the more parents know about what's going on in the classroom, the less emails you get from them! :-) Plus this is something that the kids did and can be proud of! They will want to go home and share with their families what they have learned about George Washington Carver, or whatever they are studying!

Thing #11 Slide Show- Wild Animals Edition

So, I decided to make my slide show about animals, and I wanted to include animals that we do not see that often, like Ocelots, Snow Owls, and Tarsiers (which are the cute little animals with BIG eyes!). Here's the slide show I made about Animals, this is the beginning of what I will work on for my First Graders when they study animals in the last nine weeks.

Where these pictures came from:

Picture 1 (Elephant): http://www.flickr.com/photos/drxeno/2901314548/

Picture 2 (Flamingos): http://www.flickr.com/photos/kjunstorm/2222367956/

Picture 3 (Gorilla): http://www.flickr.com/photos/davelau/1386573487/

Picture 4 (Lion): http://www.flickr.com/photos/http2007/4698944027/

Picture 5 (Ocelot): http://www.flickr.com/photos/ana_cotta/2521898117/

Picture 6 (Penguins): http://www.flickr.com/photos/drxeno/2900469607/

Picture 7 (Snow Owl): http://www.flickr.com/photos/drxeno/2900470023/

Picture 8 (Tarsier): http://www.flickr.com/photos/abufaiqa/4409689350/

Picture 9 (Tiger): http://www.flickr.com/photos/fpat/3410439596/

Thing #10 Flickr

So, when I first started to "explore" Flickr, I got overwhelmed! I knew I needed to find pictures that I could use, so I went to the "Commons" when I was exploring Flickr, however the pictures there were not what I was looking for, and I was getting bummed about this assignment. I didn't want to just pick pictures because I had to, I really wanted to find pictures I could use for this assignment, but also for my classroom. I'm all about "killing two birds with one stone". So, I got off Flickr for the night, and tried again today. I'm so glad I tried again, because I explored more and found "Creative Commons"! That's where I needed to be, not just "The Commons". I must say it was then I started to get excited about this assignment! There were LOTS of pictures for me to choose from, and when I put in a search for "animals" since we're learning about them soon, I got what I was looking for! I used the slide show option and then starred or added some pictures to my favorites, then once I was finished (I got bored before all the pictures were finished- there are a lot of CC pictures!) I went to my favorites and picked from those, which ones are the best. Here is my favorite!http://www.flickr.com/photos/kjunstorm/2222367956/

Thing #9- Creative Commons

So, I must admit I have not seen the CC on any of the websites that I visit. I even looked around for sites that may have CC on it. But no such luck. After I post this I'll find one, now that I'm not looking! :-) I must admit, I "borrow" images from the web all the time! I used to (before the county made changes to our computers) put images of what we were studying as the backgrounds to my student computers. I think that creative commons will help students when working on their projects. First, they are allowed to take music, videos and other medias and modify and change it to meet their needs. This is something they have not been allowed to do before creative commons. For example, they may want to use a video, but there is a chunk in the middle they do no need, if the video has the Creative Commons license that allows them to change and modify the video, the student can do it. Same for teachers. There may be something that you want to add to your powerpoint, smartboard notebook, or other media file to support what you are teaching. Now, you can do it more freely. This even works well if our students want to publish their projects on the web, they can and allow other people to use their ideas.

Besides pictures of the kids, and the activities that we do in the classroom, I do not publish anything to the web. The pictures I add to the web are done so that the parents can only see them, to protect the privacy of my students. However, I think that if I were to begin publishing on the web, that I would get a creative commons license because I think that Creative Commons is the future! The web is a great place for collaboration and sharing information. Currently everything is "all rights reserved", but soon, I think most sites will be "some rights reserved"

Thing #7 - Wikis

So this was really my first experience with Wikis. I have been interested in them, but a little scare of how they would work in my classroom. However, after reading Vicki Davis' blog, Wiki Wiki Teaching, it helped me to see all the possibilities there are out there in the wiki world! One of my favorite parts of her blog was where she was describing the students' excitement of creating the wiki and using it! I can't remember there ever being a time where I was so excited to go to a class in high school. It's amazing to see high school students so excited about something and learning at the same time! This blog was really inspiring and even though I don't teach high school, it got me thinking of ways I can use a wiki in my classroom. I know how excited my students get over Voki, Xtra Normal, and movies we make as a class! So I'm sure they would love being a part of creating a wiki.
Most of the Wiki's I chose to check out were ones created by elementary school students, so I could get some ideas of how I could use a Wiki in my classroom, and I definitely got some great ideas! The first one I looked at was Kindergarten Counting Book. I was really curious how a wiki was used in a Kindergarten classroom! On this site, they took pictures of a certain number of items until they got to 100 items. I thought this was a big undertaking, and it looks like it might have been, since there are some numbers without pictures. However, it could still be in progress. I think this is a great starting point to building wikis. If i would changed anything, it would have more student involvement, meaning maybe have a student write the number they created and maybe a sentence using that number (depending on how far into the year, of course). I would maybe even allow future classes to build on, and add their number items so there are more than one picture of 1 item. I felt as though this had a lot of teacher work, and I would have like to see more of what the Kindergartners could do with numbers!

A really great wiki that I saw was Mrs. Kubler's 4th Grade Reading Group. I loved going through the discussions on this Wiki! It was so great to read the students' questions about what they think will happen next in the story, making predictions! What I really liked about this wiki is that it was for a reading group, so it makes it more intimate and special foe those students in the reading group. I think having a wiki for a small group like that helps shyer students feel more comfortable expressing themselves and their opinions freely! I also thought this was a great tool for the kids reading the book because it has the Word Wizard which is a resource for the readers to find meanings of words they may come across in the book. It also has a section for the students to summarize what they read, called Wrapper Upper. Summarizing is a great comprehension skill, and this wiki made it fun! I don't think there is much I would change on this wiki, I think this is a great example of how a wiki can be used to make learning fun!
Since Dr. Seuss has a birthday coming up (March 2nd), I had to see what the Salute to Seuss wiki was all about! This was pretty amazing! There were pages added from classes all over the country and from other Countries (New Zealand)! There's a place for teachers to upload pictures of their Dr. Seuss celebrations and activities. There is also a page where teachers could find worksheets to go along with Dr. Seuss books. There were also book reviews where the students (with the aide of their teacher) can write a review of a Dr. Seuss book. What I would change about this wiki, is to make it more available to other teachers. It looks like only the creator of this wiki was able to add and make changes to the information on the wiki. To make it a true collaboration, I think she should have made it open to other teachers to add their activities, worksheets or book reviews. I think that would make this wiki a "go to" place for teachers looking for Dr. Seuss related activities.
Looking at all the wikis really got my mind going with ideas for my classroom. The first thing I thought of doing was creating a wiki on all the Historical Americans we learn about in First Grade. There are 6 different Americans the students learn about and I thought it would be great if we could create a page on the wiki for each historical American. The students could create items (drawings, writings, etc....) to go under each historical American they learn about, that way, at the end of the year, they have a great collection on these Americans! I also like the idea of having a book discussion on a wiki, in First Grade, many of the books we read are picture books, but we could do an Author Study, and create a wiki where were read, review, and create activities for that particular author, like Kevin Henkes. There are lots of ideas for using wikis in the classroom. I can't wait to begin mine!!

Thing 5 - RSS/Google Reader

Wow.... I don't know why I haven't done this before. I've seen "reader" on my Google home page, but I didn't know what it was, and I guess, I wasn't all that curious. All I have to say is it is so cool! I love being able to have everything in one place. I don't have to check one site, then another, and another. It's all there! In the video we watch on Moodle, the guy said it was addictive, and I believe it. I think I spent way too much time going to sites and adding them to my Google Reader! While sorting through A LOT of stories, I found one that made me stop and read it entirely. (After a while, I found myself reading headlines and starring items that I wanted to go back and read more.) It was, 11 Resources for Teaching and Learning Web Safety. I thought this would be an interesting article to share because we have been learning about using "Internet Tools" in the classroom, and it's important to understand and to teach Internet safety. The Internet is great, but it's just too easy to get places that are not safe. This article provides 11 links to other sites about Internet safety, so you can choose depending on what suits you class' needs most.
I'm really enjoying the Google Reader, and this reminds me of our past assignment about "blogging literacy". Although not everything we're reading on Google Reader are blogs, we are still reading. This really changes the way we read online now. Everything is together in the same place, and depending on how much you subscribe to, you can read for hours!!!

Thing 4- Student Blogs

This assignment was a little more difficult, because many of the sites that I found seemed to be rubrics for blogs, like the ones we are writing. However, I found 2 that were pretty good and one in particular, I enjoyed exploring further.
I tried to really find ways I could use a rubric for student blogs in an elementary school setting, because I think that student blogs are important and can be done in elementary school! Having the students have their own blogs to respond to topics a teacher poses is a great way to really assess what the students have learned in class. Here is the rubric I came up with:

Criteria	Unacceptable	Acceptable	Target
Blog Posts by Students	The student shows little or no understanding of the blog topic and provides no examples in their writing.	The student shows some understanding of the blog topic and provides 1-2 examples in their writing.	The student demonstrates a thorough understanding of the topic and gives 3-5 specific examples in their writing.
Comments or Responses that students leave on other student blogs	The student does not comment on any of their classmates blogs.	The student comments on 1-2 of their classmates blogs. The student does not provide thoughtful feedback.	The student comments on 3-4 of their classmates blogs. The student’s comment is positive and provides thoughtful feedback.

The sites that helped me develop this rubric are:
A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs
and
The Reading Workshop- This is the one I had fun exploring more!!

Thing 3 - Blogging

While reading some of the blogs, I noticed several things. First, blog writing is so much different than paper writing. Paper writing (and reading) feels so formal. Many of the blogs I visited didn't have that, "I'm reading this because I have to" feel, but it was like I was reading something a friend was telling me. I also noticed that blog writing is more interactive with it's readers. A great example of this was in the blog, Why I Don't Assign Homework, the author posed his argument on why he doesn't assign homework in his math classes, however when he read a comment from a reader, he changed. The author was able to take in his readers argument on giving homework, and apply it to his classroom. If this was not a blog, this interaction would have never happened, and the author would have never found a new way to give homework to meet all the needs of his students!
I also noticed how reading a blog is so different than reading a book or article. Like I said earlier, it's not as cumbersome as some reading can be. Most of the blogs I read were fairly short, and they got their point across. But even more important, with reading a blog, links are provided to other articles or information that you might need or be interested in. In the Cool Cat Teacher blog, the author was writing about cell phone use, and how it has changed education. The author of this blog provided several links to articles and videos of interest to the reader. If we were reading a book we would not be able to quickly click and get to another article or video related to what we are reading.
Writing blogs are different than other types of writing, because with a blog, you are allowed to be brief, and just write a few sentences in order to get your point across. Also, with reading, writing blogs you can use links to help get your point across. In the blog, Why Can't We Do This? the author (who also wrote our textbook!) using quotes from news articles to really get his point across. He may have written 3-4 sentences, but using the quotes, you really understood exactly what he was trying to say. By the way, I think if we started charging 33 cents for plastic bags, more and more people will be bringing their cloth bags to the grocery store! I know I would! :-) I would even if they charged 5 cents! That can really add up!
One of the blogs I read that I really liked was 2nd Graders Write About Our Missing Duck. One of the reasons I really liked this blog was because the students did most of the work, by commenting on the blog! The students commented on where they think the Duck may be. This is a great way to show how commenting can contribute to writing. I also really liked this blog, because it is a great example of how elementary school teachers can use blogs in their classroom!
I do think there is a "blogging literacy". What we did for Thing #3 was to read blogs, and that is blogging literacy, reading blogs, writing blogs, and commenting on blogs. When I read Is This SSR, 2.0 I was reminded of "blogging literacy". Instead of having SSR in their seats with a book, that they may not be even that interested in, students can now use blogs for their SSR time. The students can choose a blog they are interested in, and read away! This would also be something great to do before the students begin writing their own blogs! I enjoyed reading many of the blogs, and I have found that they have given me some great ideas for my own classroom!

Web 2.0 at School

I feel that I am very fortunate to be in the school that I am. We have a foundation that pays for many technologies for our school to use! Web 2.0 in my school is using remotes for test instead of pencil and paper. Web 2.0 is weekly blogs informing parents of what we are learning, homework they may have, and any important reminders we may have. We also use the SmartBoard to incorporate many websites in our lessons. My first graders love the games or activities that we do as review or practice in class. I also really like just being able to access a picture of something from Google Images to show to my class what something looked liked 100 years ago! It really helps them make a connection to what they are learning when they can see an actual picture of Harriet Tubman and the routes that she took to get to freedom!

I thought that the article was very interesting. It's hard to imagine how much technology has changed, and will continue to change the way we teach. Now parents can be more involved in what is going on in their child's classroom. I liked the idea of having the students create podcasts and create and wikis to show what they have learned. It allows them to take ownership of their work, and feel proud of what they have done by publishing it to the Internet! Because kids today are spending more and more time on the Internet, using Web 2.0 tools are a great way to get kids engaged in learning. Because technology is changing we, as educators, must change with it in order to keep kids engaged. From a personal experience, I know that whenever I introduce a new technology (xtra normal, voki, etc...) my students are really excited and they stop and pay attention. It's almost like when you put in a video on, and they all are enthralled with whatever is on the TV. Except now it can be more interactive and involve the students to show what they have learned. I like that things are changing in this way. In order to keep educators relevant we must change as technology changes. Many of these changes help us, and are a great resource for the classroom! I am looking forward to what is next!