Thing #18

About 2 years ago I discovered www.teachertube.com. I have shown and utilized the informative videos on this site to compliment/enhance lessons with my students. When I taught third grade I showed videos on multiplication. Teachers on their showed different methods and it reached a few of my students who did not understand how to multiply. I showed a clip about prediction for our ELA lesson. There are a lot more videos now than there used to be but you still have to weed through many to find ones that are helpful or you can actually hear it clearly.
On www.youtube.com there are videos for pretty much anything you can think about. How tos, movies (illegal I believe), tv clips, pets, music videos, etc. I can learn a lot and show a lot to students but of course it is important to preview before and make up questions to ask while they are watching or after. Also, it is important to teach the students that they should not believe everything they read, hear, or watch but to do their own research.
This and videos like it are helpful for me to learn other ways to explain teaching concepts to kids:

Thing #17

I went to LearnOutLoud's Why The Science Show For Kids Podcast and added it to my Google Reader. I don’t agree with the some of the science things he teaches so I will not be using them in my classroom. I learned that you can subscribe to podcast without having an iTunes account or iPod. I tried to subscribe to Famous American Podcast from Jamestown Elementary but the Subscribe button wouldn’t bring me to a link to add to my Reader. Since I couldn’t subscribe to this site, I googled “1st grade podcasts” and found Ms. Berthaiume's 1st Grade Class which I subscribed to. I found http://langwitches.org/blog/2009/12/11/podcasting-with-first-grade/ which had a great example of “interviewing” characters in a book. The students can make up the questions they want to know before and during reading and the answers are found while reading. They learn to become more fluent readers, to read more naturally and with tone and inflection. The teacher mentioned these are the things they learned from Langwitches Podcast above: listening, speaking, presenting, comprehension, storytelling, performance, voice acting, oral fluency, media, and technology.

I would love to do this in my classroom but I need to learn how to do and edit, etc. Thankfully in Mesquite ISD we have people who can help us!

Thing #16

While exploring www.librarything.com I can see that this would be a great site for my husband and my students. I enjoy reading but my husband really, really enjoys reading so much so that he has a large library in our house. He could organize his books and find new ones that others recommend that he might like. He might luck out and get FREE books because they have a Early Reviewers program where you receive free books in exchange for giving them a review. I could have a record of my classroom books. My students will be encouraged to read because we could make a class/individual goal to read a certain amount of books. We could make a list of books we want to read and books we have read. We could even have a contest with the other classes of the same grade and make written recommendations (typed by them) to each other.

Thing #15

I have had a delicious account for almost a year so I figured out some of the ways to tag by trial and error. I really like that fact that I can login anywhere to get my bookmarks. I used to save them in an e-mail but I do not like doing that as they are not very organized that way. I learned something new-that you can share your bookmarks with others and explore through theirs! Technology has more and more things to discover all the time.

Thing # 7b

In reviewing the various articles that come though my Google Reader I found this http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=1073716. This could have been a devastating decision but thankfully he can stay in the US. I hope he works hard to help those who are in the same situation he was in and that he grew up in. Stories like these or people who have escaped the threat of death and are granted asylum here in the US can be a great teaching opportunity for students. We can show students the history of the US and how we are a blessed nation that can help each other and others from around the world. It gives them the opportunity to expand their worldview and learn from history.

Thing #14

After exploring www.weebly.com I discovered www.education.weebly.com which is a site dedicated to teachers and schools. According to their site you can “easily create a classroom website & blog, manage your students' accounts, accept homework assignments online, [and] keep your parents up to date.” This is great especially for keeping parents up to date or to see more than their child or I can communicate. However, I do wonder who has daily or weekly internet access. We have 4 computers in our room but 3 of them will be used a majority of them throughout the day for Waterford. I could set aside 1 day a week that we can all write something or take turns writing something on the website and learn how to upload and post pictures. I could also use www.weebly.com for my own personal website if in the future I would need or want one.

Using www.30boxes.com I can feel better about my life being organized and knowing people’s birthdays. I enjoyed having a to do list but it gets crazy when I have so many papers in my purse and desk that I can easily lose it. By using www.30boxes.com I can stay more organized and possibly, just possibly, feel less stressed.

I think we could use www.timeglider.com sparingly in class for social studies. If we are studying about a particular person or event we can make a simple timeline. This is good for logical thinking in the brain.