Week 6 Thing 14

This was a lot of laughs once I got past listening to myself talk. I feel like a rock star wearing these head phones with the mic on it. I love the idea of using this with kids to retell a story, with hand drawn pictures of course. We don't want any copyright problems:) I think it would be fun to have kids comment on their favorite part of a story that was posted as well.

Week 5 Thing 13

You have no idea how thankful I am for this class time today!! It was stress free and I got so much accomplished, not to mention all of the help I received instead of watching tutorial after tutorial. As far as the Google Docs goes, I'm going to say the same thing as every other person at an IB school. This would be perfect for our planner documents since they are always being changed and edited. This is so much easier than sending a Word Document as an attachment because everyone can make changes instead of me being the only person making changes.

Week 5 Thing 12

So, I was one of the people who linked my Glog to WikiSpaces for my word documents. What a hassle. Pbworks seems to be much more user friendly (maybe because I had all of the teachers in the class, thank you Nancy and Lori, helping me). I like Pbworks because there aren't any advertisements on the page. That was my problem with Wikispaces. Every time I embeded my blog, the advertisements would cover half of it. I would have to pay $5 a month just to get rid of that stupid feature. Pbworks has made it very easy for me to update my classroom website with spelling words, class calendars, pictures, and even Wordles. Anyway, I am very proud of all of my hard work. Feel free to take a look:) From Mrs. L's Laptop.

Week 4 Thing11

Wordle is more trouble than it’s worth. Actually, I shouldn’t blame Wordle. My computer is going to be the death of me! I just spent 40 minutes trying to create a Wordle based on my blog and all I kept getting was a big fat X. I tried going through their troubleshooting steps twice but nothing worked. I finally had to drive over to a friends house to use their computer. OK, calm down, breath deep.

I felt certain that the Wordle based on my blog would be full of umm’s and like’s. Good thing this is based on my typing skills and not on my speaking skills:) I found that my two biggest words used were “kids” and “people”. I guess that means that what I’m blogging about is in fact geared toward my profession and how these web 2.0 tools can be applied in the school setting and not about me, me, me. I have to say, once you get going on Wordle, it’s hard to stop. I was able to create one for the books in our Scott Foresman Reading curriculum. Which means this would be relevant for my first graders. Just like the tutorial mentioned, I can have the kids write a short summary, draw a picture, or sequence a story they read that was on their reading level based on the words in the Wordle. If the book was at their reading level, then the Wordle will be at their reading level too!

Week 4 Thing 10

As soon as you said “if you don’t happen to be on your regular computer, how do you even remember all the sites you’ve bookmarked?” I was sold. Do you know how many times I have found something useful at home and had to e-mail a link to myself just so I could use it in class? It’s ridiculous. This is amazing. I don’t think I will ever be this organized again. This organizational system is fool proof; there is no way you could lose a valuable website because of the multiple tags you can place on it, which I recommend. The more tags you have, the easier it is to find next year when you are teaching habitats again and can’t find your saved documents because you labeled them something that was relevant at the time, but makes no sense now (not like I’m speaking from experience or anything, ha ha!).

Anyway, I find this to be more useful for me as a teacher than for my first graders. However, I do have some high kids that are currently working on a research project. I suppose I could put websites that I have approved and that are kid friendly on my delicious account so that they could do a modified search for information instead of being flooded with a bunch of inappropriate junk that they can’t even read.

Week 3 Thing 9

Please don't kill me or think I'm an old lady who is unwilling to change with the new technology of the day, but I didn't like Twitter. Most of the tweets I read were about tattoo removal websites, how to get a $60 Starbucks card, and teachers complaining about how bored they were on a Saturday night. No offence, but I don't need an update on what people are doing during the day. However, I could see how this would be useful for answers to my questions because you would get information and links to websites right away from 20-30 people. I just found Google Reader to be so much more beneficial for gaining new information. I know when blogs are updated and I love that people can actually explain things and give you a link whereas Twitter limits you to a sentence or two.

I’ve gotten off my soap box. Please let me know if I totally missed the point:)

Week 3 Thing 8

Well, I checked out a lot of blogs from our class and realized that many people haven't been keeping up with their assignments. Ha! Ha! I decided to post a comment on Priests Postings because we seem to be struggling with the same things. Our struggles usually result in trial and error and then talking to each other at school to see if we did the assignment the right way based on each others interpretation. I know...total nerds. What can I say, I have never taken an online class before and it's nice to have someone to talk to about it:)

Week 3 Thing 7

Every week I feel more and more behind the times. I never knew anything like this, RSS, existed. This is so cool and I think I got a little carried away. Before I knew it, I subscribed to 19 websites and blogs:) I had to go back and really narrow that list down.

The guy on the Google Reader tutorial mentioned that you could type in key words like recipes. What a good idea. I am now salivating and making a grocery list because I have 10 new Betty Crocker recipes on my page. I also really enjoyed Cool Cat Teacher's blog with her list of the Top 10 Things Teachers Need. Who knew you could sharpen your old scissors by cutting sandpaper?

As you can see I gathered a lot of valuable information today;)

Week 2 Thing 6

Week 2 Thing 5

I absolutely loved this assignment. I haven't spent this much time goofing around on the computer in forever. I think I pretty much sent all of my friends a billboard, trading card, or a comic. How can you stop yourself when it's so hilarious.

There are probably a million ways to use this in the classroom. I love the idea of making a magazine cover for the class. I also thought it would be fun to take pictures from popular children's books and have the kids fill in thinking bubbles for the characters based on information from the story. We have a project coming up where the kids have to interview a family member. Wouldn't it be fun if the kids then made a trading card for that family member as a thank you? It could include some of the information the family member shared only with a super hero twist. I am getting way too excited about this:)

Week 2 Thing 4

I just booked my spring break vacation to Disneyland and that's all that's on my mind right now. Seeing this picture puts a smile on my face. I can't wait to feel like a kid walking down Main Street! I also chose this picture because Walt Disney is sort of our inspiration this year at Rockrimmon. Every year our principle gives us a theme. This year we are the Rockrimmon Imagineers. Doesn't that just seem perfect for this class? Walt Disney and his crew were some of the most creative and technologically advanced people. They were able to create a world that people only dreamed about. They made the impossible possible. Just when I'm starting to feel like some of this technology stuff is impossible for me to master, I surprise myself and get it done and even enjoy it.

Flickr is amazing! I have already set up an account and can't wait to start sharing my photos!

Credit: Joe Penniston