Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Tool #11

1.  My iPad is my new best friend.  Small, versatile, and has great capabilities for making my life easier in the classroom.  I want to see myself having students use it to capture their learning.  Vidoes, skypes, stations will be incorporated as much as possible.
2.  The vision has always been there, but do to lack of tools, it hasn't been a reality.  I am going to have to spend more time looking for apps, and sites, and tweaking lessons so that technology becomes part of the objective. 
3.  There is some really cool stuff out there, just need to find the time to sort through it all.  It's quite overwhelming!  Some of it appeared intimidating at first, but then it turned out to be quite easy.  I just need to take more initiative and jump in. 

Tool #5

Tikatok

This is a fun site for children to publish their own writing and actually have a book in their hand.  Students can write digital books, keep them on a "bookshelf", and parents can log in to purchase their favorites to keep forever.  I also like the worksheet feature that allows children to write down their ideas according to a template and then transfer it to the book.

I would also use this to create projects for parents for Mother's Day, etc.  It allows you to upload your own photos or use a gallery of clip art.

http://www.tikatok.com/home

Tool #10

1.  Three things that students need to make sure they understand even at the kindergarten level is that they should never share personal information with anyone that could be used in a harmful way (first and last name together, address, phone number, current location, etc.) Another thing is that in communicating with others whether Skype, email, text, etc. that they are respectful and that everything they put on the internet can be seen by anyone and it's there forever! Finally, we would discuss copyright and privacy laws. 
2.  Brainpop Jr. has a free internet safety lesson.  This resource teaches the children how to not give their identity out on the internet.  The children would watch the video and we would make a a classroom chart to hang about the information about what they learned in the video. This can be a daily reference.
3. Through the use of Brainpop jr., and discussions in the classroom, the children will learn about digital citizenship and their role as a learner.  They will pledge and commit to adhereing to the policies by signing the SBISD oath in the student handbook.
4. Vidoes and information about digital citizenship will be available on our class blog and this will be discussed at kindergarten orientation. Parents will be encouraged to discuss internet and digital safety with their children at home.

Tool #9

1.  It's crucial to tie technology to the objective in the curriculum.  The technology should steer the learning, not just be cutesy project after the learning takes place.
2.  Students need to be held accountable in stations and centers otherwise learning does not take place and it's unstructured "play" time. 
3. I love the idea of using wallwisher as a means of students creating sentences and jotting thoughts down about their sight words, or doing a write the room.  I can see myself using this as a station for literacy on a daily basis. Students will be held accountable because I can log on and see what they are writing on the wall, and it posts their name so I know exactly who wrote what and when.
4.  There are many good apps for iPad/iTouch and some of the ones I plan to use in centers are Concentration-attention which will help my student work on following directions.  Another one is  Pocket Phonics (abclite).  Students can do a snapshot of their work to show me or the kindergarten aid when they are finished. These stations would be limited to about 20 minutes and students could set the timer on the ipad/itouch to track their time.
5.  The ipad/itouch will be used to record students as they read, so they can hear themselves, as a listening station, and to create video clips.  I can use this to track growth with students where pencil and paper tasks are not applicable.  I see these devices being highly useful in working with children with special needs.

Tool #8

I am thrilled to finally have a webcam in my room!  This feature on the new net books will be useful for Skype and making videos of students working and learning. We'll be able to skype authors, parents, friends, quickly and efficiently! I use it at home with relatives and this opens up a lot of opportunities.

The ipad, itouch will be something I use daily in literacy stations, and math stations. Students already have a lot of personal experience with these devices and now we can bring that into the classroom.  Being able to sync all the devices and download apps so they are readily availabe to students is something that will be a time saver especially in a classroom of small children. Also, discovering that I can create a webclip for easy access to web pages that I visit often.

We will take a lot of time setting boundaries for usage of the devices that include responsbility and safe use!

Tool #7


Tool 7

This year My students will participate in the O.R.E.O. project.  
Information about the O.R.E.O. project can be found on at http://projectsbyjen.com/.
Learner Objective: 
* TLW collect information about objects and events in their environment:
* TLW pose questions; collect data; and record the results using objects, pictures, and picture graphs

Date:  Sept. 17 - Oct. 12
 
 
Description:
Students will observe how many oreos they are able to stack before the oreos® tumble.  Students are encouraged to speculate how many oreos® they think they will be able to stack and then compare actual results. Once the entire class has stacked their oreos®, they will average all their results to turn in ONE class amount.
 
 
This project is open to all schools all over the world.  My teammates will also be participating in this project 

Tool # 6

Skype is an excellent tool to use with kindergarten.  This tool allows students to have visual access to people, places, and subjects that are part of their curriculum.  What better way to see real life mammals than skype a zoologist in San Diego! 
Skype allows students to meet authors and have real time discussions about how authors get their ideas. Students can also meet with other students to learn about cultures, languages, and interests all of the US and the globe.



Wallwisher
I thought this tool would be great as the year progresses and students have a collection of sight words that they can read and write.  Students can write a sentence or thought about the word and add it to the wall.  This allows for some differentiation with different learning styles.  My wallwisher is Pink Piggy Word Wall.





http://wallwisher.com/wall/vanderj