Weather widgit

I was looking at some widgets you can add to your Blogs and found Weather Widget. This is a great tool for younger elementary students when you are talking about the calendar, days of the week and weather. It's interactive and fun. I was is Georgia when I downloaded it and the scenes match what you think Georgia should look like. The weather in the widget matched what was going on outside as well. It's something fun for the kids to look at on your Blog and informative as well. Sort of a break from my normal school Blog activities. Another widget I added was the news reel. Newsreel keeps me updated on the latest news about Apple, Google and Microsoft technologies.

Digital Story Telling

This digital story is about me and contains information my students might find interesting.  I would use Digital storytelling in the classroom for numerous different projects.  I think it's a great way to have each student introduce themselves.  The students would make a digital story about themselves and publish it to my classroom blog.  We used to do this with those big poster boards but they take up a lot of room in the classroom and hard to store if you want to keep.  Digital storytelling covers it all with no space issues.  I would also use this media to have students take a project and have to do an explanation through digital story telling.  Something that seems simple to do is difficult to have to explain in detail how to do.  For example, how would you break down the steps in making a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich.  Having to break down a process we take for granted can teach students to think things out more.

Evernote Online Tool

evernote:///view/10612204/s96/77a974d4-a638-4c8d-bb5e-c81b9bb713d9/77a974d4-a638-4c8d-bb5e-c81b9bb713d9/

Google Docs Welcome Letter

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1sn6RYePgLrNuzmR6FavYQB_DmqUfwmOVEYAH3TjAgNM


Google Docs turned out to be a pretty versatile program.  I liked the feature of creating a document that I could give others pemission to edit online rather than having to email the document back and forth.  Students would be able to edit and create team or partner papers.  I used the Google Docs application for this classroom letter.  If I was working in collaboration with another teacher in the classroom this letter when drafted in Google Docs allows for personalization for each of us on the team.  In this letter we were talking about welcoming the students and giving the parents and students an idea of the internet requirements needed.  My part was more general informative where as Amer was specific as to the permissions part of the project.  When you put it all together you get a document that you both worked to create and gives the subject continuity.

My Avatar

I would use my Avatar to give students assignments on my Classroom Blog or Wiki. My Avatar would give information on the assignment details and requirements. I would also use her to give parents announcements. I think the students would enjoy having their own Avatar that could give book reports on their on Blogs.
Pro's-It would give the students a fun way to get their assignments and engage their creativity to create their own. By giving presentations with their Avatar shy students could give speaking presentations without the pressure of being in front of the class.
Con's-You would have to make sure that the Avatars are appropriate for the classroom and that what they say is not offensive. Students may become dependent on their Voki and not become comfortable with their own speaking ability.

Final Project

This movie is designed for students ages 2-5 grade level. I would use the video as a supplement to other textbook material available. We would take health and nutrition in steps by studying one portion of good nutrition at a time. The video would be shown at the beginning of the topic session. The children would be asked if they thought they had good or bad health habits based on the video. The students would be asked to go home and make a list of what types of food they had in their refrigerators and cupboards. We would then divide the foods into the basic food groups. We would work our way through all the topics in the video in more detail in age appropriate lessons. Students would be asked to identify the good habits and come up with some new ideas for recess exercises we could do as a class. To look at the portion sizes part of the video we would integrate it with our fractions lessons in Math. We would also study labels and how to read them among other activities.  At the end of the course they would watch the video again and see what facts they have learned and decide if they felt they could make some healthy changes to their current lifestyle.

Assessments

The two assessments styles I would like to use in my classrooms are Real-World and Self assessments.  I think that the real world assessments allow students to feel that they are getting unbiased and honest feedback.  The people in the outside the classroom world will not know the student personally and can therefore give an honest open opinion. Sometimes students within a classroom have certain biased feeling toward another student and sway their feedback based on those biased feelings.  I also feel that students will get a feeling of accomplishment when something they put out to the world is accepted and thought of as important enough to elicit a comment.

Self assessment is also important because students need to be able to look inside themselves and be honest about what they see.  Students seem to have many excuses as to why they can't complete certain assignements or to what standard they are working at.  If they were taught at a younger age how to look at their work and honestly assess it they should be able to understand where their weakness are without causing an argument when the teacher assesses them from their point of view.