Kan-ed Portal Site Reflection

Okay so in class we discussed an awesome site that is made available to Kansas teachers. KanEd is has many useful resources that will help teachers in their classrooms and also benefit student learning.

As I looked around the site one link that caught my use was the links it provides to different websites were teachers can get ideas on lesson planning. One of the ones I really enjoyed was the Thinfinity website. This website provides you with many lesson plans on a variety of content areas and it aligns it to state standards. This is great because many times you get lesson plans from the internet but they are not aligned to state standards whatsoever.  Having this tool is beneficial and takes a lot of the hassle out of lesson planning and making sure what you are teaching your students is relevant to the standards!!

Animoto Reflection

So Animoto is this great alternative to slideshows.  Here you can make free 30 second videos about anything and everything.  It literally takes about 5 minutes to make a video.  If you want to make videos longer than 30 seconds you can upgrade your account to the plus or pro account.  They are either $5 a month or $39 a month.  The great thing about Animoto is that if you are already teaching you can apply for a free plus account.  Once you have the free plus account you can use the website for student presentations and also to showcase what your class has done during family night or parent teacher conferences.  I encourage you all to check it out!! P.S This is the video I created; it would be like a getting to know Miss Soto kinda video that I could present to my students the first day of school!!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Podcast Reflection #8

K12 Online 2010 – Kicking It Up A Notch Keynote: Intersections

This was a presentation about different ideas for teacher to “kick it up” in the classroom. Time and space are reluctant to learning, and there are many different new resources on the internet for teachers to use and get familiar with. With examples such as Google docs, Skype, second life, DimDim, and Eluminate are great tools to use on the internet. Blogs, wikis, and podcasting are also great tools outside of time and space as well. These different interactions allow for more freely interaction with students in your classroom. The entire curriculum can be used in different ways to make these subjects interesting with using technology, content, and pedagogy.

Podcast Reflection #7

Tech Chicks Podcast: Anna’s a bit of a Klepto Episode: 075

These two girls are great and they always provide good resources and tips for teachers to use in their classrooms. One particular topic and link they included in this podcast was, “Top 10 Technology Tips for New Teachers”. This is a great site for new teachers to go to in order to have resources and topics when they are entering their first year in teaching. It provides meaningful tips on how to incorporate technology in the classroom to better engage the students and provide meaningful lesson plans that the students will enjoy. These tips are something that a teacher could use throughout numerous years of their teacher.  That is definitely a resource I would use when I start teaching myself. Another link and topic the tech chicks talk about is, “Tom Barrett’s 11+ Interesting Ways to Get to Know Your Class”. This site provides different and fun ways for teachers to get to know their students the first couple days of schools. These interesting ways can range from creating a single sheet the students need to fill out to even doing a fun activity with the whole classroom so everyone can get to know each other. Not only will the teacher get to know their students, but the students will also get to know each other through this fun activity. These are a couple of my favorite topics and links that the Tech Chicks provided for me on their 75th episode!

Podcast Reflection #6

2010 PRECONFERENCE KEYNOTE Sharing: The Moral Imperative

In this podcast Dean Shareski talks about the importance of sharing ideas with teachers all over the world. His presentation starts off by a variety of ways to teacher can share ideas and communicate with one another on the internet. Dean makes a comment about before the internet we would never feel obligated to share things with other teachers and schools. Many teachers love to share and know that there is an abundant amount of resources to communicate on the web these days. Teaching is sharing, and if there isn’t any sharing there is no education. Blogs have become one of the most popular resources teachers have began using more frequently. Another popular resource teachers are starting to use is Skype, which is a fun tool to make free video calls to anyone in the world as long as they have Skype too.

Podcast Reflection #5

Tech Chicks: It’s not THAT much shorter# 74

In this podcast Anna and Helen share their experience at ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) in Denver, Colorado. They also share different links and resources that teachers can incorporate in their lessons or pass down to their students. Most of them are FREE, however my favorite one is the Toddler Timer and it cost 99 cents.  This timer consist of four different timers which are:

1.The Quiet timer: if you put a child in time out or if you tell the class we are not going to recess until everyone has been quiet for five minutes… you start the timer and it starts counting down.  If you’re too loud the timer STOPS counting down. The louder you are the longer the time is.

2.The slow timer: you can control the countdown speed.  You can set it for ten minutes but if the kids are acting up you can slow it back down where you can make a second last a little bit longer OR vice versa, if the class is being good you can speed up the timer and make a second last a half of second.

3.The sharing timer: Use it between a group (2-6 kids) of kids that are sharing something (slide, toy, station..etc).  Set the timer, Each child is  represented by a little animal so when you start the timer the little animal pops up in the middle of the screen to let them know how much time they have left. THEN once they have run out of time it goes to the next animal to let them know its there turn. It eliminate the whole “you’ve been taking to long…”. Everyone has the same amount of time.

4.Activity timer: You can set it for seconds. Most timers are set for minutes. You have the options to do a voice countdown too.

Podcast Reflection #4

Prove It Keynote: “Asking Bigger Questions About Assessment”

In this podcast Gardner Campbell explores a larger historical and cultural context for the issue of student assessment. He talks about proving what educators do to make a difference in the students learning. I found it interesting how back in the day “proving” happened publicly and orally; these test had a very social dimension to it. They were mostly test of credibility or even reputation. The purpose of this podcast is to start with complex questions of meaning so that educators may construct assessment wisely.

Podcast Reflection #3

“How Google Transformed My School”

This podcast video is pretty interesting. In this video they talk about how Google Applications change an entire school because it allowed communication, collaboration, and consistency. It just made it that much easier by:

-all stored online (you can access from any other computer with web connection!)

-invite people to view the documents and edit them

-everyone can be on that document and watch it being edited

-g-mail

Some beneficial ways and reasons to use Google Application are:

-lesson planning—share with other teachers and admin

- edit or no edit privileges

-spread sheets (organized data)

- Google forms: questionnaires and assessments