Topic 19 - You Tube

Six years ago when I first started teaching, I would never imagine there would be such a thing as you tube or that it would be such a hit. I love the whole idea of streaming videos because I think my students love various forms of media.

I was first introduced to streaming from unitedstreaming.com. This is a wonderful tool for teachers and I think it is really easy to find great clips to reinforce lesson ideas and make topics more interesting to students. In years past, my students have loved the Maths Mansion video clips for our math lessons. There are some really great videos for geometry that any elementary teacher should check out.

It seems like the big trend now is you tube. My students are always asking me if we can find things on you tube. As a teacher, you have to be careful and view things ahead of time as there are many things on you tube that are not appropriate for the eyes of children. However, there are so many wonderful videos on cultures, communities, and social issues that can really support various curriculum. I think you tube also makes it really easy to search for various topics as well as other videos that can relate.

I plan to use more and more you tube with my lessons. It's just hard to find the time to view everything before I show it to my class. Which is crucial. A teacher at my school accidentally showed 3rd graders a video with a bad word in it because she didn't view it ahead of time. I think that is a big lesson learned. That being said, I still think you tube is a wonderful teaching tool.

Topic 18 Great Websites

It's amazing how much a website can enhance my student's learning. I'm continuously amazed by the new websites I am constantly hearing about that my students just love. Some of the ones I have learned about from Roblyer have been great. I think websites are fun to my students and they often times view them as a game rather than work or drill & practice.

My student are studying multiplication right now as I've previously mentioned. Their current favorite website is multiplication.com. They ask me to go on it whenever they have completed all of their walk. It is very kid friendly and I can see a difference in their multiplication facts. Getting them to study their facts is often like pulling teeth, but this has been working very well.

Our CIT does a nice job of telling us about new websites she is learning about. My students also love funbrain.com, mathblaster.com, enchantedlearning.com, and many many more. Our CIT recently exposed me to brainpopjr.com. Now, this is something we subscribe to, but I have found it quite useful.

Recently, I showed a clip from brainpopjr.com about adjectives and nouns. It was amazing to see how much more engaged they were by watching this video and they truly seemed to understand the difference between the two.

I love the way teachers are always sharing websites and helpful hints with each other. One girl on my team is always finding wonderful things on scholastic.com. It is amazing how easy google makes it for teachers. If anyone has any favorite websites, please send them my way.

Topic 17 - Technology and the Classroom...Oh How It's Changed!

Next week we our having our Greatfriend's Day (this is basically Grandparent's Day). My school is very blessed to have Promethean boards in every classroom. The group that I have this year has had a Promethean board since kindergarden. They don't know what it would be like without one. Grandparent's are always fascinated with what classrooms look like now. I always share our technology with them and show them the cool things that my students can do.

This year my students put together a little presentation that we will play on the Promethean Board. My students were asked to write a paragraph on who they were thankful for, why they are thankful, when they are thankful, etc. I took pictures of them individually outside by the pretty fall trees. They then drew a picture of everything they are thankful for on Pixie. We put these pictures in Photo Story and I recorded each of them reading their writing. We have classical music in the background. It truly brings tears to your eyes.

I know that the grandparents will be so fascinated with the technology in our classroom and how different it is from when they were students. My kids have done so many cool things and have them linked to their websites. They will have an opportunity to show them these things as well.

I'm really excited about Greatfriend's Day...and Thanksgiving!

Topic 16 - Skype

I know the Skype has been around for a while, but I am new to it. I Skyped with another teacher yesterday who I am doing a collaboration project with. We met yesterday via Skype to work out all of the details for our project with our students. My class is going to be collaborating with their class on a writing assignment. We are going to introduce our classes to each other via Skype. I'm really looking forward to doing this and I know my students will love it.

I think there are so many ways that you could use Skype in your classroom. I was thinking about the chapters I read this week and how we could use Skype with Art, Music, and PE. Those teachers could find athletes, artists, and musicians and Skype with them during class. You could have an athlete talked to students about healthy choices and being physically fit. A local artist could do a painting demonstration or talk about various works of art. Musicians could perform for students using Skype as well. I think it would be neat to interview and have a Q&A with people who are experts in particular areas.

Several teachers at my school have used Skype to talk with an author. I know that students find this very intriguing.

I am excited about this web 2.0 tool and I'm looking forward to using it in the future.

Topic 15 - I LOVE DS

I never imagined that Nintendo's DS could be used in educational ways. This past summer our design team at school had the opportunity to listed to Alan November speak in Boston. He is truly an amazing speaker and if you ever have the opportunity to listen to him, take full advantage. At this conference there were a series of breakout sessions, and one topic was Nintendo's DS.

I remember Nintendo from being a kid and I think of Super Mario and Tetris. Never in my life did I think teachers could use these in the classroom. What you may not no (or at least I didn't) was that a DS makes a little network with the other DS's around them. Student's can set up chatroom's and discuss anything from a reading reflection, a writing sample, or answer a math problem.

We are using them in my classroom for the first time tomorrow and my students are FIRED UP! As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we have started our multiplication unit. Every teacher knows what a struggle it is to get kids to memorize their facts. We are going to set up chatrooms tomorrow and have a competition to see who knows their facts!

One of the great things about this, is the kids have screen names, so only I know who comes in first and last. I get to monitor it by traveling to the various chatrooms. I am also going to have my students reflect on it when we are done to see what they thought about it.

I can think of countless ways in which we can use these in the classroom. We can do anything from spelling words to journal entries. I am so excited to start this!

I did a survey of my students to see who has a DS. 17 out of 21 of my students own a DS. Our CIT purchased 6 DS's so now each of my students have one to use. If you are interested in doing this and only a few of your students have one, it makes an excellent group project. I would love to talk about this with anyone who is interested in trying something really cool in their classroom that your kids will be crazy about!

Topic 14 - Technology Is Much Better Than Paper!

This week we started multiplication in math. This is an exciting time for 3rd graders. :-) In the past, I have had my students draw their own multiplication problems and tell a story about them. I do this because it helps me see if they truly understand the meaning of multiplication. I decided to try something new this year and have them draw their stories in Pixie (which is our district's drawing software). THEY LOVED IT! This was a very basic technology tool, but I was amazed by how it truly helped my students understand the concept. Sometimes they don't understand "equal groups" and Pixie allowed them to choose the same picture of groups and it helped them visuals and articulate the meaning.

They created 4 of their own multiplication stories and today they used objects around the room and created multiplication stories. For example, I had a group of boys who put all of my large dice on the number 5 and showed me that 6 dice with 5 of them showed 30 dots. Once the students wrote down their multiplication story and showed it to me, I took a picture of it with my digital camera. Tomorrow we are going to make a "multiplication movie" using Photo Story. My kids are so eager to do this and I've never seen students so excited to learn and show multiplication.

My students are so lucky to have the technology available to them that they do. I truly think that technology can enhance the way we learn and this lesson proved that.

Topic 13 - Technology in My Classroom

I am like a little kid when it comes to teaching with technology...I just love it! I am always looking for new ideas to enhance my teaching and strengthen learning. We are working on several cool things right now.

I have mentioned this before, but my students have started creating their own websites. They are having so much fun and it's amazing how it is motivating them to write! On their site, they write about themselves, they have links to their class portfolio, and they will have a favorite websites page with links to all of their favorite websites. This will take a while to complete. It will actually be a work in progress since they will constantly add to their site.

Earlier in the semester, we learned about a website called www.monsterexchange.org. I loved the idea of this, so I decided to pursue it with my kids. In this exchange, classes come together and design their own monsters. The students have to write a descriptive paragraph describing their monsters and the other class has to guess who's monster it belongs to.

The first roadblock I ran into was the issue of setting up e-mail. In my district, there are security issues with setting up e-mail for our students. Our CIT at my school helped me and we are tweaking it a bit. We are going to use Moodle (which is just like Blackboard) and create a class for the exchange. Students are going to work in partners to create their monsters and then write about them. Discussions and pictures will be posted on Moodle...a little like we have our discussions in EDU 6384. We set up our Moodle class today and we are going to Skype with the other class next week to set all of our "rules", "norms", and "expectations". My kids are going to LOVE this.

Next week we are starting our multiplication unit. I am going to have my students illustrate multiplication stories on Pixie (this is a drawing software). We are then going to compile our math stories and my kids are going to make multiplication movies. In the past we have made multiplication books with paper, so I'm excited to try it with technology.

I am always looking for new ideas, so if you have any great lessons...send them my way!

Topic 12 - Technology Across the Senses

I am always fascinated by the different intelligences. It always makes me understand my own learning as well as the learning of my students. I think it is important to consider the various learning styles when you are planning your lessons. I found a great website about the multiple intelligences and if you have time, you should check it out http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic68.htm. It is consistent with the Mapping Technologies to Intelligence article. There are some awesome links to sites with activities you can do with your students. I think it is interesting that researchers are continually learning more and more about the brain. In Howard Gardner's 1983 book, there were 7 intelligences and current researchers have identified 9 different intelligences. According to Gardner, we all have all of the intelligences, but no two people are alike.

I am definitely a visual/spatial learner. I like to see things and a picture always helps me retain. I love it when teachers add graphics to lessons or tie in a picture book or some type of visual. Somehow, my brain can connect to that. I am also a logical/mathematical person. I have this weird thing with numbers and I somehow always remember them well. Math is my favorite subject to teach and I'm always fascinated by what numbers can do. I would also consider myself a kinesthetic learner. I like to manipulate things with my hands and I love to create. I love movement in the form of drawing, dancing, and exercising.

I would be lying if I said that I thought about all of the different intelligences all of the time. On a day to day bases, I definitely use visual, verbal, and logical/mathematical learning styles. I do like to have my kids move around, so often times I will have some kinesthetic activities. Every so often, I will play music when they write. I have some students who love this and some find it very distracting. From looking at the table in the Mapping Technologies to Intelligences article, I do think I cover many of the activities for different intelligences. I like for my kids to work with their hands, I like for them to make connections with pictures, I like for them to create and collaborate.

My lesson plan covers a variety of these intelligences. The purpose of this assignment is to help my students develop their ideas in writing by using details. My students will find an interesting landscape picture that they would like to write about on google images. This will be great for my visual learners. Students will then post their pictures on our class page using moodle. Students will write a description of their landscape on moodle and students will try and guess who's picture belongs to who's description. Writing on moodle will appeal to my verbal/linguistic learners. We are just now learning to use moodle, so this should be an interesting experiences. Pictures and descriptions will later be compiled in a class movie by using movie maker/audacity. When making the movie, we will use classical music in the background. This will certainly appeal to musical learners. Objectives:

• Develop details in writing
• Use moodle to collaborate with peers
• Create a movie to show descriptive writing.

Below are some technologies that could be used to teach various intelligences.

Intelligence	Technology
Verbal/Linguistic	word process, e-mail, speech recognition
Logical/Mathematical	spreadsheets, search engines, webquests
Visual/Spatial	television, video, digital camera, digital animation/movies
Bodily/Kinesthetic	simulations, assistive technologies, joystick, mouse
Musical/Rhythmic	digital sounds, online pattern games, multimedia presentations
Intrapersonal	online surveys, digital portfolios with self-assessments
Interpersonal	instant messenger, message boards, blogging
Naturalist	mapping tools, database
Existentialist	virtual field trips, simulations, virtual reality, virtual communities, MUDs

In my lesson plan using moodle to write will appeal to my verbal/linguistic learners. Find the images on google earth will appeal to my visual learners. Creating a movie on Movie Maker will also appeal to visual learners. The collaboration of the whole project will appeal to my Interpersonal learners.