VoiceThread

Voicethread allows users to upload their own photos and add their own audio clips. It is a great free resource for educators to make lessons for their students to execute on their own time. I would use this tool if students finish work early and needed a new assignment to keep them occupied.

Xtranormal

I've been exploring xtranormal.com which is a website where users can create their own videos with cartoon characters speaking whatever the user wants them to say. The user can choose the camera angle, character, setting and voice to create an individual movie. I personally do not like what the monotone voice that computer-read text sounds like. However, I think young students would really enjoy receiving information and instruction through this medium. As Marilyn pointed out in class, this website does have some inappropriate material on it so students wouldn't be able to create their own videos (in the classroom at least). But teachers could play this in the morning to catch students attention and tell them what they will be expected to do throughout the day and some possible goals for the class.

Glogster

Above is the Glog I made at glogster.com. This is a fun, creative and free website that allows users to post images, video and audio while adding frames, backgrounds and graphics. I think this could definitely be used in the classroom as a way to present new material to students. I chose to make a glog about the Scientific Method. I made it to be supplemental to a lesson but the page includes a video talking about what the Scientific Method is a why we use it along with the main steps included in the method. It was easy to create the page and in all this page took me all of about 15-20 minutes to put together including the time it took for me to find a video I liked. I think it could be a really fun way for students to post poems they have written and add backgrounds, images from the web and graphics to enhance and go along with it. They could then share their glog poem pages with the rest of the class. There were many options to choose from but not enough to keep students browsing for 30 minutes through pages and pages of options for one graphic. They would have enough to find something they like, change the font, color and size to make it their own. All in all, I really enjoyed this site and I think it has some great potential for education purposes.

Rubric Site

An easy site to create a quick rubric is rubistar.4teachers.org. Teachers can choose what components they want to include in their rubric such as 'content' or 'presentation' and then edit the description of the grading from what the website provides. For instance, if I was making a project about making a Google Earth project, I could add the requirements I created for my class into the 'content' section by specifying the content that I wanted my students to include. In 'sources' I could say to get a '4' students would have to use 4 pictures, a YouTube video and audio. It's free, easy and doesn't require a login.

Google Earth

Google Earth is a fun way to show students various historical & influential places and monuments throughout the world. Google Earth allows you to create your own 'tour' of the world where you can show children the important rivers of the world or the capitals of various countries. I chose to do a tour of important American monuments and natural landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, Crater Lake & the Alamo. It's possible to add pictures and video into the tour as well so if there was a video on YouTube explaining how the Statue of Liberty came to the U.S. and why it is so important it could be added to the Statue of Liberty pin in the tour. Audio and personal video can also be added to help walk students through the tour and explain the importance of the places they are visiting. Students can also create their own Google Tour to reinforce learning and have them research the places they are adding. Guidelines would need to be clear and easy for students to follow to make this effective.

A useful resource for learning how to use Google Earth is jogtheweb.com/run/vWtFwfVndYCs. There are many how-to's and lessons on all the possibilities of Google Earth.

Spelling with Flickr

metaatem.net/words/ is a fun way to spell and use different letters and numbers from Flickr. I created the date and my name and had a lot of fun! I think this could be fun using spelling words or having students incorporate this into a project of some sort. A cool feature of the site is that you can change the letters or numbers by clicking on them. So if you got your results and there was a cursive letter in the sentence, you could click on it and it would change that letter. I think students would really like working with this. Also using this as the way to display the date for the day might be a fun change from writing the date on the board.

Odds & Ends

I have visited blockposters.com before taking this course and I found it interesting and cool but didn't have any personal use for it. After considering how to use in in a classroom situation, I am still unable to think of any extremely fun and interesting ways to use it. It could be used for large pictures when teaching a subject. The teacher could possibly add a page to the picture as a class reward to reinforce good behavior so that the students don't know what the picture is until they have gathered enough good behavior points.

Similar to blockposters.com I struggled to find a creative and unique way to incorporate bighugelabs.com into the classroom. I think it's a fun website and a great free website for using your own pictures to make calendars and mosaics. A teacher could possibly put together a mosaic of students from the first day of a school and hang it in the classroom. Or another option could be to make a calendar with a picture of the 'students of the month' for that month. Each week a student can be the special teacher helper who leads the line, collects papers or runs errands to and from the office. For example:

April 1-7: Sarah

April 8-15: Jacob

April 16-23: Payson
April 24-30: Christina

I really like text2mindmap.com and I think it could be used very effectively with students. Educators could have their students create their own thought maps regarding books, current events, historical events and scientific relationships. It would be a great way to brainstorm with all students and have them track their thought process and help analyze and categorize it.

PLN Web Resources

classroom20.com is an excellent resource for educators to collaborate on ideas, tools and resources. The website provides blog links, forums and provides a search by subject and area. By working with fellow teachers and communicating about what skills and practices work or don't work in the classroom, educators can possibly apply these into their individual classroom. teacherlingo.com is a similar website but the blogs featured on the main page are not all related to education. One featured on the main page talk about wishing for a gas station on the way to school while another posts a picture of a messy living room with a short, unspecific blog post about how busy the blogger is. However, there were blogs that looked potentially useful and fun to use. Both are easy to navigate and can give users access to great blogs and websites.

SmartBoard Resources

SmartBoard lessons can be found throughout the worldwide web. One good website I found was www. eduscapes.com/sessions/smartboard/. This website provides a list of different lessons available at the click of a button. There is no downloading necessary and everything is free. The website goes through what SmartBoard is and how it can be used as a teacher. As Marilyn has said in class, a large part of what teachers do is to borrow resources and tools from other teachers. As an educator, blending these borrowed materials into your own teaching style to help cater to your student's individual learning styles is the most important part. www.smartboardrevolution.ning.com is another website where educators have gathered to share information regarding SmartBoard and the ways in which they have used it in the classroom. Another good resource is bristolvaschools.org/mwarren/SBActivites.htm is a website where educators can peruse various lessons and activities for different age levels.

Spelling City

Spellingcity.com is a free website that allows students (or teachers) to put in vocabulary words and then immediately tests them on it. The students put in up to 5 words and then in the test portion, they listen to the computer voice say it to them and put it in a sentence. There is also a section with games which I think students would be excited to explore and play with. The game section includes games that help students become familiar with alphabetizing words, spelling words in a hangman-like game and finding the missing letter in a word. This would help them to learn to spell and become comfortable and excited about their weekly spelling words. I think this might be too advanced for 1st grade students but 2nd and 3rd graders would be old enough to use the computer and enter in their vocab words.

Internet Safety & Copyright

Another important topic to talk about with students are the issues of internet safety and copyright. By creating an interactive SmartBoard lesson regarding safety, plagerism and copyright, students will begin to learn the foundation of what is appropriate to use and do while on the internet. They need to be taught what to share, what websites to avoid and how to use sources but not steal from them. Learning some of these skills early in elementary school will make the research process easier for them in middle school and high school and eventually college. Really, web safety is a real world skill and copyright issues are something that should be made aware of from an early age so students don't get into sticky situations.

PortaPortal

I am simply in love with portaportal.com. I volunteer in a 4th grade class and the teacher uses this website. The students find it easy to use and there are a variety of websites to choose from (if you so choose) and there can be a folder for each academic subject studied. The teacher can specify roaming PortaPortal one of two ways:

1) If an educator wants students to work in a particular area (such as learning their times tables or how to make graphs) then they can specify by saying "Please go to PortaPortal and click on the Math folder. Go to Hooda Math. I would like you to only work from this website today."

2) Or if students have free time after finishing an assignment, the teacher can say "Go to PortaPortal once you are finished and visit websites in the Reading folder."

Search Engines

There are thousands of search engines on the web, the most notable being Google, Bing and Yahoo. An important job of a teacher is to sort out the useful search engines from the bad ones. Some search engines do not find good, academic material for students to work with. As a teacher, you don't want your students wasting precious class time sifting through thousands of unrelated sites. One way to prevent this is to give students engines that relate to what they're looking for. If they are looking for pictures relating to a historical event, find a search engine that finds pictures off the web. Same for videos; there are many engines that search solely videos. There are also subject specific search engines such as historybuff.com and chemindustry.com. I am a Google fan but this is primarily because I was never taught to use anything else. By the time I was well versed in searching and researching, I was loyal to Google. When Bing came out, I was skeptical and hadn't even checked it out. However, I think by limiting myself to one search engine I have limited my options and resources. When I have my own students, I don't want limit their knowledge and the tools that they work with but instead I want to open them up to unlimited possibilities. I think a big lesson that students from their teachers is how to use these many search engines effectively so that they find the material they need and do not become overwhelmed.

In addition, educators can create their own custom search engine in relation to whatever subject matter the class is covering at the time. Google provides a free account where teachers can add websites they deem useful and decide whether or not they think students should be able to access other websites or not. I created an account and added a dozen websites in less than 5 minutes. This could save teachers a lot of trouble trying to help herd their students in the right direction when it comes to research. This way, students will have a fenced in area to work with while still perusing several websites for the information they want and need.

Free Rice with Free Learning!

freerice.com is a great free resource for students to learn and contribute to hunger problems. The bowl on the right hand side of the screen keeps track of how much rice each student earns. Teachers could create a classroom competition to see how much rice a single student can earn in a specific time period. Or create an incentive by saying "If the entire class earns ____ in 30 minutes you can have an extra 5 minutes of recess". The website has different academic categories to choose from so students can learn new words or practice math problems. It's a great website!

Scriblink & Thinklinkr

Today we explored scriblink.com and thinklinkr.com. Both are free websites that hold potential educational value. Scriblink is a website where students can draw, write, paste and collaborate on a virtual white board. They can play with colors and insert pictures or equations. I think this website has a lot of potential with further investigation. I think students would really enjoy using it. I think this website could be a good tool posting constructive criticism in regards to papers or other assignments. Thinklinkr was more confusing to master. The website isn't clear on how to add users to one document so that they can post on the page. However, after about 20 minutes of trial and error, we figured it out. This would be a cleaner way for students to post about their peer's work but I don't think they would find it as fun to work with. Both websites have pros and cons but I think if the teacher became more comfortable with using them their students would reap the benefits.