Google Reader

I have thoroughly enjoyed our Google Reader Project. Just this past summer, while preparing for the new school year, I stumbled upon blogs. I was SHOCKED at what I had been missing out on from the blogging universe. I feel like my world has been opened up once again with Google Reader. I love that all of my favorite blogs can be in one place rather than always googling them or searching for them on my bookmarks. I never have to leave the Google Reader window. I would say my only complaint would be that through Google Reader you do not get to see the creative side of each blog and that part is one of my favorite experiences with blogging. Seeing all of the different designs/ideas on blogs helps me to visualize the personality of the blogger and get ideas of my own. Overall it is a great organizational tool and I plan to continue to use it. Here are the blogs I followed for this class:

1.      CoolCatTeacher Blog http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

2.      Will Richardson http://willrichardson.com/

3.      Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/

4.      Free Technology for Teachers http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

5.      A Media Specialist’s Guide to the Internet http://mediaspecialistsguide.blogspot.com/

6.      Mathwire http://mathwire.blogspot.com/

7.      Little Literacy Learners http://littleliteracylearners.blogspot.com/

It is very hard for me to say that I have a favorite blog out of the seven. I really enjoyed reading all of them and they all gave me not only great ideas to implement into my classroom but also kept me up to date on different educational trends concerning technology. The blog that I found most useful was, A Media Specialist’s Guide to the Internet. I enjoyed all of the tools that she gave for teachers to use. I felt like it paralleled this class in a way because many of the things she shared about I had some sort of background to form a connection. With that being said my favorite post on that blog was, 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Collecting Information. I LOVE organization and this post was meant for me! The blogger gave 10 great websites that anyone could use to organize their life on the internet. Many of them are like digital corkboards where you can write post-it notes or just notes. Very Neat! It also gives websites to organize all of your internet researching. This is something that I find difficult. I go to so many websites, I often forget about great tools. One of their suggestions was a website called bagtheweb.com and here you make a “bag” which is like a theme and put websites in it that correlate to it. I could see myself using that for the different subjects/themes I am always researching on the internet.  I really enjoyed learning about all 10 of the tools listed in the blog and will be using them to help organize my life!

Social Bookmarks!

I LOVED this project! I like being very organized and my bookmarks I had under Internet Explorer always drove me crazy. I feel like my world has changed with this new little website, delicious.com, who knew???? I, like many other ED505 bloggers, will continue to use this tool. It is a great place to keep my educational websites. I will say this project took some time for me because I would become so engrossed in all the new websites that I wanted to start participating in the cool activities right away. The list I have made makes me very excited and I cannot wait to see everyone's and their resources! Take a look at my delicious account by clicking on girl below (picture from really neat website I put on my delicious account with free clipart)!

I also really like wordle.net. As you know I am new to my school this year and at the beginning of the year all the students created a wordle about themselves in technology class and I always thought they were cool but just made on word. I am so excited to know that it was wordle now. This would be great to use for a project. For example maybe if they are researching a new country and used words to describe it. There are so many options, very fun! Here is my wordle.

The Importance of Digital Citizenship

Why is it important to be a good digital citizen?

It is important to be a good digital citizen for the same reasons we hold value in being an active citizen. As a teacher I believe in developing the whole child. This means teaching citizenship. I feel fairly confident on that area in my classroom but I must say I will now embrace the digital world and expand my knowledge of digital citizenship to my students. The students are already becoming more and more advanced with technology and I think we must teach them earlier how to use the internet in an appropriate manner and use good judgments. I think being a good digital citizen is important because it protects you from many things. Some of these are your personal information, your emotions, your privacy, your friendships, and many more. I personally uphold the philosophy, “due unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I revisited the website digitalcitizenship.com and found something really interesting. They suggested a way to teach students the norms for using the internet that would encompass good digital citizenship values. They used the acronym R.E.P. which stands for:

R-Respect yourself and others

E-Educate yourself/Connect with others

P-Protect yourself/Protect Others

Each one of these sections have several different points included in them to cover the norms of good digital citizenship. As a teacher I believe you could also the website safekids.com to show safety on the internet in a kid-friendly way. Using some of these resources and making students aware of what digital citizenship is and its importance will help students be prepared for a technology rich society.

What value does a good digital reputation have?

Having a good digital reputation is very important, it parallels with having a good reputation in society. I think teaching students early about digital citizenship is important because I do not think students understand the importance of a reputation how it can affect them. The chart on page 222 in our text would be a good place to start. It goes over netiquette rules for the internet. Having a good reputation does not only come from the words you type but it also comes from how you type it, using correct grammar and presenting in a positive way. A good digital reputation can take you a long way and that needs to be communicated to the students.  

Thinkport Simulations!

I, as well as other classmates, had difficulty finding the simulations. I found classroom simulations and those are the ones I will discuss in my post, but I also found a link to “computer simulations” but it received an error message. I hope those were not the ones we were to use!

I really enjoyed the Elementary Ecosystems from Xpeditions Archive on Nationalgeographic.com (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/08/gk2/ecosystem.html.) In this simulation students act out an ecosystem and see how one species can affect many others. The students will either be animals or plants/food and have to interact with one another. When one is taken out, what happens to the ecosystem? In first grade we study animal habitats and what it takes to keep animals alive. We always take a field trip to the Ecology Preserve to study animals in their natural habitat. This would be a great place to participate in the simulation.

For my second simulation I found one that is a computer based software. Although it says that it is for grades 3-5 I think with support we could use this in first grade whole group. One of our units in science is Balance and Motion and we discuss speed and its relationship to gravity/weight. On this simulation from NCTM e-examples (http://www.nctm.org/standards/content.aspx?id=25037) students are controlling two runners and their speeds and starting points, watch the race, and compare time versus distance on a graph. This would be a great activity to jump start our unit on balance and motion. I could allow the students to start forming relationships between distance and speed through this software simulation activity! Very cool!

Overall I love the idea of simulations because I believe it gives the students first hand experiences with a subject rather than just reading about it. In my science class we learned about this Chinese Proverb: I hear, I forget; I see, I remember; I do, I understand. Simulations proves this saying by giving students the chance to do. I enjoyed this website because right here you have access to many simulations. 

Software Reviews

For this assignment I really had to learn how to navigate the site. It was interesting to see how they were all very similar in some aspects in not in the others.I enjoyed EducationWorld the best because I feel like it had the most to offer. I found it fairly easy to navigate and found myself looking around for a long time. The website I enjoyed the least was SREB because it was not very eye-catching and not user friendly to me. I also enjoyed Superkids and how their review teams were made of parent, teachers, and students. I like that they are gathering data from all aspects. I think I might trust their reviews the most. California Learning Resource Network seemed pretty straight forward to me. I liked some of their aspects like the newsletter and how their search of the different resources seemed easy to do as well. 

I am not 100 percent sure on all of my answers to the questions. I continued to look through the websites and the sitemaps but did not find definite answers to all of them.  This is what I believe them to be:

1)Which of these sites evaluate the largest number of titles? SREB gave the exact number to be around 10,000. The others did not give a number from what I can see, but seemed to have a lot of reviews.

2)Which sites are the most recently updated? I would say CLRN because it updates its newsletter every month and has the one for November 2011.

3)Which sites include reviews submitted by site visitors? This was also a tricky one. I know on Superkids it states the reviews are a team, and on CLRN there is a pretty lengthy process to become a reviewer. I actually did not find a site that allowed visitors to submit reviews.

4)Which sites would you use to learn about software you were considering for your students? I would use CLRN and Superkids because I believe them to be the easiest to search software and navigate their sites. 

Web 2.0 Tools

Although, many times I get overwhelmed with having a full time job and being in two grad classes, I can say I am LOVING learning all of this new technology. In my last class, Educational Planning, we wrote a research paper and mine was on technology in the classroom because I felt like that was an area where I could improve and was truly not educated on many of the programs available.

Web 2.0 Tools for Weather Unit in First Grade!

Concept Map (Bubble.us)
With that being said, I have completed my concept map and am ready to go start my video! I really enjoy Bubbl.us. Unlike other classmates I have not had the trouble of saving it, cross my fingers I was doing it correctly! My major concern is with not being able to align the bubbles. I feel like I spend too much time trying to get my bubbles in the perfect place. It is a hard program for us Type A people who need it to be perfect. I also would like to change my font. Both of these things you might be able to do, but I have not figured out how! Here is my concept map:

Video (Animoto.com)
I really enjoyed this website. I am very sad I did not know about this until now. Not only do I think it would be cool/interactive to use with students in the classroom, I could utilize it for my own classroom webpage to post pictures. My one concern was the length of the video for the free user. I think I would want the option to have longer videos, I had to delete three of my photos to get to the 30 seconds! Hope you enjoy my video. I chose the music, "Cloud Forest," not too exciting but I thought the title was fitting!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Glogster
Well, not so sure how much I like Glogster. I think the application is really neat and some of the graphics and designs are cool, but I do think it was very hard to use. I would imagine you would use this in a classroom to make a presentation about a certain topic, but I think a lot of support would be needed to do so. I really enjoy the idea of it and if I got better at it I might feel more comfortable to use it in my room. After several hours on this I still do not love mine, but at some point I had to let go! Here it is...

http://morgana3940.glogster.com/weatherunit/

Free Choice (Bighugelabs.com)
I, like many others, really enjoyed this site as well. I could see using all of the fun activities in the classroom to help students express ideas. I have added this site to my favorites and cannot wait to use it at school. Here are the three activities I made!

I think the magazine cover would be fun to make when students have completed a writing piece and need a title page!

I used this project to show the four seasons.

I thought this project was neat, a creative way for students to share information about a topic.

WHEWWWW...I'M DONE!!!!!

I'm Bossy!!!! YouTube Video and Questions

I LOVE this video! It gets stuck in my head and I cannot stop singing it!

Is this appropriate to use with younger children to teach R-controlled vowels?

How would you engage your students in this video?