Wikis

As I examined the wikis today I began to think about how I can use them in my classroom. I really like the 2nd grade teachers idea of posting student writing on the Wiki. I am a little confused as to how she created their individual pages so that each student had their own. I have to say though that I still like blogging better because I wouldn't want just anyone to go in an change my students work. If you were working on collecting information about a topic it would be great. I am pondering how we might be able to do something with this for Thanksgiving. Possibly ask people to list their one favorite Thanksgiving food and graph the information? It would be neat to get replies from people all over the country. As a graduate student at Appalachian last year I used several wikis in my technology based classes. The professors had created the wikis with earlier classes and each new class updated the information. Therefore, as fast as the technology changed a new group would change the information. Pretty smart if you ask me!

E-Books

Electronic books are truly remarkable! In a graduate class 2 summers ago I actually made my own electronic book. We created our books in movie maker and uploaded them so that our entire class had 20 e-books. The process was fairly easy and fun! I would love to create an e-book with my studetns; however, I feel that that would be a much easier task with upper grade students. As I explored the e-book sites I absolutely loved the on-line version of Lewis Carroll's "Alice". I actually am thinking about letting the electronic book read this story to my class. It would be no different than me reading a chapter book aloud. I also liked the book choices on the "Big Universe" site. I found the project gutenburg site to be difficult to use. Many of the texts seemed to be old and not "current". I truly feel that electronic books will take the place of paper books in the future.

Pod Casts

Searching for Podcasts seemed more difficult than I originally thought. Now that I am out of Graduate school I feel like I am not kept up to date on the new children's literature that is coming out. I found a really cool feed called Book Bites for Kids. Through this podcast the producer discusses new books that are coming out and interviews the authors. If one was doing an author study, this might be a good way to allow your students to listen to their favorite author speak about his/her work. There were other cool podcasts such as "Book Voyages" which is a children's literature review from the perspective of a librarian. I can see how pod casts could be very beneficial to a teacher. I am not quite so sure how it would fit into the elementary curriculum. I would probably need to explore more in order to see its benefit in the classroom.

You Tube

Since being able to use You Tube here at school, I have used it for many lessons in my classroom. I have found the site to be very useful when I am teaching either science or social studies. While studying various types of animals, (their life cycles and habitats) I have been able to locate several videos that my students could view to understand these science concepts. On Columbus day I was able to locate several videos and even songs to teach the history of Christopher Columbus. The song was very "dorky" however my students loved it and have been singing it ever since. I am sure that they will never forget that Columbus sailed in 1492. Overall, I feel that a teacher is safe to use You Tube as long as he/she previews the video before showing it to the class.

Web 2.0 Tools

I decided to examine the site My Heritage. Basically this site allows you to create a family tree. You can upload photographs and information about every member of your family. This would be a great way for families to keep up with each other. I found the site to be very easy to use. In a matter of minutes I had created my "immediate family tree". I could definitely see this site being used in an upper grades classroom. I have asked 4th graders many times to create and draw their family trees to share with the class. Students could use my heritage to upload family photos and information. The teacher could allow the children to share their family tree with the class using the SmartBoard. This is definitely a site worth checking out!

Google Docs

This tool is probably the most beneficial I have been made aware of yet. As long as I have internet I can access a word processing document and files that I have saved and stored. I actually have already started using this feature. Up until today I have had to store my gradebook on a flash drive so that I could carry my information from school to home. Now, I have uploaded my gradebook into Google Docs. I can access my information now without all of the hassle of saving the file to so many different places. This would also be a great way to share information with colleagues that you do not want to send as an attachment. This is an awesome resource!

Feeds

I have to admit that I found all of the feeds to be pretty confusing. It was hard to differentiate real news from entertainment news on many of the sites. My favorite sites were Technorati and Topix. net. The link that I had for Feedster did not work. Technorati would be a great site to examine if you were trying to find out about the newest and coolest technology. Topix allowed me to search to look for information that I wanted to find. I'm not sure how much I would enjoy using any of these sites because there seems to be almost too much information.