Twitter and Ed Chat

I have been following numerous technology names on Twitter and I am loving it. Twitter has become a huge resource center for me. I am following people that not only like to communicate about education, but also like to share. I have found numerous links to tools and resources that I can use in my classroom and also share with other teachers to use in there's. I am very excited about twitter and the potential it has. However, there are times when I find twitter overwhelming. Some people that I follow tweet A LOT! I find this frustrating because it makes some of their material seem less valuable because it is done so often. I would prefer that they wait and tweet about something really exciting. This way you know it is something good. I tend to skim over the obsessive tweeters because I don't think that their stuff is as valuable. I do find things here and there, but they are not the ones that I look at as closely as others. I also participated in the edchat about 2 weeks ago. O boy! This was an amazing experience. It was overwhelming at first because it was hard to keep up, but the amount of information and discussion that was happening was awesome. I was so happy to see educators discussing change and their opinions about it. I did not feel the need to respond because I did not feel I had a valuable opinion worth sharing. I hope that as I participate more that I will feel confident sharing my thoughts on the issue. As much as I loved the idea of edchat and educators speaking of change one thing did get to me. I feel that this is the first step to making change, talking about it, however when will we get to the next step, actually doing it. Will this just happen one day? or do we need to have an uprising of educators and politicians to make this change? I am not sure the answer to this and it is what I ponder often. How I would love to see education reform, but how? when? Edchat got me thinking about these things and I will continue to follow in order to continue thinking...

Solar System Projects! Awesome!

I spent today working with Voice Thread with a third grade classroom. I would say that about 1/3 of the students were able to handle voice thread on their own and the others used the assistance of myself and the other teacher. I was so proud of this. The students wrote great facts about the solar system and the planet they chose and then recorded their voice. It was amazing to see how this project benefited all the children. Not only did the good readers excel, but the students that struggled were able to listen to their voice and practice saying their words correctly. The students were so excited for their projects and worked so well. I was happy to see the outcome! I have really enjoyed working with these students for the past week. However, I must say that we had a few technological issues with Voice Thread. I believe it may have been because too many students were accessing it at the same time, however we started doing it in stations calling students up one at a time for our assistance. This worked really well and I was even able to watch one student record his sentence, listen to it back, realize it didn't sound correctly and fix his grammar. What a learning experience!! Today was a great day and I would love to work on tech projects everyday with a classroom like this, such a rewarding experience. Check out one of the voice threads from a student that did this completely by themselves:

Working at an Elementary

I have now worked at an elementary school for 3 whole days as an IT role and I love it! I have found that it is a lot of fun working with teachers, giving them ideas, and helping them through their daily struggles with technology. I have worked closely with 2 teachers. One of these teachers I have started a Voice Thread project with and it is coming out great. There were 2 finished projects today and we listened to them as a class. I was so proud of the third graders, they did a great job. However, this would have been a difficult project without an extra set of hands (me) to help. This is why I enjoyed it. My sole role was to support the teacher and students in this project and it worked great. I am not sure if I would recommend this teacher to do this project alone because it has to be done in her classroom since the school does not have a lab. This is more difficult for her because of all the other obstacles that are happening day by day. However, this just reminds me of how necessary it is for a school to have a technology integrator. This school is without one and I sometimes think that I would love to take over that role. Today was such a great day. Students were learning and showing off their work and it was incredible.  I cannot wait to see how the rest of the projects come out.

Penguin Story Finally a Success

If you read my last post you would notice that I was frustrated because I couldn't write my penguin story in StoryBird, however I have found a different tool that will allow me to write exactly what I want and it's even better!!  Its called Little Bird Tales http://littlebirdtales.com/tales/sendTale/story_id/1084/ . This is better because it allows you to upload any pictures you want for the story or you can draw them using the paint tool that is embedded into the program. Then you can type your story into the picture. This isn't even the best part, you can also record your voice! So I have decided that I am going to do a little research and then finish my story about Penguins. I am going to draw all of my pictures using the paint, type the story under the pictures and then record myself reading the story. I will share this with the first and second grade teacher I am working with. My hope that she will want to create a story with her class allowing each student or groups of students to make a page in the story.

This tool is awesome, however I do not think it is always free. I was able to sign up for a free version, but I am not sure how long it lasts I wasn't able to check this out. Nevertheless, I am so happy that I found a way to write a penguin story with my one sentences, my own painted pictures, and my own recorded voice. YEAH!

Story Bird

After hearing about StoryBird this weekend at MESPA, I was excited to try it out. My initial hope was to be able to write a story about Penguins for a first and second grade classroom that was going to discuss Antarctica. However, I found some difficulties. I believe that StoryBird was intended to have people write stories give certain artwork, not vise versa. For example you can not choose an artist and get all sorts of penguin pictures. Instead you choose an artist and have to use those pictures. This caused my greatest issues. I was not able to generate pictures for the story I wanted to tell, but rather was asked to write a story given a number of pictures. No doubt StoryBird seems like a great tool for creative writing, however it was not serving the purpose I wished it to. I wonder if any others had this issue or if I was just lost in my effort to create my penguin story.

Baltimore Habitat For Humanity

Baltimore Habitat For Humanity

Baltimore Habitat For Humanity

Baltimore Habitat For Humanity

Blogging with MESPA

This is my first blog post ever!! I am so excited to share links and ideas for projects that I am finding! Look for further posts soon!! :)