As I reflect I am so pleased at how much I got out of this class! I have tools that I can use in my classroom with my students to give them the competive edge for the real world. My favorite assignments from the class are:
Creating a webquest via Trackstar
Making a gabcast
Tarheel Reader
Setting up a blog
Networking with my peers and
Learning how to use digital photography and video to enhance student learning
Here is a link to our syllabus if you would like to get started using any or all of these tools in your classroom!
Literacy and Technology
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Overstream.net
I had so much fun playing around with overstream. The tutorial was so thorough it was easy to make captions. The hardest part was sifting through a million and one videos on you tube. Seeing as how Christmas is my favorite holiday I choose to add captions to "White Christmas". The only thing that's missing is the sing-along ball and if I knew how to make that happen I would :)
But in all seriousness as a reading tool, this is wonderful. As I searched youtube I noticed a plethora of oral stories that people had created. Adding a caption to these stories almost makes these videos digital books. This is a resource that I will share with my colleagues in hopes that we can collaborate and make a nice resource collection of fun and interesting reading material for our students.
Watch my overstream here:
But in all seriousness as a reading tool, this is wonderful. As I searched youtube I noticed a plethora of oral stories that people had created. Adding a caption to these stories almost makes these videos digital books. This is a resource that I will share with my colleagues in hopes that we can collaborate and make a nice resource collection of fun and interesting reading material for our students.
Watch my overstream here:
Gabcasting
What an awesome tool! Again thanks to this class I have found yet another component to add to our class blog. The possibilities for using the gabcast could be infinite (so far I've thought of eight). I will have to prioritize the ideas that I want to use this tool for (in an effort not to be overwhelmed). My first gabcast is a oral newsletter (of sorts) to my parents. In this gabcast I gave them an update of upcoming events for the week of December 15th-19th.
Here are the ways that I will probably use my podcast this year:
communication with parents on my school website, especially useful for my hispanic parents that are illiterate
creating a favorite books section on our blog and reading those books aloud while the student reads along We don't have listening centers.
Listen to my gabcast of upcoming events:
having students read books and stories that they have written and post the gabcast to our blog
Gabcast! Upcoming Events #1 - December Events
Listen to hear an update of events for December 15th-19th.
Here are the ways that I will probably use my podcast this year:
communication with parents on my school website, especially useful for my hispanic parents that are illiterate
creating a favorite books section on our blog and reading those books aloud while the student reads along We don't have listening centers.
Listen to my gabcast of upcoming events:
having students read books and stories that they have written and post the gabcast to our blog
Gabcast! Upcoming Events #1 - December Events
Listen to hear an update of events for December 15th-19th.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Digital Video
I have found another neat tool to use in my classroom and with my own kids. I also learned something about my digital camera. It can record a short video clip! I am so excited to use this in my class and I am even more excited that I can link the videos to my blog! Earlier I talked about the use of blogs to share and respond to books read. Adding the video component of students orally sharing books that they have read will be a bonus.
In the video that I have uploaded here you can watch my daughter recite the nursery rhyme "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". Which brings me to another use for this tool in the classroom. We do a lot of things with poems in my 3rd grade class and one of my students favorite things to do is "perform" poems that they have learned. I think it would be really neat to record my students performing their favorite poem and post it to our blog. Then myself as well as their classmates can comment on their performance. Of course I will have to teach my students the appropriate ways compliment and respond to each other's performance.
Click to watch the video!
In the video that I have uploaded here you can watch my daughter recite the nursery rhyme "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". Which brings me to another use for this tool in the classroom. We do a lot of things with poems in my 3rd grade class and one of my students favorite things to do is "perform" poems that they have learned. I think it would be really neat to record my students performing their favorite poem and post it to our blog. Then myself as well as their classmates can comment on their performance. Of course I will have to teach my students the appropriate ways compliment and respond to each other's performance.
Click to watch the video!
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Del.icio.us!
And no I am not talking about food! Delicious is one of a few places where you can go to create social bookmarks. It's just like adding a site to your favorites, except now you can access your favorite sites from any computer, anywhere in the world by simply logging in to your account. I am so glad that I learned about this resource as I use so many different computers. Gone are the days where I have to try to remember a site at school that I found at home.
More importantly, I can have meaningful computer time with my students!!!!! It is going to be so much easier to get my students on the same page. Instead of having them create their own Delicious (in an effort to avoid lost passwords) Iwill provide them with my login information and have them click the designated site from there.
I shared this with my computer tech person at my school and he has already put it to great use emailing the site to everyone and sharing some terrific educational sites with our teachers.
Checkout some of my favorite bookmarks. My Bookmarks
More importantly, I can have meaningful computer time with my students!!!!! It is going to be so much easier to get my students on the same page. Instead of having them create their own Delicious (in an effort to avoid lost passwords) Iwill provide them with my login information and have them click the designated site from there.
I shared this with my computer tech person at my school and he has already put it to great use emailing the site to everyone and sharing some terrific educational sites with our teachers.
Checkout some of my favorite bookmarks. My Bookmarks
Monday, December 1, 2008
Blogging!
I love to blog and when I have time, I keep the blog on my Myspace page fairly up to date. Before this class I never even considered using a blog with my students. After reading articles about the benefits and uses of blogging in the classroom, I am excited to use blogging with my students after Christmas break. Currently my students use Reader Response Journals to write about books that they are reading. We will continue to write in our RRJs, however, in January it will be required for my students to blog two entries a month on our gagglenet account. I can see this being such a valuable learning tool for my 3rd graders. Right now I am the only one that sees and responds to the entrys that they make in their journals. I am excited about my students reading and responding to each other. I have high hopes that blogging about books will even get them talking about their books more.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Digital Photography
I use digital photography in my classroom constantly. Every year it gets to the point where my students don't even pay attention when I bring the camera out. Before this class the most that I have ever done with our pictures is printed them and put them on a bullentin board. Now I will be using our photos for authentic reading and writing experiences.
We had our first writing experience with our photos a few days ago. I created a powerpoint of the students in my class, putting each child's photo on a different slide. We decided that since the photos were of them posing outside that each student would write a little blurb about themselves. We titled the powerpoint Welcome to 3rd Grade: Mrs. McMillan's Class
Click here to go to badongo to download our powerpoint!
3rd Grade
We had our first writing experience with our photos a few days ago. I created a powerpoint of the students in my class, putting each child's photo on a different slide. We decided that since the photos were of them posing outside that each student would write a little blurb about themselves. We titled the powerpoint Welcome to 3rd Grade: Mrs. McMillan's Class
Click here to go to badongo to download our powerpoint!
3rd Grade
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