5532 Course syllabus

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

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:

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.

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!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

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

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.

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

Technology the New Literacy?

It seems to me that the definition of literacy has changed. At one time it meant being able to read and write for the means of communicating with other people. In this new age literacy has many facets. There is mathematical literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy. Since this is a technology class I want to talk about technological literacy. I am pretty sure that you can't have one without the other. Technology is the new literacy. A literate person enjoys reading and writing, and one would even say that they find both to be rather fun. In the world we live in today one needs to be technologically literate in order to share ideas and learn a wide range of information. Teachers are using technology to create more opportunities for students to read, write, and collaborate with their peers. Quickly or (for some) slowly we are changing the way informaton is giving, processed, and used. In turn changing the way that we read write and think.

Digital Books

I had so much fun using TarHeel Reader to create books for kids! What an amazing tool for teachers and students. TarHeel Reader is a site that allows teachers to make high interest books for struggling readers. My favorite thing about the site is flickr. It puts hundreds of thousands images at the push of a search button, making it super easy to add pictures to your pages. The entire site is easy to navigate; creating a book is a breeze, editing, and publishing all happen at the click of a button.

In the spirit of Christmas I created two books. Both books are repetitive thereby predictable. The first book that I created is entitled Christmas Is.... and the second book I created specifically with boys in mind. The title of that book is called There is No "I" in Team

Click here to view my books!

Christmas Is...

There is No "I" in Team

Facebook vs. Myspace

After a good friend begged me for several months, I finally took the plunge and joined Myspace and have been a happily addicted member for almost three years now. I am also a member of Facebook (going on a year and a half). I understand that Facebook is the preferred social network for college kids and that once you graduate high school you are "uncool" to have a Myspace. Thank goodness I am not in college, because I LOVE Myspace! I am addicted to decorating my page, seeing the bullentins that my friends post, and getting status updates. I appreciate the fact that I can click on a application without having to permanently add it to my page. I also appreciate the fact that only the people who are my friends can view my pictures and the comments that I write. For me Facebook is too "let's tell everybody your business". If I leave a comment on Friend Z's page, then I intended for only Friend Z and whoever chooses to visit his page to see it. I do check my Facebook because I have friends who choose to communicate with me in the avenue.

I do not see any need to introduce elementary students to Facebook or Myspace. In my opinion it is a recipe for disaster. I am not even sure I would use it in the middle school or high school classroom, simply because sometimes they can be just plain mean. We have a hard enough time trying to monitor bullying and gossiping in school without having to worry about internet teenage wildfire. I say let them social network on their own time, but let's provide them with internet etiquette classes.

Come visit my Myspace: My Little Space on the Net!

Skype-a-holics

My husband and I learned about Skype through some of our military friends and until previously, only used it to talk to each other. I was really surprised when it was an assignment in my technology class. My first thought was "Why on earth would we need to use Skype in the classroom?" Then I started thinking! The possibilities for using Skype in the classroom are exciting. First of all, we are not bound to one area. Skype is the perfect opportunity for students to connect and interact with other students in our country or in the world. It would be an "instant" penpal opportunity where students could share ideas orally and written simultaneously.

Another idea that floated around our class and the discussion board was the use of Skype to hold parent-teacher conferences. What a convenient way to accommodate all the parents who work more than one job, or have a hard time getting off one job to to meet with their child's teacher. It's at least 10x better than holding a phone conference because it's as close as a face to face without actually being in the same room. I sent home a letter to all my parents inquiring if they had a computer with internet access. In the letter I gave them step by step directions as to how to download Skype and how we would use it as a teacher-parent communication tool on an as needed basis.

What do I know about technology?

I consider myself to be technology saavy, so I was surprised to find myself struggling when we had just a few minutes to type all of the things that we considered technology. As I reread my list I notice that these are things that I personally use often. I am looking forward to learning about effectively using technology with my present students and well as the students that I will teach in the future.
Computers
Internet
i-Pod
Webcam
Skyppe
MySpace
SmartBoard
Permetheum Board
Document Camera
LCD Projector
PSP
Playstation 1
Playstation 2
Playstation 3
Sega Genesis
Electronic Chip in my car
CD Player
Disc Changer
Nintendo Game Cube
HD TV
DVD Player

Threaded Discussions

Oh how I love using threaded discussions as an adult learner! In the traditional scheme of things there are people in the world who just love to talk and then there are the people who'd rather not share their thoughts and opinions with other people. Threaded discussion is a neat tool for both types of people. For people who just love to talk, like myself, it makes you slow down and think about what you are saying and gives you more time to choose the most effective words to get your point across. The biggest plus is that the non-vocal student now has a voice! They are free to type away and participate in class discussions. I think for me the hardest part about threaded discussions was getting away from just typing to have actual conversations with my classmates. Just like with everything else, the more you do it the better you get at it!