Tool 8: Videos are Useful Resources

My two videos were focused on a science unit on animals. I love the first video on “Animal Sounds” being portrait by early childhood students. The teacher was able to integrate a variety of subject matter such as gross motor skills, fine motor skills, music, art, math etc. This would be wonderful way to close a science unit on animals!



Teachers could preview this second video and come up with questions for the students to answer as the video plays. The questions don’t need to be hard, but they should be questions the students can only answer by watching the video.

Tool 7: Creating Digital Stories

Hallelujah! This was quite an adventure. I must say that this cumbersome journey did serve its purpose. I learned how to incorporate a variety of technology resources into this digital storytelling project. It will be powerful to witness our children having opportunities of creating digital stories through PhotoStory. The evidence will show on their increase growth of listening, speaking, reading and writing. These types of experience with technology resources will set them up for their future academic success.

Popcorn ready! Let's view "Valentine's in Vegas".

Tool 6: Wikis

Fabulous website, I am joining their Wiki…. http://littlepawspreschool.wikispaces.com/

I navigated through the Wiki sites. Indeed, there are many educational resources that are useful for teachers sharing and storing formation and great places for students to work together. The collaboration piece is what makes it powerful. Students and teachers are engaged in sharing, learning and reflecting ways.

1. Teacher applications: roadmapping, agendas, discussions of balance literacy
   
2. Classroom applications: projects, writing books, discussing Big Books for Shared Reading http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Technology_in_the_classroom

Tool 5: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking makes it simpler and practical to organize all of my bookmarks. I did my browsing through both sites and used tags to find two websites new to me. My tags used were Pre-K, bilingual, and resources to locate information. I am using Diigo.

Story Place is an online digital library http://www.storyplace.org/. You will find Spanish and English versions of stories and resources for students in pre-school and elementary school. You must check out this amazing site! Teachers can also check this other website http://www.pbs.org/teachers/.

Tool 4: Cool Google Tools

Google Reader http://google reader is a useful tool for browsing and collaborating with other subscribers. It has a great format for news sites and blogs. Constant updates!
http://groups.google.com/group/google-for-educators

Google Docs http://google docs as the adminstrator of a school it would help me with communication, collaboration and time management. It is useful on reaching consensus through surveys, scheduling, news-letters, raising the level of work, etc.
http://www.google.com/educators/pdocs.html

Tool 3: Image Generators and Mashups

The best format to use in saving pictures was jpg for me. I practiced with “Spell with Flickr” and it was fun. I was able to save photos and other visuals to the gadgets on my blog. Teachers can use pictures and visuals as an anticipatory set for a lesson. The students can use the pictures as story starters.

More samples will be posted on my block.

Tool 2: Building Community and Comments

A positive outcome relies on collaboration! "The formal and informal leaders have to be clear that the goal is collaboration and not competition," says the Mattituck-Cutchogue School District's Anne Smith. Therefore, we need to support our teachers through staff development and scheduling extra time to work together. The Cool Cat Teacher commenting advice was fabulous. Once again, providing time for our teachers to work together on this area would be extremely beneficial.

I have selected these five blogs for my comments:
.Blogging in the classroom
.Ellen’s 21st Century
.11 Tools for the 21st Learning @ Tiger Trail
.11 Tools for the 21st Century Learner
.Simon Says