Week 6 - Google Reader Post

For the past 6 weeks, I have been following the blogs of:

A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet -
http://mediaspecialistsguide.blogspot.com/

Cool Cat Teacher Blog -
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

Education World; The Educator's Best Friend
http://www.educationworld.com/

Free Technology for Teachers –

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day for Teachers
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/

NEA Focus
http://www.nea.org/

Will
http://willrichardson.com/

Write Out Loud
http://writeoutloud.edublogs.org

I really enjoyed reading all of the blogs because each of them offer a variety of information that is relevant in some way to the field of education.  However, the blog that I enjoyed the most and felt that I received the most relevant information was Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day for Teachers. 

This site offered such great variety and so many of the recommended sites seemed to catch my interest.  There were so many posts that he made and had already did the legwork in gathering together great lists of blogs and other websites that would be of interest to teachers. 

In particular, I really enjoyed that other teachers posted comments on his blogs and shared their thoughts as well about the various topics.  One blog that really stands out in my mind was entitled “Simple, Great Chart to Show All Students”.  When I clicked on it, it opened up a picture of what success truly looks like versus what people think it looks like.  It was something that I downloaded and shared with my own students.

I will continue to monitor these blogs to gather more information.  I think that I am officially hooked and plan to share what I have learned about blogs with my students.

Digital Citizenship Project

Just thought I would upload a link to my Digital Citizenship project that I did on Prezi!  Here is the link:
http://prezi.com/ya_oatvcfvpl/digital-citizenship/?auth_key=38767b19d13ec39774609e99f1649b1148594c8e

Week 4 - Software Review

I went to the thinkport.org link, but the link was experiencing difficulties of some sort.  While at the thinkport.org site, I decided to check out some of the other areas.  The section for Think Classroom was a great find!  It offered archived lesson plans on various themes that I thought could be useful in my classroom lesson planning.  

I also found some useful reading strategies videos under the Think Career section.  The Think Technology section had some free downloadable graphic organizers as well as games that kids could play online.  There were also software downloads that were available.  One of those was for crossword puzzles, so I downloaded it for future use.

It is unfortunate that the link for the simulations was not working.  I am sure that there would have been some very helpful information for integrating technology into my classroom.

Week 3 - Review of Software Websites

For the week 3 assignment, I had to visit several sites that were listed in our textbook by Roblyer on pg. 105 #1 and answer the questions in a post.  There were four sites listed and out of these four, the sites that evaluated the most titles were clrn.org, superkids.com, and educationworld.com.  All three of these sites included a great number of titles that had been reviewed.  The best of the three as far as ease of use was the superkids.com site.  It was very easy to manuveur and understand.  All of the sites had been recently updated, but I did have problems finding the evalutech.sreb.org site due to the link.  I did locate the site but did not find the site to have ease of use and could not find a way to look for the titles that had been reviewed.   The only site that I could find that allowed visitors to review the software was the educationworld.com site that allowed educators to post reviews on the different software titles.   The site that I thought I would use the most was the educationworld.com site.  I liked the way that it had so many titles covering various topics and seemed to offer more titles that were for the level of students that I teach.  It also had so many other areas to visit that were of interest to me as an educator.

Web 2.0 Resources Assignment

I really enjoyed using Glogster and Animoto during this assignment.  I felt that both of these sites were easy to understand and manuveur through even for someone as inexperienced with this as me.  The Glogster that I created turned out really nice and was something that I feel I could use with my students. 

Animoto was also a great site and easy for a novice to comprehend.  However, my free choice of Blabberize was not as easy to manipulate.  I had to keep working on the mouth of the picture to get it even close to being right and it still looked funny after many, many tries.  The site also was harder to figure out as far as the tutorial just didn't give too much information about how to use the buttons to start recording and playback of what was recorded. 

I had to go through the setup process of getting the right picture and fixing the mouth and then recording numerous times.  I don't think I would use this site with my kids at school.  I would be absolutely crazy by the end of the day!

Here is the hyperlink to my Glogster post:

http://scox0913.edu.glogster.com/the-outsiders/

Here are the links to my three Blabberize photos in which Johnny Cade, Ponyboy Curtis, and Elvis Presley try to entice you into reading the book:

http://blabberize.com/view/id/604726

http://blabberize.com/view/id/604723

http://blabberize.com/view/id/604720

 This is the hyperlink to my Animoto post:

http://animoto.com/play/LPt0AoH0t70tHVtHYg03Aw

I couldn't figure out how to paste a link to my concept map that I created so I sent it thru Blackboard as it said to do.  I enjoyed doing the concept map for this book.  It is one of my favorites, and my students love reading it in class.  I will definitely have my students create their own concept map.  Here is a picture of my concept map that I created for The Outsiders. 

Blogging and Keeping Up!

I must admit that I have struggled some this week with blogging and figuring out how to comment on other's blogs.  For some reason, it would not let me do this last week but when I tried today, I was able to.  ??  Curious!  I just hope that I won't be too crazy trying to catch up.  Maintaining a blog definitely and reading all of the material has been interesting though.  I have found that there are many of the blogs that are very informative!