Reflections POST

1. What are your favorite tools you now have in your personal technology toolbox? A new tool that I really love that I will first use with my other team members is the google docs.  The first grade team has used them in lesson planning and I think I would like to try to use them with the SIS to build and create a certain lesson that I need a little more help with. The tool that I think I will use with my kids first is the AVATAR I will use this as a set, I think they will relate to this tool and get them interested in creating their own blog in the future or adding to our classroom blog.

2. How have you transfomed your thinking about the learning that will take place in your classroom? I am going to use my blog to communicate with my children and parents.  We are going to use the blog as a check point to make sure they understand and remember what they are learning and extend their learning.  Their responses on our blog will eliminate the "I don't know" answer when the parents asked what they did at school that day.

3. Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?  I realized it is not as easy as it sounds and there are a lot of the tools like embedding links that I still need to work on.  I also realized there is so much you can do and I want to learn more!

Tool #7

file:///Users/leannrominger/Library/Mail/IMAP-leannrominger@imap.gmail.com/%5BGmail%5D/Sent%20Mail.imapmbox/Attachments/4571/2/IMG_0387.MOV

I would love to use this in science so we can watch an ongoing investigation and we can also send our experiments to other classrooms as well.

Tool #4

I added 5 teachers from my team and school that I feel are expert teachers that I could learn from following their blog.  My next step would be to meet other 2nd grade teachers at professional developments and follow their blogs as well so we can share ideas and information.

The google docs I wrote a list of things I am suppose to do as the year begins.  I shared it with my Math SIS so she can help me make sure I don't forget anything.

First Day of School Videos Tool #8

You Tube Video telling about all the people you will see at school and a brief description of things you will find at school.





You can use videos in the classroom in so many ways. Now with our active board you can use the videos as short clips.  So help enhance a lesson you have already prepared.  You can make the videos interactive too using the active board.

Tool #9

Skype is so awesome for the classroom!  I had a friend teaching abroad in South America and we planned with each other once a week.  Then we had our kids talk on skype after we had both taught the lesson.  We would always learn from each other new information about the same subject.

The kids were so excited every Wednesday when we talked to their friends in Costa Rica!

Tool #11

Three things I would want to tell my students about being a good digital learner:

1)  Understand you must do research on the internet to back up an thought, statement or opinion.  To not just believe everything they read.

2)  If they are posting they need to understand that they are putting themselves out there and that they may be effect the way someone else feels, thinks, believes so they need to be very careful when posting or adding to the digital world.

3)  They need to use the digital world for learning first and as often as they can!

I would use videos from Atomic learning and then have an open classroom discussion about the video.  I would continue to refer back to what we have learned about being a digital learner everytime we used it in the classroom so it would always be on their mind.

Tool #10

Using a itouch or ipad in the room can be very helpful for students who finish their work early.  There are so many games like "moron test" that tease and test the brain.  They can also use it for Brainpop to help find things we can use in the classroom on whatever we are learning about that week.

Also, you can read news reports blogs that relate to our classroom, etc.  It is a safe link to the world that can be used to gain information by reading updates to blogs, new articles or playing games that challenge the brain.