Sept. 24 - Class Assignment

I went to "Google for Teachers" Guide. I read through it, tried the different sites/resources and took notes:

Google for Teachers…

Google Books? Cool!

Related search terms automatically created by Google…I've seen these but never thought to point them out to my students. Will have to do that.

Wonder Wheel - I played around with this when I saw it on the Blooms & Google site (http://kathyschrock.net/googleblooms/). Will have to also show this to my students when we do our next research project.

Timeline - my kids have used this when doing their "History in Your Lifetime" project. It is a great starting place for them to find topics that at least sound familiar to them.

Google Books - very cool! Great way to find "reading in the content area" that isn't a textbook!

Google Scholar may be very helpful during our Civil Rights unit. Kids are required to have a primary source/court case.

Google News - we've used this - have to use it more.

Embed Google Books - not sure if this is necessary since we have 1:1.

Google News Widgets - could put some of these on my social studies page during certain units - current events connection to past events!

Spreadsheet gadgets - never understood these, guess I'll have to take some time and find some that are useful.

Reading levels - did not know about this option. I remember having to do the calculations for these in college. This will be really helpful when selecting differentiated articles for kids to read.

Flashcards - it is hard to beat Quizlet, but the word games might be fun (especially since we don't use Quia anymore.

Google Lit Trips is how we got the idea for using Google Earth for our Maine Tour.

I love FreeTech4Teachers.com - I tried working through one of the "lists" on this site and found a ton of useful links! Working through all of the suggestions posted on this site could be another Tech class project!

Final Project Reflection

My project did not turn out anything like I had hoped. I spent our class time in June watching tutorials and finding useful "notebooks" that I could adapt to use in my classroom. At this point, I have only used SMART Board in my classroom at the beginning of the year to "get kids up and give them something to "play" with."

Kids really enjoyed using it, but then it was in the way of my white boards so I took it down. Later, when thinking about the time I had to make up for the September class I was going to miss, I created an interactive Maine Map review. It works, it is completely interactive, but it would be more user-friendly if kids had the software on their own computer, instead of just one or two kids using the SMART Board. I'm thinking that maybe it would be great to use as a station...

Looking forward, the next time I want to make an interactive review, I hope it won't take as long as it did the first time. I also hope to use the Jeopardy and game show reviews as well as the Balancing Chemical Equations notebook. Ideally, I would like to use Portfolio time or Flex time to find notebooks and/or adapt ones to my curriculum, but with our new curriculum, all that time is spoken for. For now, it will just have to stay at the forefront of my mind, while actually on the back burner.

iGeneration ideas & Video

I would like to spend more time with the ideas presented in Chapter Three "Telling Powerful Visual Stories."  We've had seen some wonderful animated projects that kids make in Keynote, but I've seen some cartooning sites that I would like to pursue.  I want to look into Make Believe Comix, Bitstrip, and possibly Pixton.  The idea presented in the PBS video - to create an allegory, really intrigues me.  What a fabulous way to demonstrate understanding.

PBS Video

The key ideas described in the video incorporate technology in education in a variety of ways: gaming, media arts, scavenger hunts, augmented reality, and creating allegories.  I'd like to think we do some of these, although not nearly in the same depth, throughout the year in either science or social studies.  In addition to the variety of techniques introduced, there were some very powerful quotations.  I particularly enjoyed, "technology is changing the ecology of a school."  I'd sure like to believe this, however, I know that in our building, the new ecology is in specific niches (rooms) and not throughout the whole facility.