Sunday, November 15, 2009
BP14_2009113_Blog Comment #3
@ Tara - I really liked this site. What a great way for art teachers to incorporate graphic arts into their classroom. It was very easy to use and it can be used at many different grade levels!
BP13_2009113_Blog Comment#2
@ Patrick - Very cool site! With every new Web 2.0 tool I am learning about, I can find a use for each one. I like the idea that student screenwriters can share their work and work collaboratively. Thanks for sharing!
BP12_2009113_Blog Comment#1
@ Coleen - What a cool site! As I was playing around, I found it was so easy to use! I would love to use something like this in my classroom. Maybe to give our parents and update of our week! Thanks for sharing!
BP11_2009113_Web 2.0 Kerpoof
Web 2.0 tool: Kerpoof
Kerpoof is a website owned and operated by the Walt Disney Company. One of the reasons I was interested in this site was because it has so many different ideas to offer not only children, but parents and teachers too. Kerpoof is a site where kids can chat, make artwork, make an animated movie, tell a story, and much more.
Who is Kerpoof for? (www.kerpoof.com)
Ages 3-5
At this age, Kerpoof is typically visited with an adult or older sibling and with their help, can usually navigate most of Kerpoof's activities. Kerpoof is a great way to build motor (and mouse) skills and to foster creative thinking. You can also turn any picture you make on Kerpoof into a coloring page for off-line coloring. More than 400 pre-made Kerpoof coloring pages can be found at www.coloring.bz.
Ages 6-8
With a few reading skills under their belts, children can start to take full advantage of the Kerpoof creativity suite on their own. These kids will appreciate the ease with which they can make all sorts of fun creations on Kerpoof
Ages 9-13
As kids develop more analytical reasoning skills and social interests during these years, several of Kerpoof's activities will become richer experiences for them. The Make a Movie activity has been designed to teach some of the basic ideas behind computer programming and is a great way for kids to learn what a powerful tool a computer can be (www.kerpoof.com).
While I was playing with the site, I found it very easy to navigate around. Drawing pictures were very easy, and I am not an artistic person! It was almost like KIDPIX, but a little easier to use. As I continued to play around, I found a site dedicated to teachers. There were lesson plans for specific lessons and grade levels. There were even ideas geared to younger grades!!! I decided to sign up for a teacher account and they have a very serious terms and conditions policy. They are very serious about having a site for kids, and keeping it safe for all children. They monitor everything that is posted to the site and urge adult supervision at all times while on the site. I am very excited to use this site in my classroom. I believe that my students will be able to use this site very easily. I am thinking of using this site in my action research project!
Walt Disney Company. (2008). Kerpoof studio. Retrieved on November 12, 2009, from www.kerpoof.com.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
BP9_2009112_Web 2.0#3
MiddleSpot:
This site is designed for educators. This site allows you to interpret information faster from their search results, collect and annotate relevant results into groups, and share those collections with people relying on their expertise.
To begin you start a mash tab. This allows you to collect web pages, images, music, videos, web widgets, files, documents, code, and more in one central spot. While I was learning about the web site, I realized it was really valuable. It is a quick way to search for images, papers, educational articles, etc. It's hard to argue with results. A study by Microsoft Research reveals that presenting a screenshot in conjunction with a text result allows a user to locate desired web pages faster and easier in almost every attempt. Our brain is designed to filter, distinguish, associate, and select information first and foremost visually. Middlespot.com is designed to take advantage of this strength by providing a patented interface that helps you determine the relevancy of your results with greater efficiency and accuracy.
Middlespot also acts as a search interface, allowing you to submit your search query to a number of search engines and social services like Yahoo, Flickr, Amazon, Twitter, and Microsoft. We also keep track of what you searched for, from where, and when and make it easy for you to access anytime using our "recent searches" tool.
This Web 2.0 tool would be very effective to use in a classroom. It would be very helpful to filter through websites to actually find relevant information. I know from my own experience with my action research it is frustrating trying to find valid and reliable information.
BP8_2009112_Web 2.0 #2
Tikatok:
This is a community for children to write, illustrate, and publish a real book. The minute I saw this Web 2.0 tool, I fell in love. The first idea that popped into my head was the students who always finish all of their work first. What an amazing extra curricular activity to work on. Although it costs money to buy a book, they are selling the PDF version of the book for $2.99. Not bad when you can print them out and photo copy them for an entire class.
While I was playing around with the site, I noticed that there are many different types of books you can create. You can make your own, or there are a lot of different story starters you may use. It is a very easy layout and once you click a page you can get right to work. You can add photos or draw your own. There are just so many options to choose from.
I can see so many of my students really getting into this. It is such a great way to get kids writing creatively. I think it would be such a reward to have a real hard cover book from your own imagination. I think it would also be a great for parents. What a great activity to do on the weekend or summer vacation. It would be incorporating technology with improving writing skills. The best part being, the children would not even know they are improving their writing skills and creativity skills.
BP7_2009112_Web 2.0 #1
Panoramio
Panoramio is a geolocation-oriented photo sharing website. The site's goal is to allow Google Earth users to learn more about a given area by viewing the photos that other users have taken at that place. Two Spanish entrepreneurs created this site in October of 2005 and by 2007, it had archived over one million photos submitted by users (Panoramio Blog).
This Web 2.0 tool would be so much fun to use in the classroom. While I was looking at pictures from Japan, Spain, and Hawaii, all I could think about was, what a cool virtual field trip. You can learn so much from pictures and it is interesting to learn about the areas you are finding the pictures from.
Why would this be an educational benefit? As we all know, traveling is a very expensive hobby. Although looking at pictures is not as much fun as going, you can learn so much from a photo. There are so many projects you could use this Web 2.0 tool with. Geography class especially! While learning about the Eiffel Tower, you can locate other famous buildings and get a glimpse of the layout of the city.
Another positive aspect of this website, was the simplicity of it. It was so easy to use. You click on an area on the map and photos of that location just pop up. Another idea about the website that was interesting was the photo contest. Each month they choose a few photos as winners. They are based on scenery, remote locations, etc. Could you see yourself in a photography class in a high school and entering a photo you have taken. Could you imagine winning? That would be such an accomplishment for a high school student. All in all, I really liked the layout of this site. It was easy to use and would be easy to teach it to students.
BP6_2009112_Flickr Lesson Plan
| Learning verbs: | Steps of the lesson: |
| | |
| 1) Learn the verbs: run, jump, sing, dance, play, swim, read, write. | 1) Learners look for pictures on Flickr. They type the words in the “search window” and try to guess the meaning of these verbs. 2) The teacher shows slides, pronounces the words, and adds some new verbs. The learners repeat and try to remember that. 3) Students can print out five photos each. They will then play a verb vocabulary game with a partner. 4) As a class, we will then take the photos and create “I can “ and “We can” sentences on the pocket chart. |
| | |
BP5_2009112_Social Bookmarking
(Photo: Freedigitalphotos.net)
Educational Uses for Social Bookmarking:
Social bookmarking has a great place in the education world. As many teachers are obsessed with organization, this tool can only help. The concept of shared online bookmarks dates back to April 1996 with the launch of it List, the features of which included public and private bookmarks (Goulder, 2006). Within the next three years, online bookmark services became competitive, with venture-backed companies such as Back flip, Blink, Clip2, Click Marks, Hotlinks, and others entering the market (Goulder, 2006).
So why would social bookmarking be useful in the education world? For example, I'm always highly motivated, by Will Richardson. After all, he's doing some remarkable thinking around the innovative ways that technology can be used in the classroom. Wouldn't it be cool to share his online reading list? Well, you can! It’s available on Delicious, one of the web's most popular social bookmarking applications. Now here's the cool thing: For each item that you bookmark, social bookmarking applications like Delicious will provide you with a direct link to all of the other users who bookmarked that the same item. You can then see that many other people saved this website as a valuable site. You can also check out what those people have been saving and see if there are any other common interests.
While researching social bookmarking, I found these great uses on the wiki classroom website (Tangient LLC, 2009) :
· Network with other educators around the globe who share your interests.
· Create social bookmark accounts for your school's academic departments. Teachers within the department all contribute to the growing database of web resources.
· Contact other people for professional networking, based on their social bookmarks.
· Allow yourself and your students to share bookmarks on research topics.
· Subscribe to someone's bookmarks via RSS and receive updates whenever they add new websites.
· Collaborate on projects with other schools, sharing bookmarks between all participating communities (Tangient LLC, 2009)
Goulder, Scott. (2006). Usage patterns of collaborative tagging systems. Retrived
from Journal of Information Science 32 (2): 198-208.
Leelefever. (2007, August 7). Social bookmarking in plain English. Video posted to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU
Tangient LLC. (2009, November 3). Classroom2dot0 – social bookmarking.
Retrieved from http://wiki.classroom20.com/Social+Bookmarking
Monday, November 2, 2009
BP4_2009112_Web2.0Tools
Web 2.0 Tools:
After researching the website with the Web 2.0 tools I found one in particular that I wanted to pursue. The website is http://kidoz.net/. KIDO’Z is a website dedicated to keeping children safe online. While reading the reviews, they state that is an extremely popular website for children ten and under. As I am a Kindergarten teacher, this is right up my alley.
This website is a great tool for young children because they
don’t need to read or write in order to use it. It is very colorful in nature with a kid-friendly interface. The best thing about this website is that it allows children to access and browse hundreds of safe sites without leaving the Web 2.0 tool.
This website is something I would definitely use in my classroom. The way our schedule is set up, we have two free computer times per day. I usually let the students play PBS Kids.com. Using KIDO’Z I would be able to let the children browse through a variety of safe websites and let them choose what they would want to research or play.
I could use KIDO’Z for many assignments w
ithin my class. I would start by using this website with the Smart board. I would allow the students to browse through the different websites and see what the site has to offer. By allowing each student to have a turn checking out a website of their interest, they would be able to go on their own and use the site by themselves. The beauty of this Web 2.0 tool is that you don’t have to worry about students navigating away from a specified site. Any site they are using is safe and allows you to have peace-of-mind.
Go2Web2.0 has actually made me rethink some parts of my action research project. It has given me more age appropriate information that might be better to use with kindergarteners then what I had previously planned.
*The pictures I used in my blog were screen shots from the KIDO'z site!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
BP3_2009111_Educational Use of Blogs
Why are blogs so important to education?
As blogs become more and more popular, they can be used for educational purposes. There are so many uses for blogs in education; creating a resume, personal weblog, newsletters, and collaboration project logs. It is a great idea for educators to become familiar with blogs. Personally, I never thought I would be a blogger. I guess I never thought I had anything important to say. The more I research blogs, the more I can see the importance of them.
After watching the Networked Student I discovered the importance of Connectivism. It makes so much sense to dump the textbooks and take control of your own learning. Using blogs can help you reach that goal. Blogs are a collaborative piece of work pertaining to a specific topic. It actually allows you to gain more knowledge in a smaller amount of time. When you begin your research, you are not starting from square 1. It is almost like you have a heads up. People who are interested in the same topic and who have completed some research are making it easier for you.
As all educators know, if you can own your learning, you will learn clearly learn more and retain the information. This is where the importance of blogs comes into play. Imagine giving a middle school student an assignment on an inventor. That student could do a number of things to start this project. They could begin their own blog, and watch for comments on the research they find, or they could look for other blogs posted by other people. Maybe these blog posts would be from college professors, college students, or anyone who has extensive knowledge in this subject area. That student is learning so much more then reading a few textbooks or encyclopedias. In conclusion, it is only a matter of time before blogs hit the education circuit. Once they do, educators should be prepared and have prior knowledge to coach students on the correct way to use blogs!
BP1_2009111_GoogleReader
BP#1 - Google Reader Feeds
Preschool Education & Everything Preschool:
Although I am a Kindergarten teacher, I get many ideas through Preschool education and adapt it to the Kindergarten curriculum. This subscription shares posts about crafts, advice on children, and ideas to use in the classroom.
Web 2.0 Articles, Blogs, and Videos:
I wanted this subscription because it applies to my action research project. It shares the many uses and reviews of Web 2.0 applications.
Cool Cat Teacher Blog – Basics for Beginners: What is Web 2.0:
This subscription pertains to the basic uses of Web 2.0 tools. By reading the posts, I am hoping to gain useful information to be used in my action project research.
Web 2.0 Tools and Applications:
This feed explains the uses and ways to use Web 2.0 applications. I am hoping that by following this, I can gain useful information to not only use in my action research project, but also my personal and professional life.
Education: News and Videos about Education – CNN.com
I usually read CNN.com daily and this feed pertains to current information and practice that are related to education.
