Diigo

Here is the link to my Diigo library.  I have to admit that at first I wasn't too excited about Diigo.  After spending time trying it out I have changed my mind!  I wish that I had know about it sooner.  I have been using Pinterest for a while and will continue to do so, but with Diigo I feel that it is easier and quicker to locate things.  I am finding that the more I use Pinterest, that the more crowded my boards are becoming which makes it hard to go back and find what I am looking for.  Diigo's tags and lists features make it easier to see what you have saved.  I do like that Pinterest shows you the picture of the idea.

At first I did not use the list feature, but when I went back to create lists I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to add previously saved items to the new lists.  Each time I save something new to my library, it is just one click to easily add that item to the appropriate list.

I also saw the "play as webslide" feature on the lists page.  It shows the web pages from the library in a slide show.  This can be helpful to help you remember what was on the page that you wanted to save instead of looking at multiple pages on the same topic.

Digital Story Telling

Here is my first attempt at my digital story project.  I hope that this is OK because it isn't in a story format as far as having characters, setting, plot, etc.  We are studying polygons in math so I had the students apply what they are learning about the different number of sides and angles that polygons have.  I found an optical illusion calendar with the artwork of Rob Gonsalves and had my students choose a picture they liked.  They had to find a polygon and then explain how they knew it was a polygon.  This was also a great activity to promote speaking.  Some of them had a hard time speaking loud enough in the microphone, but most of them were relaxed enough and enjoyed it.

Story Kit app

Check out this post on one of the Manchester cohort's blogs.  It is about a free app called Story Kit (I think for the iPad).  Kids can draw pictures for a story, type words, and record themselves reading the story.  I think some of my reluctant writers would love it.  The teacher who posted it also uses it to create her own mentor text for writing.

More Digital Storytelling Tools

This site has a lot of digital story telling tools to try out!  I don't know which one to use for my project.

Web 2.0 Tools - Voki

Maybe I'll use a Voki for when I'm out and I want to remind my class of my expectations when a sub is there.

Technology in the elementary classroom

Before taking this class I didn't think that technology (beside the SmartBoard) could be used successfully in the lower elementary classrooms.  Wow, was I wrong.  After seeing all the examples of blogs, wikis, digital stories, etc, it is obvious that these young children can use technology and do it well!  It is important for educators to keep up with the technology world that our students live in.  Here is a site, edutopia, that talks about how to incorporate technology into the elementary classrooms.

Math Games

I stumbled on this site with great math games.  The site is organized by grade level and looks like it covers a lot of relevant topics.

What to do, what to do????

I am narrowing down my ideas for my digital story project.  We are still working on identifying shapes in math so I think I am going to go with that since it is something that is relevant.  I found a calendar of optical illusions made up different polygons where the pictures play tricks on your eyes because things end and start where you don't expect them to.  Maybe I'll record the kids talking about the shapes they see in the picture and describe how they know the shapes by their attributes.  What do you think?

This is the cover of the calendar:

Digital Story Telling

I came across this video on YouTube about digital story telling.  It is another one of those tutorials "in plain English".  It helped to clarify what exactly digital story telling is all about.

woo hoo - I created a class blog!

I can't believe how excited I am over my new class blog, The Latest and Greatest from Room 15! I worked on it this weekend and can't wait to get the word out tomorrow.  What is the best way to get people aware of the blog?  I have the emails for the parents in my class.  Should I sign them up with their email to get notices from the blog? (there is a gadget for that).

The more that I think about using a blog to communicate with parents, I realize that it can be a tool to communicate with the support staff that work with children in your room.  The special ed, speech, OT/PT, etc. can get important information about what the children they service are doing.

Animoto Project

We start a new unit on shapes in math this week.  The students need to identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, and hexagons by the number of sides and angles each shape has.  This unit covers Common Core Standard 2.G.A.1 Reasoning with Shapes and Their Attripbutes. The main focus of the unit is for the students to be able to sort the shapes by their attributes. The Animoto shows the shape in isolation with a definition of how many sides and angles it has, and then there are pictures of the shape in the real world.  This will be used to start off the unit in order to introduce the vocabulary and different types of shapes.