Technology Integration: What I've learned

Before this class, I had managed two personal blogs for fun but had been trying to figure out a way to implement them successfully into a classroom. Blogger was not the platform I had chosen to work on before, so it was interesting to see how it worked. However, I don’t think that I will be continuing my classroom blog on it. Being used to Wordpress I found that Blogger lacked some of the simple formatting features that I commonly used.

This class introduced me to Rubistar, a rubric creation site. I absolutely love this site! It has tons of premade rubrics, categories, and ideas! I love how easy it is to start with a basic rubric on the site and tweak it as needed to fit your project. Rubrics were always a dreaded task for me because I never knew how to word the differences between the grading categories, but this site is letting me use more and more in my classroom!

Education World’s website had a list of easy and quick ways to use technology more often in your classroom. This quick list was full of great ideas that are easy to implement. It is surprising how often we can use digital resources to replace or supplement all the written work and textbooks we use! (http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech146.shtml )

This class has helped me analyze my use of technology and work to use more in my classroom. It has also given me some ways to use the limited technology available to our students. Technology needs to be used often to create comfort and allow students to develop proficiency with it.  It also needs to be used productively to assist our curriculum and state standards to help create student growth.

Equal Access to the Digital World!

What does it mean to "provide equal access to the digital world"?

Providing equal access to the digital world does not mean that everyone receives the same thing. It means that everyone gets what they need to be successful. This can look very different based on the student. Some students may access technologies to help them write or write for them, while others may access programs designed to help them read. However, just because everyone is getting what they need does not mean that some students deliberately get less access time to technology. The usage of the technology should vary depending on the student but the amount of time spent using technology should be as fair as possible to support all students.

Social Media...In Education??

When you see the words social media, you instantly think of Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. How could those things ever be useful in a classroom setting? But you may be surprised how many opportunities social media can be used in a classroom! Students can be writing blogs, commenting on each others work to help improve writing, having on going discussions on a Ning, or creating wikis (websites that host information)! The opportunities are endless.

I am sure the next idea that popped into your head is internet safety. And rightfully so! With third graders social media needs to look VERY different than it would at a high school level. Students will be working on a private, controlled area. I have created an edmodo site that allows students to join in a group with me. This group lets us post updates, chat online about topics, post resources, links, homework, and more. It's almost like a Facebook for school. As students join this, they will need to be approved by me. All comments and posts will be moderated and held to the same standards as our in class expectations. I hope you will check out the link below to join the edmodo and start exploring with your student!

Join my edmodo:
https://edmo.do/j/j7yp7r


If you want to know more about social media in the classroom setting, how other teachers are using it, or see how edmodo lines up with current thinking about social media in the classroom, check out the link below! Its a two page article talking about various types of social media and their uses in education!

Article:
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ991339.pdf

Introducing...The Weather WebQuest!

Hello Parents/Guardians!

This post is to inform you of the exciting educational journey our room is going to be taking! As part of our upcoming weather unit, students will be engaging in a WebQuest created by me. You may be asking yourself, just what is a WebQuest? A Webquest is an interactive learning opportunity that students complete using technology. A WebQuest has a major goal to accomplish to demonstrate student learning. Along the way students follow the process outlined on the page to learn information and create their final project. Here is a great video explaining WebQuests, followed by some sites with examples!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4rel5qOPvU
http://webquest.org/
http://questgarden.com/

Our WebQuest will take students on a journey learning about how different weather patterns are formed, how we can predict weather, and how weather can affect our world. The final project will be for students to create their own weather forecasts! Here is the link to our WebQuest:

https://sites.google.com/site/edu533webquestlacroix/

Please talk to your students about what they learned and did each day as we work on our WebQuests. This will help cement their learning, and may even teach you some new information!

As always thanks so much for all the support you give your student and our classroom!
Ms. LaCroix

The Educational Value of Animoto

Make your own slideshow at Animoto.

Animoto is an easy to use website for anyone interested in making their own videos. This video was an example of introducing a project in a different way, but students could easily use it to create a weather forecast for their final project. It would also be a great way to preview different types of weather seen around the world.

Educational Value of Wordle

To create this Wordle, I copied several different forecasts for the week from various weather sites online and pasted them into the text section on the Wordle website.

The point of this Wordle is to have students look for the most common weather words that show up in forecasts and start familiarizing the vocabulary. With the Wordle, students can pull words they don't know to find the meaning, or discuss how a chance (one of our larger words) has several different meanings depending on its use. This would be a great activity to start whole group, and continue at home with parents!