ToonDo Reflection

I actually really enjoyed using the ToonDo website to create a comic. I created a play on some of Shakespeare's lines so that it would make it easier for my students to understand. I could see myself using this to introduce new content and subject areas. I could also see myself having my students creating their own comic for a project. They're a versatile tool and I plan on using them all the time because they are free and easy to use.

Podcast Reflection #8: Tech Chick Tips-"Podcasting Even as we Speak"

For this podcast reflection, I did another Tech Chick Tips podcast. I know we are supposed to do different podcasts for each one but I've found that I really enjoy these women and feel that they present the technology in a positive and easy to understand fashion. In this podcast, they discuss a 21st Century Article about Education. The article talks about how the constant need for "reform" in the educational society causes people to overlook the teachers that are positively influencing their students and who are good at their job. They also discuss Pindax which is a cool alternative to message boards. It's set up like Post-Its which makes it fun and visually pleasing. Another great aspect of it is that it's free!! The last aspect of their podcast that I'll discuss is Google Flu Trends. At first when I heard this, I rolled my eyes a little. I thought, "Why would they discuss this?". But then I got to thinking, as a teacher, I'm going to be around so many kids a day, I need to be aware of their health, even if they don't look sick. Google Flu Trends shows flu activity from around the world, so even teachers who don't live in the United States could potentially use it. Overall, I think Tech Chick Tips are my favorite podcasters and I hope to continue listening to them even after this class is over.

Classroom 2.0 Site Reflection

For this reflection, I will discuss how I explored Classroom 2.0. Classroom 2.0 is a free website that is community supported. It's basically like Facebook for teachers. It's a social networking site that allows teachers to share ideas and lesson plans with other educators in a fun and easy way. I found the Forum to be especially helpful because it offered such a variety of topics and I really feel that this would make it easy to find something that would relate to what I'm teaching in my class. There were also different groups that you can join based on certain topics. I really feel like this social networking site could be useful to a new teacher because when we're just starting out, we are basically starting out classroom from scratch. It is up to us to decide how we want to teach and having this resource would give us new ideas on how to do this as well as give us a place to spread our own ideas that we come up with. I think it's very inventive and will be a valuable asset in my classroom.

Eduteacher Site Reflection

For this reflection, I will discuss how I explored the Eduteacher site. The main page was very visually pleasing but not in such a way that it was overwhelming or messy. There were three main areas to look at: explore, share, or contribute. Explore had links for all of the different content areas. I clicked on the Language Arts tab and up came 76 different sites that I could go to for ideas for language arts. This was incredibly easy and beneficial. The Share aspect had different buttons one could push (Twitter, YouTube, etc.) to share a lesson plan or idea from the site. The Contribute link brought up a window that allowed the user to contribute a lesson plan, comment, or idea to put on the site. The site itself also had tabs for conferences, the library, eduTeacher TV, and many more. The three resources I found through it were 4Teachers.org (a site to help teachers integrate technology into their classroom), Books Should Be Free( a site that offers thousands of audiobooks that can be downloaded in different formats), and Conjugation ( a site that allows students to type in a verb and have it conjugated for them). Overall, I really enjoyed exploring the site and feel that it will be a valuable tool in my future classroom.

Kan-ed Portal Site Reflection with Netrekkerr and Thinkfinity

When we first went to the Kan-ed site in class, I'll admit, I was a little intimidated and overwhelmed. There were so many different areas to look at! However, after exploring the site and the different resources it offers, I feel like I have a better grasp of what the site can do for me as a future educator. I think it's great how the site offers examples of the different standards for each grade level. I'm a secondary education major so that means that I could teach any grade from 6th grade all the way up to seniors in high school. Because of this, I have to be familiar with whatever standards for whatever grade I teach, whether it's in middle school or high school. With Kan-ed, all of these resources are available to me. Another aspect I like is that it has the standards for both Reading and Writing all across the grade spectrum. Different assessment tests focus on different aspects of Language Arts/Literature so it will be important to me as a teacher to have all of these standards somewhere that is easily accessible. Another part I think will be really useful is the Lesson Plan area. Based on the grade you choose and the standard, there are usually lesson plans available to use. For example, in the High School Reading and Writing section, there are lesson plans available for everything from journal entries to uses of commas. The only thing I didn't like about the website was that the site itself was not very visually pleasing. I understand that it has an abundance of information to convey but the fact that it wasn't fun to look at it made the task of navigating it even more daunting.
After exploring the main Kan-ed site, I moved on to Thinkfinity.  I was absolutely blown away with the abundance of material for teachers to use in the classroom that Thinkfinity had available. They have everything from Lesson Plans to Interactive Assignments for students. My favorite lesson plan that I found was entititled: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Literary Humor. This lesson plan was located in Literature under the 9-12 section on the lesson plan page. It had questions to ask the students, activities, and even a section for extending beyond the lesson, which I think it really important in a Literature classroom. I think the site is very easy to navigate and I like that they have different sections for the different grade levels as well as different sections for the different topics.
The last part I looked at in relation to Kan-ed was Netrekker. While the main page for Thinkfinity was very easy to navigate, the Netrekker main page was a little confusing.  Netrekker is a search engine for teachers and academics that has access to a plethora of resources. I did like how Netrekker had a section for Professional Development. I think that most sites tend to overlook that part of education and teaching so it was refreshing to see a site that paid attention to that.
Overall, Thinkfinity was my favorite site to explore and Netrekker was my least favorite. I think Kan-ed is a great resource for future/current teachers and now that I've had the chance to explore it, I feel that it'll be easier for me to use it!

Podcast Reflection #7: Teaching Strategies for the Everyday Teacher--Answering (Irrelevant) Questions

In this podcast reflection, I'll discuss how I listened to a podcast from Teaching Strategies for the Everyday Teacher. This particular podcast focused on Answering (Irrelevant) Questions in the classroom. According to this podcast, there are three types of questions that a teacher might hear in the classroom. The first type are questions that are relevant to the topic and easy to answer. The second type are the questions that are relevant to the topic and a little more difficult to answer. The final type are the irrelevant questions that most teachers simply ignore and don't answer. If a student asks a type one question, give answer BUT don't imply that it was a silly question. You want students to feel safe asking questions because it helps you check where they are in the lesson. They then discuss many different strategies for answering these type one questions. After that, they discuss type two questions and how to answer those as well, including how to answer these questions if you don't know the exact answer. Finally, they explain how to respond to irrelevant questions and reasons why they might be asked in the first place. They also make the distinction between the student who might just be lost or the student who might be asking the question simply to get attention. The main idea of this podcast that they want the listener to walk away with is that every questions deserves some kind of answer. Overall, I really liked this podcast. It was short, sweet, and I feel like I'm walking away with tools I'll use in my future classroom.

Podcast Reflection #6: It's Elementary--Season 3, Show 6

For this reflection, I watched the visual "podcast" from It's Elementary. I was really surprised at first to see that it was run by kids but this made me all the more intrigued to keep watching. First off, the discuss what the ITBS test is. It stands for the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and is offered through the College of Education. It can be given to students K-8th as part of the Iowa statewide testing. It's a standardized test and a "norm reference test". It's actually given to students all over the U.S., not just in Iowa. It deals with reading, language arts, math, and science. It's given once a year to all 3rd-8th grade students. Next, they discuss how to get ready for this test. It's a test over what you've learned up to that point in your education. They talk about how they need their bodies prepared with rest so they can focus, how they need a good breakfast for energy and fuel, that they need to use the strategy of re-reading the question and looking at all of the possible answers yet picking the best answer. The next strategy is to rule out the answers that they know aren't the right and then choose the best one from the remaining. One of the last ones they discuss is to NOT RUSH!! Lastly, they discuss about how their teachers spent the day learning about formative assessments. Formative Assessments are assessments for learning and the information they use is for teachers to learn how to form or direct their instruction. Cassandra Erkins discussed how to grade students work in a way that the students will get the most from it. The last thing they discussed was parent-teacher conferences. Overall, I really enjoyed this podcast and I liked that it was run by kids. It was a little slow at points but their enthusiasm made it enjoyable to watch and listen to.

Podcast Reflection #5: EdTechTalk-EdTechWeekly #186

For this podcast reflection, I listened to a podcast by EdTechTalk entitle. This is a discussion of education technology and how it can be integrated into the classroom. They give a four minute discussion of something that went wrong at a conference. It was a little difficult to follow because they were using terminology that I was not familiar with. They started out talking about Gephi. Gephi is a software that allows you to sort through a lot of different types of data. It can sort out information on different accounts and the example used here is Facebook. This can also be used by research companies who do a lot of analytic work with lots of information. Then they discuss how Facebook or social networking can be used in schools and if it is being used now. The consensus was no BUT that it will probably be incorporated soon. They discuss how a school in NY was using something similar but for it to be sucessfull, everyone has to be using it in a pretty uniform way. From what they say, they are using these systems to help people interact with one another. Towards the end, they start to discuss the idea of open resources to a K-12 level and how you "grow" a text book or an alternative to a textbook. Conclusively, they talk about how these open resources would be beneficial to students. Overall, this was a hard podcast to follow and has been my least favorite of the one's I've listened to thus far.

Podcast Reflection #4: Teachers Teaching Teachers-"What does passionate inquiry look like..."

For this reflection, I listened to a podcast by Teachers Teaching Teachers that was titled "What does passionate inquiry look like at a second chance school in Canarsie, Brooklyn?". It was their first podcast of 2011 and they started out talking with Charlie Freed. He now teaches at a new vision school in Brooklyn where his students have been using Youth Voices. It's a "transfer school" which means they serve an over-age, under-credited population. These would include kids who might have issues with truancy, had to leave another school because of childbirth, etc. Basically, they work with exceptional cases. The students come to them not really wanting to be anywhere NEAR school so what they do is try to re-engage their students by covering "traditional material in nontraditional ways". They have different classes like a Personal Finance class which teaches students to balance checking accounts as well as teaching them traditional math. However, instead of sending the students back to regular public schools after they get better, this school actually graduates students. They can get up to 18 credits in one given year. They have 55 minute classes for their students throughout the day. Charlie is a part of iZone which is a virtual learning environment initiative. The initiative said that a third of the day had to feature lessons with an online component and how they chose to do that was to take their students and have their first two courses of the day be online courses.  Later in the podcast, they discuss student's response surveys and if they think they're a good idea, especially in terms of finding out what students like to write about. Charlie also talks about how he incorporates website and the web into his lessons. Towards the end, they get into discussions about online teaching and how important modeling is to students. Overall, I thought this was a really interesting podcast and was inspired by the way this school has worked so hard to incorporate technology into their entire curriculum.

Podcast Reflection #3: Tech Chick Tips-"No Peanut Butter Required"

For my first podcast, I listened to "No Peanut Butter Required" by Tech Chick Tips. This reflection will cover three tools that they discussed including Secret Builders, Screen Jelly, and ABCya!.

The first tool that they looked at is Secret Builders. It's a virtual type world that kids can use, a lot like the different worlds that they can use with Webkinz or similar toys. The cool thing about this is thought that they can interact with different important people in history as well as fictional characters. Because this site is trying to combine the virtual world with an educational aspect, there are different quests, quizzes, and other activities that students can do along with interacting with these characters. There are different "social tools" that they can explore like malls, cafe's, etc. There are sections for parents as well as teachers and the privacy settings vary for age but the site doesn't offer ANY of the child's personal information, which is nice.

The next tool is Screen Jelly which is a screen capture application. It has a 3 minute limit but you can capture what you're doing on your screen as well as record your voice as you work. It's very easy to share your information via Facebook or Twitter as well. It could be a great tool for teachers if their students are at home or out of class and they need to be shown what to do. The teacher could just demonstrate what they need to do and use Screen Jelly to record it and then send it to the student.

The last tool I'm going to discuss is the ABCya! which is a site with different education games for students mainly at the elementary level. The Tech Chicks talk about how the site itself is a little overwhelming but could definitely be used for an interactive whiteboard. One cool aspect of this site is that all of the games and activities were created by teachers for teachers! These activities incorporate all subject areas (math, reading, etc.) while trying to introduce students to basic and needed computer skills. Cool thing for younger grade elementary teachers: the kindergarten and first grade lessons have sound to help the kids as well! It's not really geared towards high schoolers however some of the concepts and lessons could be used for certain middle school classes.

My favorite tool that they discussed and the one that I think I would use the most out of the three would be Screen Jelly. Because I'm going to hopefully be teaching high school, if I have students that are absent or sick, I can still get them the information they need in such a way that they can see it done and hopefully it would make it easier for them to do the assignment outside of school.

Avatar Experience

For class today we learned how to create avatars using Build Your Wild Self and Voki. I've posted both of the avatars I made below; the first is Wild Self and the other is Voki. Hope you enjoy them and possibly create one of your own!