So we are off to a great start this year in kindergarten...... The second day into the school year, we are told we will be losing not one, but two teachers from our Kindergarten team due to the lower number of children. It shook all of us up including teachers, parents, and most importantly the students! Trying to help the two teachers leaving pack up their things and set up their new classrooms in new schools has definitely been a challenge. I have to say though that the students have been incredible in learning the new routines of the class and getting acquainted with everyone. So far it has been a smooth transition for sure!
Amidst all of this chaos, I have stumbled upon a great website I have already started utilizing this year in my classroom. http://www.thekidzpage.com/ It offers free clip art, online games, coloring pages, and much much more!
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Kindergarten Here We Come
As another school year is about to begin, I have decided to re-purpose this blog to pertain to Early Childhood Education and my Kindergarten classroom. Stay tuned for many things including book reviews, website reviews, thoughts about early childhood resources, and happenings in the classroom!
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
23 Things: Sum It All Up!
There were so many favorites that I found along this journey! Some of those include Rollyo, Delicious, Image Generators, and Library Thing. All of these tools are things that I can use personally and professionally. Right now I am still in the classroom and feel that I can utilize these resources now and in the future in the library.
Library2Play has not only assisted in my lifelong learning goals, but also motivated me to explore more things on my own. It has introduced me to new tools and also helped me to become better equipped to work with tools I have worked with before.
I knew going into this program that I would learn a lot and take away with me some great resources to use. I was surprised how easy a lot of the tools were that I worked with. A lot of the things seemed difficult when starting, but once I worked with them, it deemed to be easier than thought.
I was impressed with many of the tools and the set-up of this program. There is not much I would change except for possibly Thing 12: Creating Community Through Commenting. This could actually be part of another thing to make this spot an opportunity to explore other tools, rather than other blogs. This should be taking place anyway.
If there were other programs offered that allowed users to discover new tools, I would definitely participate. My participation in this program was to receive credit for a college course, but it is certainly something that I would take part in!
This discover program has allowed me to become familiar with Web 2.0 Tools in ways that would not have been done in a normal staff development.
Library2Play has not only assisted in my lifelong learning goals, but also motivated me to explore more things on my own. It has introduced me to new tools and also helped me to become better equipped to work with tools I have worked with before.
I knew going into this program that I would learn a lot and take away with me some great resources to use. I was surprised how easy a lot of the tools were that I worked with. A lot of the things seemed difficult when starting, but once I worked with them, it deemed to be easier than thought.
I was impressed with many of the tools and the set-up of this program. There is not much I would change except for possibly Thing 12: Creating Community Through Commenting. This could actually be part of another thing to make this spot an opportunity to explore other tools, rather than other blogs. This should be taking place anyway.
If there were other programs offered that allowed users to discover new tools, I would definitely participate. My participation in this program was to receive credit for a college course, but it is certainly something that I would take part in!
This discover program has allowed me to become familiar with Web 2.0 Tools in ways that would not have been done in a normal staff development.
Thing #22 Nings
Ning, a social networking tool, is a great way to communicate with colleagues and others in your field. When exploring Teacher Librarian Ning, http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/, I came across a Book Video Ning, http://bookvideo.ning.com/. This is an excellent resource that shares media related to reading. Nings are great tool that allow users to blog, post photos and videos, and network with others in your field.
Thing #21: Podcasts and Videocasts
Using Photostory was extremely easy for me.... maybe it has to do with the fact that I have used it before....I don't know. It is an excellent tool and is very easy to use. I uploaded my pictures, recorded my voice for each one, and it puts it together for you! I might have done a better job with this if I would have made a script to better know what I was going to say for each picture!Now, I played with adding music, but ended up not doing it for this project. In the past I have not used music in any Photstory that I have created, but I would like to work on adding that in this next school year.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Thing #20 YouTube, TeacherTube and Zamzar
There are so many movies available via YouTube and TeacherTube. After searching through YouTube for movies using a keyword search for "librarians" and "library", I found that all types of movies and clips come up. When searching in TeacherTube, I found that the materials were appropriate for education and more specific to what was searched. TeacherTube offers not only movies and clips, but also documents, photos, and audio. I plan to incorporate more technology in my classroom this next year and plan to utilize more of this resource in the future.
Thing #19 Web 2.0 Awards List
Looking over the Web 2.0 Awards List was very interesting. There are so many categories......AND I have to say that I was surprised by some of them. One tool that I checked out was Yahoo Answers www.answers.yahoo.com. This tool allows users to ask questions, answer questions, and even discover how things work by categories. This would be a useful resource for teachers and librarians to assist with research on most any topic. Currently as a teacher, I could see myself using this in my classroom to answer simple questions that are asked by students to find out more.
Thing #18 Online Productivity Tools
Google Docs is an awesome tool that can be utilized by many people! It offers so much to users. Users have online access to word documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, whether it is developed online or a document uploaded from an office suite. Having complete access to a document is a major advantage of using this online tool. Work included can be edited by invited users and shared with others using an assigned link to the document. Google Docs could be used when collaborating with colleagues, sharing documents with friends and family, or even sharing documents with parents.
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