Tool #8 - Video Resources

Video resources are great for supporting classroom instruction. I've used United Streaming from Discovery Education for several years and found it to be very helpful in reinforcing lessons. Teacher Tube is quite useful for teachers to learn new ideas and see what other teachers around the world are doing.

I searched Blinkx to find these You Tube videos. The first one is the nursery rhyme - "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" that can be used to help students develop phonemic awareness skills.
The second one is "Heidisongs Singable Songs" that can be used when teaching shapes.

Tool #7 - Creating digital stories

I've created several projects using PhotoStory. It is a fun tool!
Below is part of a video I created to show to parents at our end of the year celebration
which showcase students in the classroom and during special events throughout
the year. The parents and students loved it!
Other uses for PhotoStory:
- students retelling a story by acting it out
- introducing a new concept
- teaching classroom procedures

Tool #6 - Creating wikis to store and share information

I enjoyed the classroom sample wiki about a study of the ocean - http://wedderburn-grade34.wikispaces.com/The+Ocean.
This is a great tool to use to document our classroom science projects - the life cycle of a butterfly, the plant life cycle, etc. With parents being able to view the wiki pages, students can easily share what they are learning. I could also use wikis to provide useful information to parents, such as: school procedures, classroom news, class rules, field trips, volunteer opportunities, conference information, links to favorite kid websites, and pictures of the class.

Tool #5 - Tagging and Social Bookmarking

Tagging and Social Bookmarking are so much easier to use to reference and organize my saved websites than "my favorites". I decided to join Delicious and will definitely work on reorganizing my favorites. I'm going to love being able to access them from any computer!

I found two very useful websites:

www.prekfun.com
(great ideas for beginning of the year activities)

www.kellyskindergarten.com
(great powerpoints for Dr. Jean songs, Jack Hartmann songs, and others)

The tags I used were: prek, prek activities, first day of school ideas

Tool #4 - Cool Google Tools

I really enjoyed using the Google Tools!
I created a form with multiple choice answers, using Google Docs, and shared it with a team member.
Using Google Reader, I set up five blogs to follow.
It's such a time saver to be able to keep up with your favorite blogs all in one place.

These tools can save so much time when sharing and collaborating with other teachers and students too.
I can see using the form I created when working with the students on the Question of the Day.
Once all responses have been received, they would be able to see an instant graph!

Tool #3 - Image Generators & Mashups

Each tool had a lot of fun ideas to choose from!

Using ImageChef, I created a sketchpad template that I will use for name activities, name tags, classroom labels, and much more...

Using Bookr, I created a book about zoo animals that I could read before our school field trip to the zoo. After the field trip, I could add the pictures I took at the zoo, then put the book in the library center to share with the students.

Zoo animals book - link

Zoo Animals by Mrs. M

I also created this Visual poetry image using ImageChef - to add as a gadget to my blog.