Voice Threads

Today we made voice threads on http://voicethread.com and comment on what each other said. My questions asked if there can be too much technology in a classroom? Should there be more hand ons and teacher student interaction than working mainly with computers?

My PLN members agreed that there can be too much technology.

Here is the site to my post.

http://voicethread.com/?#q+too+much+tech.b939668.i5008928

I feel like voice thread would be most beneficial in presentations. It can either be used to present or help students hear how they sound and what they need to improve on before giving a presentation in the classroom.

Jigsaw Puzzle

A fun site for kids is the jigsaw puzzle site. They can create their own puzzle by uploading an image or play an already existing one. This would be fun to help kids exercise their minds and can somehow corporate the puzzles with whatever lesson they are learning.

Big Huge Lab!

Big Huge Lab is a website that has many different mini projects for you to try out. For example, the image to the left is a Pop Art Poster where I picked a picture and it did the trendy pop art style poster with that image.

This site can be used for artistic values and expression. There are many other mini projects involving using pictures but with different styles.

This is my collage I made with the glog website. I didn't really enjoy this website because it was too limited. It did not leave much room for the imagination.

I also did not feel that the tools or the way it was set up was very nice either.

This could be used in a classroom to make collages things that are similar, or it could just be a fun art project.

Online Books

I had trouble figuring out the online picture books. Fortunately, my macbook has a similar system I can use to make picture books. I enjoy this tool and it is fun and easy to put together. Above is the cover page and the first two pages. These pictures are of my friends and I getting dressed up to enjoy a fun Valentines weekend.

Google Earth

On Google Earth, I did a tour of my hometown Edmonds, WA. The picture to the left is my neighborhood and my house.

I had some trouble navigating and figuring out the tools but it was fun to explore and see my home from a satellite view.

I then did a tour of Paris, France and then around Egypt. It was interesting to see all the different patterns of structures between the three different places.

This could be used in the classroom to give a more visual idea as to what different places look like around the world and where they are in relevance to another place. Lastly, I looked at Sydney, Australia which I had found the most interesting. Children could play with this tool to gain a better understanding to the different landmarks around the world.

Today we started out by using scriblink which is like an online white board that multiple people can use at one time. We discussed how it can be used to discuss ideas, opinions, thoughts, problem solving, scratch paper and more. It was fun, however, the website was slow and didn't work well with my computer.

The second task was using thinklinkr. It is confusing and I do not like it. We used it to talk about what "differentiation" means. We came up with teaching with all lesson styles in mind and teaching in a way that benefits all children who learn differently.