Final essential

I have really enjoyed this course. I learned so many new things. I can do a lot more with my web page than I did before. That is awesome. I can't say that I actually had a favorite essential. I found each one useful in a different way. I enjoyed blogging but wish that more participants had blogged with each other. It is my hope to begin a blog page for my students. I did not know about skype and I think it is really cool. My students were able to skype with the 5th grade students at Riley. That was a really special thing. The students interacted with each other and thought it was cool.Other staff members are now wanting to learn to skype too. I use utube videos and have been doing it more since I took this class. I did not know about zamzar and I find that really useful. I also started storing sites on Delicious.

I really need to find time to explore each of the essentials further. I am the type of learner that needs to do things many times before it becomes ingrained in my learning. I hope to go back to each essential often over the next few weeks.

I cannot say enough good things about this course. The lessons were very well explained and having Jason and Carol to talk to using skype was helpful too. My staff now sees me as the expert in technology and are often asking for my help or advice. I don't have all the answers but I'm getting better at it. I hope everyone that particippated in this course got as much as I did. I think it would be neat to get together and actually talk about our experiences and or questions in person in the near future,

essentials #14

I enjoyed checking out these sites. Taking my class to computer lab once a week sometimes leaves me helpless as to what they can do. Right now, they are working on a slideshow to share with parents. These will be posted in my website. However, there are times when I want to do something different with them. http://www.spaghettibookclub.org/ This site is related to books and authors. Sometimes I get stumped on what books to suggest to my class. If they like a particular author they can type in the name of that author to see what other books he/she has done. They can also type in the name of a book. I see real potential for this in conjunction with my reading and writing workshops. It would be real helpful with an author study too.

http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/mentalmaths/tabletrees.html This was an interesting site. This helps students practice their multiplication facts. I know there are many sites like this one, but one more won't hurt.Students like technology. Any extra thing we can do to get them to practice their facts will help. This is set up like table trees. They click on the times table tree they want to learn. I plan on adding this link to my web page so that parents can have students practice at home, too.

I still do not remember what to do when it comes to putting this on Twitter so it may be awhile before I get these posted there. I did put both of them in Delicious though. I love Delicious!!

essentials 13

Wow, found some interesting websites today. http://readwritethink.org seems quite useful. It has many different lessons related to literacy instruction. I also found a cool math site.
http://www.ixl.com/ This site you can access different grade level math to practice. Not only will this be a good place for me to get stuff for my students but it will be a great resource to help out at home, too. I put both on the spread sheet. Now I need to find the time to add it to my delicious. I haven't twittered about it because it has been so long since I have done twitter. I am not sure I even remember how to get to it. Plus, it wasn't one of my favorite things. Please let me know if you have checked out these sites and what you think of them and/or if you know of similiar sites that you like.

Essential "12 Delicious

Well, I have to say that I haven't had much time to do much other than actually set up my delicious account. My name for the account is PattyCooke because it would not take pcooke. This surprised me as I am sure there is not more than one of me. Today, I looked at some of the blogs I have been following. Ghblog posted two very good sites to follow. I sent them to myself in an email because I want to play with the sites for a bit, but then I will add them to my delicious account. Both are math sites.

I have also been following geeky.momma.blog@gmail.com. This is a terrific teacher who has her students blog. She post things on her blog that I find very useful. Plus, I like looking at her student blog page too.

Essential #11 PLN

A PLN means a professional learning network. It is a way to communicate with others in your field and share ideas. I feel that in a way this course and the blogs we are reading and writing are in itself a PLN. I have really gotten a lot out of this course and want to share what I have learned with my colleagues. I am going to try some of the PLN suggested in Ann's utube video that we watched. I really want to find a way to return to blogs I have read or ideas posted by certain individuals. I am hopeful that the next essential will tell more about this. I have come across quite a few utube videos and blogs written by other professionals that I want a quick and easy way to follow them. Quick is the key word here. I know I am just learning but it seems like I have to go thru many steps to re find something I read that I want to return to.This will be especially useful when I find lessons on line that I like. I can return to that person's blog or site to see if he/she has more ideas that I can find useful.

Essential #10

I have recently started using utube videos to enhance my instruction. My students read about the Soo Locks, but the book didn't really give the students a good idea of how it actually works and why. I went on utube one evening and typed in Soo Locks videos. I had to sort thru a few things. Then my oldest daughter said " type in utube", then when you get utube, type in Soo Locks. Wow, success. I found several good ( and not so good) videos to use. The next day I showed the best one to both of my social studies classes. They loved it.The video was only 5 minutes long, but well worth it. The video showed the actual raising of the boat in the locks coming from Lake Huron and going to Lake Superior. It is a little bit of a pain setting up the laptop and projector to use for only 5 minutes but it is something I plan on continuing to do. While showing the video I learned that I could maximize the video to the full screen. I never knew I could do that. See the 4th graders knows more than I do when it comes to technology!

I did not know about zamzar.com until today. I love the idea that I can save the video on my computer and not have to be on the internet. Not only that, but some videos get removed over time ( I just recently discovered that when I went looking for one that I had sent myself in a link). If I save it to my computer I will always have it even if it gets removed. I am concerned about downloading stuff to our school computers. I have downloaded pictures and documents. The computer seems slower than it did last year. It takes forever to delete something from email. I wonder if our computers are having problems because of all the downloads we are doing. If anyone has a similiar question or thought please let me know.

Essential 9

It seems like forever since I have commented on my blog. I have been busy reading different blogs for essential 9. I also have been trying different things out in my classroom. My class skyped with Jason S. class on Thursday. My class asked his class questions about their school. It was a real neat experience, however we showed up mostly in shadow so I'm not sure how much his class got from the experience but my students loved it! We skyped for a half an hour. My teaching partner came in while we were doing it and now she wants to do it too. I spent time on my lunch hour and recess breaks helping teachers post puzzles and word searches to their web pages and am currently collecting pictures from field day from various parents and teachers in order to make a slideshow for our gym teacher (in charge of winter field day) to post to her web site. I have also been working closely with my principal to find time to share all that I have learned in this class with our staff. All of these things have kept me busy so I feel I am falling behind in my quest to learn about technology. Today, I found a blog in the 100 best blogs list; geeky mommablog. She is great. Her class has a blog page. I can really see the benefit of doing the same. I have some reluctant writers that I feel would possibly write if I had a class blog too. I am unsure how to get it started though. Any ideas or thoughts?