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?

Audacity and Podcasting

I actually have had some traing on audacity. (Thank you Jason). I have had each student make a mini movie reading what he/she was thankful for during the month of November. Then I showed these mini movies to parents at conferences. Then, parents asked if I could post it on my web page which I did ( remember use only first names). You can check out the results on my webpage under the heading Thankful Movies. My students really picked up on their writing skills when we did this because they knew they were going to read it and be filmed! We are now working on geting a class set of headphones for the computer lab. I also filmed myself singing happy birthday. I saved this on my desktop. I did this as a fun thing to try out audacity. My plan was to send it to colleagues on their birthday, but I have some Center students that attend my class. One in particular was absent on his birthday. I sent the birthday video message to him via email to his mom. She said he was absolutely thrilled. It is because of learning audacity that I became more interested in technology for my classroom.

Web Page Info

For reading month, our school has a lot of activities planned based on the Olympic theme. Students are to read to turn in medal of minutes, etc. They also have reading challenges. One of the challenges requires them to visit teacher webpages and do a puzzle or word search posted there. Many of my staff ( including me) did not have puzzles and word searches posted. I spent the last couple days creating some on my web page. ( Coolidge, Mrs.Cooke Puzzles). I offered to teach my colleagues, but many wanted written directions. I typed it out at work today. It's really pretty easy. You could actually figure out the word search part on your own.If anyone wants a copy of the directions please email me at work , identify who you are and I will email the directions to you.

Have a great weekend!!

Essentials #7 Posting Pictures

I am very excited about the things I looked at in this essential. I plan on going back often. I really like Pics4learning.com. Wow! There was so much useful stuff. I just started my class doing their first slide show based on a simple exercise they wrote in class. My goal is to put their completed slideshows on my web page. We just started today and it was difficult to find pictures using only google images. Pics4 learning will be another option for them. I also liked the fact that there was lesson plans in there.

I did my slide show of my classroom tour today. I used smilebox.com to do it though because you don't have to resize the pictures which can be time consuming. Plus, smilebox puts it in a creative slideshow with music ( that you pick out). I started to use Picnik but because of time constraints I quit and opted to do smilebox because I had recently learned how to do it and as I said I did not have to resize my photos. It took me a total of 15 min to learn smilebox and i can now whip up a slideshow using pictures from my digital camera in about 5 min. I have other slideshows in my photogallery ( of my class) if anyone wants to check it out.

Essentials #6 Web Pages

I enjoyed looking at the sample web pages. It made me feel good actually. I try to update my web page about every two weeks, sometimes sooner. I felt that my web page was right on line with some of the web pages I saw. I added the calendar page to my web page. I want to add some puzzles for reading month. I mentioned before about www.smilebox.com. It is so easy to use and I have added a lot of classroom pictures to my web page using it. If you visit my web page ( Mrs. Cooke) click on photo gallery to check it out.

Essentials #5
Wow.Endless possabilities for google docs. I am not sure how I would use this with my own classroom but I can see how useful it would be with my peers right now as we are gathering data for NCA accredidation. I can't wait to show it to my staff.
I read an interesting blog today by someone else who did their google doc and it sounded interesting to me. However, I have no idea how to access his/her google doc. Hopefully that will be explained to us by the techies.

I had my first call today using skype. Very neat!!

Skype Continued.. Well, I did look through some of the links associated with skype from The Essentials class. The possabilities are endless. I also watched a getting started with Skype vidoe sent to me from Jason (thanks Jason). My webcam still does not work so I am not sure what I will accomplish. Not sure if Skype is my thing but I definitely like Blogging. I asked my 13 year old to help me with my profile picture. Prettu easy stuff I discovered. Next time I will try to do it myself.It is a picture of yellow flowers so if you see that picture following you it's me. I am following quite a few group B blogs.

Side note: If you do not know about smilebox.com youu should check it out. I have created 3 slideshows of class pictures and posted them to my school web page for parents and children to access. It's a free site and has really cool slideshows. My first attempt took me 15-20 min but now I can do it in 5 min. I took pictures of my class at their Valentine party then posted during my lunch hour.

Essentials #4

I started my skype account tonight. I thought I would have all day to play around and explore (snow day) but my children and friends had other plans for me. Went tobogganing! Anyhow, my name on skype is a little different. It's techamateur1. I guess my name was taken. I actually added several people I knew that was taking this class and I think I added my principal too. Now, I just have to find the time to see what I can do on this. My test on my computer ( home laptop) said that my webcam did not work. Now I have to figure out how to turn it on. Any suggestions??

Essentials #3

I signed up for Twitter last night then added the two that I am to follow. Got some great ideas from DMitch. Two of the videos I am going to show my staff and I likedthe mind game site.http://bit.ly/uCnnb This is not only good for my students but it's great for me. There is a family history of alzhemiers and it is best to keep the mind active..

http://mrssmoke.onsugar.com/3568634 This is an awesome blog. It helps students narrow their search when looking up research using google search. It walks you through the steps called Wonder wheel. I tried it out using "Slavery in Michigan"as my topic for my google search. I picked this because that is what my class is learning about right now. The wonder wheel broke the sites down like a web. Then students can narrow the search by clicking on one of the outside web links and it will make another web. I even tried it out with my 13 year old daughter because I thought it was so beneficial. I can't wait to teach this to my students.

I have spent several hours reading educational blogs. I did not realize how much great info is being published on the internet. It does get confusing at times as you follow one link to another than try to navigate back where you came from but I think I am getting the hang of it. I found this one blog that I thought others might be interested in. It is free resources ( fun internet resources for students, Check it out!.
http://tech4teacher.weebly.com/fun-and-creative.html

I love reading to my class and I often read the books they are reading but my tastes don't always match theirs. I read a blog written by a teacher that had a similiar problem. She said that she when she broke down and read 'The Lightening Thief" she found she enjoyed it. She gives some suggestions regarding reccommended reading for 4-5th grade students, too. Her information is found in a blog written by a group of teachers. I plan on returning the site.http://readingyear.blogspot.com

blog #1

I am surprised at how easy it was to create this blog. I spent some time reading other blogs that stated how they use the blogs in the classroom. Wow!!