Sorry

I will have to apologize for not posting since last week's class. I have been really distracted with care for my ailing step father so thinking and concentrating on anything has been really hard!

In the last session we had I LOVED the etherpad activity we did. This would be a great way for kids to work collaboratively on their writing skills and to help with editing work. I don't know if I am ready to implement this tool, however, it will be in my bag of tricks for later use.

Right now, I am working on completing my lesson plan. I think I am a bit too detailed, but it was fun creating. I have a student teacher right now and we discussed how we could use this as a culminating activity for the end of our reading themed unit. I can't wait to get my hands on the CD of our class projects so that I can utilize some of the ideas in my classroom!

Hope you all have a relaxing and happy Thanksgiving!

Keyboarding

I was really happy that we discussed keyboarding in class and did the activity with the pros and cons of teaching keyboarding stand alone or as part of TPACK. As I mentioned in class last week our district wants us to teach keyboarding stand-alone and I had a training to do so. However, I have seen other teachers teaching the stand alone version of keyboarding and the kids complain all of the time about how boring it is to do. No thanks!!!!!

Last year, I utilized using technology with my students in all of their writing and publishing. I feel as though integrating the technology as part of my instruction kept the kids motivated to write and their writing and computer skills improved. So needless to say I don't teach keyboarding stand alone. I feel as though the kids are at different levels of keyboarding skills and I allowing them to go at their own pace with typing and navigating through the various computer programs. I also, strategically place more advanced tech saavy kids next to students who may need assistance. This works out well as they can help those who I can't get to right away.

Digital Storytelling...continued

Sorry this is late getting on here....I thought it posted by obviously not if I am rewriting this.

So this past week I was sitting in one of our collaboration meetings for our International Baccularette unit (which is a cross curricular program to help prepare students for the 21st century) we were discussing our next unit of study which is culture. And bam...it struck me that we could use digital story telling to have studnets write personal narratives or to recreate a cultural story. I brought that up to my colleagues and they were excited to try it! So that got the ball rolling....I then went to my principal with the idea and he was excited as well. So now I am in the process of getting information for the software that we need.

Then funny enough, I was at a wedding this weekend and was talking to a kindergarten colleague of mine and we were talking about technology and she was so excited to share that she knows how to use Animoto, but was limited to only 3o second clips and that's when I told her about VideoSpin. So I will be showing her that sight this week!

I am so excited to incorporate the digital storybooks!