Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Tool 11

I like wordle. I could make one and have the kids pick out words that they have to define. Maybe have them post them on wallwisher.
I am not sure how this has changed my thinking about teaching with technology in my classroom. There is way too much information here for me to digest in one sitting. This will take time to revamp the curriculum to include much of this stuff. We have so much to teach and get the kids ready for EOC that I am not sure what to do. I am on overload with all of this. I find it playing more than teaching. I remember just a few years ago we were to NOT have a facebook account or twitter account for kids to communicate with us and now you are telling us that we should. What a change. I am not a blogger type person so not much it going to come out of that. 

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Tool 10

            Communicate in the appropriate language without slang or texting abbreviations. No cyberbullying, treat people how you want to be treated. Report cyberbullying to your teacher. Watch out for plagiarism and remember that you are accountable for your words.
            iSafe is the tool I would use to help my students and parents understand digital responsibility.
            I would teach digital citizenship by using websites and videos that explain it. I would have them fill out a contract to insure that they know what is expected of them. I would also teach them how to cite their information that they are using. I would share these websites with parents so they also know about digital citizenship. 

Tool 9

It is important to put technology with the objective because it is HERE!!! The kids know how to use it more than us. They get on there and explore and play. We as teachers just don’t seem to have the time which makes it a challenge to tie technology to the classroom. We will have to get out of the box on this one. Technology should help not hinder us.
We should hold the students accountable for their work so we know that they are doing the correct things. It will be interesting to see how to come up with a way to keep track of how they are doing. The need to learn that technology is not just for playing Angry Birds but that it should help us in the classroom understand the objectives we are trying to complete.
Phet and SciLinks are good interactive sites for IPC. There are different interactive sections for the units that we teach that can expand on what the student needs to know. I see density and buoyancy inactives that would be great to work with after teaching the subjects. The students could pair up and work problems or show the class their information on buoyancy. You could give a quiz for accountability. The student could use googledocs to or wallwisher to add to the blog board.
From the SBISD data base I see a few that might help students. Flash cards are great for helping kids learn their vocabulary. Science Glossary and video science sound good. These are all good ways of helping kids with the study sheets for a test. Before the end of class the student would have to show how much they have completed.
Animation Creator might be fun to have the kids make a comic strip that has to do with the unit that you are teaching that week. 

Friday, January 13, 2012

Tool 8

     After watching the videos, I learned that they must be plugged in other night to get their updates. Teachers must first download to their computer and then sync the information to the iPad. Our iTunes account has to be created through SBISD.
     I will have to establish a check out-check in procedure and watch for battery usage so we don’t run out. Allow the students to explore and learn. Most of my students know more about this techie stuff then me so I will probably be learning from them. We might be able to use in labs for collect data and share through googledocs.

Tool 7


We could use asynchronous learning with googledocs and collect data from the 3 IPC teacher’s classromms on a lab that we are all doing. Whether it is a spreadsheet or a just documentation we can see how close we come to getting the dame answers as we are doing the same lab. 
            We would need to pick a lab that will give us enough data to make it interesting for the students to compare. Not that this thought is in our heads I would need to look at labs to see what is best. Probably next year we could implement something since we have worked through all the labs this year and seen what is best. Googledocs would probably work the best in doing this. Working with the other IPC teacher would probably work best for a start. 

Tool 6

    Wallwisher.com might be a good place to have the kids review. They would have to put an answer to the question. Then NO 2 answers could be the same, so the kids would really have to read all the answers so they don't put down the same one. I like it.
    Polleverywhere.com is interesting because the kids can use their smart phone to answer the poll instantly in the classroom. You don't have to mess around with active votes if you don't want to take answer grades from individual kids. Kids love to use their phone for everything so this would probably increase participation. They could also make their own polls for other kids to take.

Polleverywhere and Wallwisher are located on the side of blog.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Tool 5


I looked into wordle and bighugelabs. Wordle was fun and one of most interesting tolls that I have learned about so far.  I have always seen these little work groups on google images but never figured out how they were created. Here is the one I made with words from out Matter Unit.  I can see my students making wordles with their vocabulary words for the unit.
Big Huge Labs is great with pictures. I had to do a little playing around with it since the YouTube video does not come up. Once I figured out how to upload photos I was good to go. The students could take pictures doing their labs and we could make a mosaic. Mine is only a 4 photo but you can make one with many more photos. 
Here's my bigHugelab


Here's my wordle!!!