Clovis 23 things Thing #23

1. The online and digital story telling, because they applied most to Kindergarten and I really feel that I can use them in my classroom. The feel the kids will enjoy them.
2. I have found myself using the webtools much more than I have before. The activities gave me a format to go and explore, where before I wouldn't have known where to start.
3. The Gen Y was very interesting to me personally, due to the fact that I work with an age group in my co-curricular duties that fall in this category. Also, after seeing that information, I will be more aware as I raise my own son in the technology world.
4. The activities seemed long at times. Many of them were very helpful, but there were quite a few that as a Kindergarten teacher I will not use in my class. But maybe in my personal work. I spent more time with this class getting 2 units, than I did in my other 3 or 4 unit classes.
5. Technological Journey!!!

Clovis 23 things Thing #22

Ok, I enjoyed this. But again I found myself getting distracted with all the video!! The Disney youtube was fun to watch. It grabbed my attention. I have a love for Disney, so I was interested. If I was interested, then students would definitely be interested!! Or at least I think they would be. The comic was also one that was pretty good. You could share these sites with students who are doing projects that they need to be careful about copyrights, but for my grade level Kindergarten we don't really deal with this. We discuss the author and how different authors may write the same book, but they use their own words and change their ideas. But we don't really get into having to deal with copyrights for our kids. We use the story "Hey Little Ant" to teach ethics and good decision making by reading the story and having students write a response or we talk about it as a class in their own words, by discussing what the boy should do with the ant.

Clovis 23 things Thing #21

http://www.funbrain.com/brain/MathBrain/MathBrain.html addition
http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/fm.cgi?A1=s&A2=8&A35=9&INSTRUCTS=1
dinosaur matching
http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/fm.cgi?A1=s&A2=8&A35=7&INSTRUCTS=1
colors
http://www.vocabulary.co.il/
word search game
http://www.mathplayground.com/flashcards_timed.html
timed math flash cards
All of these could be played in the classroom or shared with parents at home as enrichment activities

Clovis 23 things Thing #20

http://www.bradleydicken.blogspot.com/
Polar Express

http://bridgerblogs.blogspot.com/2007/11/digital-storytelling-with-kindergarten.htmlice.wikispaces.com/Digital_Storytelling Story Retell

http://www.mtlsd.org/Foster_Elementary/Grade2.asp Jan Brett

http://www.mesquiteisd.org/imovie/monarchbutterfly.htm Butterfly
I enjoyed searching through different digital stories. I found a few that would be really fun to share with my class. The first site showed a class doing that made different digital stories on things that they have learned. The second one was a class activity where the students each retell the same story individually. I think this could be a fun activity to do with my students for open house. Like a book report on video. Then I found a animoto slide show digital story that a class created after a field trip. This is something that I would love to start doing after class events or field trips and use for a parent gift for the end of the year. The last site I mentioned was a really interesting video on the life cycle of a butterfly. This is something we do in our class and the students would really be able to relate to this video.

Clovis 23 things Thing#19

I found Animoto to be the easiest for me to use. I went ahead and used their pictures to create a short 30 second video, because it was fast and easy to use. I did create an account and I really think this is one that I will use. I can create short slide shows for the kiddos and parents to show on Fun Friday. I could create slide shows of our past field trips and class parties or even fun activities we have done in class such as our reptile unit!!! Students could then follow up about what they liked best about our trip or activity.

Clovis 23 things Thing #18

We found a few podcasts that we could relate to. We listened to some podcasts that were created by a Kindergarten teacher: Polar Express, Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten and Days of the week. They were all from the following site:
http://www.bradleydicken.blogspot.com
This site had many great ideas that we could relate to and use in our Kindergarten class. We thought that this podcast could be created using Digital Storytelling by uploading pictures and texts and adding voice. Students could watch this in the classroom to learn the days of the week or they could even create their own.

Clovis 23 Things Thing #17

Not sure if this was positive or negative for me! I found two videos to be I guess interesting is the word.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363a2Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR90
The first video really made you stop and think about how much is going on out there. And the second video showed how involved technology is in students today. I felt that this video didn't show technology as a positive, but as a very negative. It really opened your eyes to how much a distraction technology is to kids and how easy one is able to get off task so quick for so long. I know that there are many thing that technology can do for us in a positive way, but how to monitor the distraction is where the question is. Even for myself as I am sitting here completing each "thing", I find myself getting of task and before I know it, I have been sitting in front of the computer half the day and I am still have not completed all the "things" that I need to have finished!! As far as what I did find positive, was the refseek site. Holly and I thought that this was a great link for teacher with the TeacherTube and the 5min. This could be helpful when trying to get an answer in a quick manner.