Thing 08 Curation Tools

I looked into Padlet.  I recently used this curation tool once.   I wanted to try and set up my own padlet page.  I found it very easy to work with which was great.  i instantly thought this would be a great place that I could post useful websites for students to have extra practice and enrichment.  I thought that I could share this padlet with parents of my students.  Many parents are always asking where they can get extra practice for their child.  This owuld be a quick and easy place for parents to access meaningful website practice for their child.  Also, parents could add educational websites that they have previously used and comment.  This would provide many resources for parents and create a classroom community of parents interacting with one another.  It is possible that the school could use the padlet all parents could interact with it and post websites that are working great for practice at home.  Here is the link to my started padelt. Useful Websites It includes websites I currently use with students.

Thing 07

New York State Presentation
I created this presentation as a sample for my students.  Students will use this presentation as a guide to create presentations on an assigned state.  Students can use google slides and create presentations.  This is a fairly simple presentation program to use and students can get the hang of it pretty quickly.  Students all have google accounts in my classroom.  Therefore, students can access easily.  Also, I can have students link their presentations to google classroom.  I also think students could benefit from using this presentation style vs a poster.  In the real world presentations are done electronically so much more often than seeing cardboard set ups.  So this makes a great real world connection for student work.

Thing 06

My Family

This is a quick video slide show showing some pictures of my family.  I think this would be a great way for students to introduce themselves to one another at the beginning of the year.  Students could even work on this project with their families at home.  I often have students do this with creating posters.  However, I know that people do not print pictures out as often as they used it.  This will be quicker because people have their photos digitally and could work on this project with easier access.  Students can take this a step further by including music.  This could also be used for students to report out on a text they read.  The pictures could be words from the text and students could include pictures and thoughts about a book they read.  I think this would be very exciting to get students more engaged and having fun while learning.

Thing 04: Twitter

I joined twitter during the Summer of the school year with the intention of using it more for my class and looking for professional resources.  However,  all I did was join.  So this was a great opportunity to begin looking for resources.  I started with tlchat and saw some very interactive and engaging ideas for student lessons in the classroom.  I am now following tlchat, edchat, and slscoolstools.  I found the teacher that my class writes pen pal letter too.  She posts all kinds of activities her students are doing, and celebrates exciting things in her classroom with tweets.  I also found teachers at my school who post great teaching ideas and fun exciting moments with their class.  I would like to start using twitter to show off great student work.  I would also like to use twitter to show great ideas that have in the classroom.  I think this would be a great way that students families can be engaged in what is happening in the classroom as well.  Since I am always looking for more ways to engage parents. A goal would be to try and tweet something at least once a month until the end of the school year.

Thing 03: Photo Fun

Photo courtesy of Photos For Class

It was actually very quick and easy to find a photo on this website.  I chose this photo for an upcoming unit on natural disasters where discuss weather and Earth.  I also chose this photo of the volcano is Sicily because I am looking into going to Sicily to see Mt. Etna.  I like that this website is better than just doing a google image search because I know that I am going to get safe images for my classroom. I always make sure when I do a google image search that students cannot see what I am searching just in case something inappropriate pops up.  Using this website I know that I am going to find safe pictures.  I might even have students search for images this way so that I know they will be finding safe images when they are working on essays where they attach images.  This would also be helpful when students are creating a blog and adding images to it.