Reflection

This has been a very interesting class.  I learned a lot!  I liked how we were not just exposed to a variety of tools but we were expected to use them.  I have begun using Diigo at school and in my personal life to gather information from sites that I want to visit again. Now if I could only figure out how to do that in my car when I hear something interesting on NPR.  I know, I know just go to their website, it’s not the same. I would have to say, my comfort level for blogging has increased ten-fold.  I am looking forward to using this technology with my parents at school as I think it would be great for them.

This course also opened my eyes to the number of people with amazing ideas who blog on a regular basis.  I am thoroughly impressed at the amount of time people put into their blogs and how generous they are to share their work.  These ongoing sources of information are a true asset.  I now take information I learn about and share it with my peers and my family too as they also integrate technology into their daily lives.

Thanks for a great course, Harry, Toni and of course Kim.  I look forward to crossing paths with you in the future!

Jenn

Connecting Classrooms Globally

In order to successfully connect to a classroom in a global manner, lots of preparation and planning is needed.  

Students benefit from being connected to others from around the world.  It allows them to learn about the similarities and differences found in their lives.  Understanding and accepting these similarities and differences gives students and all people or more open minded view of the world.  We live in a society that seems to be homogenized, especially in the US.  It’s too easy to think that it actually is the same everywhere or worse to be egocentric enough to think that “our” way is the best/correct way to be.  We need to be able to appreciate how we are different and the perspective of different people to fully understand ourselves.  Conversely, understanding the similarities, especially in what is perceived as very different people helps us realize that we are all the same in many ways too.

Teachers play an important role in this challenge. Many of our schools consist of students with similar backgrounds.  Reaching out to other schools to collaborate together can help our students have a broader perspective on our world.  Teachers can do this in various ways including using examples from a broad range, not just familiar to the teacher and students.  This helps students gain a broader knowledge across subject areas.  Another way teachers can helps students become global citizens is to introduce them to students from across the world.  

 

Projects that connect classrooms using wikis, Skype or other methods are a way to help our students learn about the many aspects of our world.  Davis and Lindsay are the creators of the Flat Classroom Project.  What a great way to link classes together.  Collaboration, communication and problem solving are all important aspects of the CCSS.  Teachers who strategically plan activities and lessons for their students to work on together are giving their students a wonderful opportunity to expand their abilities in these important areas.

It’s important to carefully plan not only the collaborating activities, but also how students will communicate with each other.  These steps are important and will depend on the age of the students and also whether there is a language barrier.

Here are some Web 2.0 tools for successfully designing and participating in a global project.

Ning

Google Apps

Flipboard

Twitter

Google Earth

Skype

Flat Connections

Global Youth Debates

Edmodo

Snagit

Google Translate

Google Hangouts

Global EdCon Smackdown Resources

Global EdCon Schedule

Global EdCon Smackdown Resources

Hosted by Heidi Hutchison a 5th grade teacher in Baltimore

This was really interesting.  There were approximately 16 people participating from all over the world including Honduras, Australia, Mexico and Indonesia.  The session was modeled after the Ed Camp “unconference” idea.

Heidi created a Google Doc and we all linked into it.  At that point, we added our Twitter handle and added links to resources and tools that we wanted to share.

Heidi went down the list and had each of us share ideas about our links.  If you did not have mic capabilities you could just type.  Most people spoke to share their ideas.  Finally, Heidi is going to create a compilation of the resources and tweet them to us.  I will post the tweet here when I get it.

Overall, I felt this was a fun way to collaborate.  I think it would be better, if I knew ahead what the expectations were going to be.  Our district attempted to do a collaboration across the district as part of a early release professional development.  We used sticky notes and then the notes were compiled and supposed to be shared with us at a later date and reviewed by the department chairs.

Math Problem Solving Lesson

So this has been a week of new tools!  I used educatorstudio.com to combine my math problem solving for Kindergarten students with a demo video for my project.  Here is print copy of my lesson plan also.  I was having difficulty accessing educatorstudio.com from other computers so here is the screencast of my lesson. The link to the lesson has been fixed (I hope.)  Thanks Harry for the heads  up!

I hope you enjoy.
Jenn

NETs and CCSS Animoto Video

Here is a link to my Animoto video about NETs and CCSS.  I'm happy I have a trial subscription, this could be a fun resource.

Google Presentation

Here is the Google Presentation that our class created.  This is a great tool for collaboration and it is easy to set preferences for sharing with various audiences i.e. anyone with a link, private, or public.

Google Apps

Change can be difficult...  A few years ago, our district decided to switch our email to Gmail.  At first it was met with much trepidation.  Looking back, I don’t think there is a staff member that could imagine a time when we didn’t use Google.  Gmail was the gateway to using Google Drive.  Again, angst was felt by many (myself included.)  Then I realized that because it was cloud based that organizing our grade level work was going to be so much easier.  I tend to do my planning at home, so I realized quickly that my days of relying on thumb drives and Dropbox were over.

Since then, I have seen how helpful Google Docs, Presentation, Forms, Calendar and Spreadsheet for my work at school.  I will say that as a Kindergarten teacher, that most of my Google work is for planning, implementing and tracking progress of my students.  The students are not at the stage where they are using these tools yet.  I know that the staff at our school uses these tools with the older students to help them organize and share their learning over a variety of platforms.

Here are the results from my Google Survey.  This is the first time I have created a Google Survey myself.  We have used them at school for parental feedback.  After seeing how easy they are to use, I cannot wait to use them with my parents for feedback purposes during the year.  I think I would like to do a survey about the amount of parent/teacher contact that we have.