PLN- Twitter

A PLN or Personal Learning Network is a system that allows for teachers and anyone else to connect through one network. This is extremely helpful for teachers because lesson plans, struggles, and idea's can be shared easily with one another through one website. I chose to research Twitter because I already have a Twitter account, which would allow me easy access to teachers and teaching programs from around the world without the hassel of registering for another cite.

Twitter is a PLN that connects people from around the world. Anyone can create a Twitter account, therefore it is important to also realize that information gotten from Twitter can be tampered with or untrue. This being said, Twitter has several different "groups" within their cite for teachers. One of the "groups" that is my favorite is PBSteachers. PBSteachers is a group that updates the cite with new teaching idea's, studies and other important information that can benefit a teacher and their classroom. I think that Twitter in particular will allow me to constantly update my teaching styles to better fit my students.

Another teaching 'group' Twitter offers is innovativeteach. This group posts links about different technology uses within teaching. This group could be extremely helpful in allowing me to find the newest uses of technology and apply them in my classroom. Technology is constantly changing and bettering and the more I understand about new technologies the better I will be at teaching my students.

Ease of Access

There are several helpful tools within each window's system that helps students with disabilities to have technology make their work easier. Three of the tools that I researched included, Onscreen Keyboard, Magnifier, and blocking of background images.

The Onscreen Keyboard is an interesting tool that allows for a student who may not have all the movement within their fingers to use their mouse and type what they want to say into the keyboard shown on their screen. This tool could be extremely helpful for students with physical disabilities that may not be able to push buttons or move all of their fingers. I believe that this tool would also be useful within my classroom because I plan on teaching very young children who may not understand or know how to type yet. Those students that may not be as strong with their typing skills, by using this tool will still be able to participate in typing activities without being left behind. This being said it is also important to teach those children how to type, but this allows them to finish projects quicker and remain on course with the rest of the class.

The ability to block the backgrounds on a screen would be extremely helpful for students with ADD or ADHD. These students have difficulties concentrating on one task at a time. This tool will allow for students to limit the amount of visual stimuli the encounter while on the computer. By limiting the amount of information that distracts them they will concentrate more on the tasks they are assigned and less on their backgrounds. I would also use this within my classroom as a means to make my entire class concentrate. Young children usually cannot sit still as long as older children and they get distracted easier. This will help me control the amount of distractions my students encounter on their computers.

My Bean Plants Growth Journal (Artifact Proposal #3)

Measurement #1:
The first plant shown in the picture above is from the first week of the project. This plant was measured at 2.5 inches. Some of the changes that our group saw as the plant grew to be 2.5 inches were the growth of leaves and a stem. The seed that we started with was only a bean. It was measured at .5 inches. This means the plant grew 2 inches in 2 weeks. We predict that the next time we measure the plant it will have grown 2 more inches.

Measurement #2:
The second plant in the above picture is from the second week of the experiment. When measured the plant was 4 inches tall. Some of the observations we noticed were a third leaf grew and the plant became too heavy to support itself so a stake was added to support the plant. Our group predicts that the plant will only grow another inch by the next measurement time.

Measurement #3:
The third plant in the above picture is from the third week of the experiment. When measured the plant was 7 inches tall. Some of the observations that our group noticed were several more leaves grew on the plant, all at different spots on the stem. Our group predicts that the final measurement of the plant will be at 11 inches.

Measurement #4:
The fourth plant in the above picture is from the fourth and final week of the experiment. When measured the plant was 13 inches. Our observations were the leaves grew larger than they were before and there are still more leaves being grown along the stem. Many times our hypothesis' were wrong which shows that sometimes the growth of a plant cannot be guessed about.

My Bean Plants Growth Journal (Artifact Proposal #3)

Measurement #1:
The first plant shown in the picture above is from the first two weeks of the project. This plant was measured at 2.5 inches. Some of the changes that our group saw as the plant grew to be 2.5 inches were the growth of leaves and a stem. The seed that we started with was only a bean. It was measured at .5 inches. This means the plant grew 2 inches in 2 weeks. We predict that the next time we measure the plant it will have grown 2 more inches.

Measurement #2:
The second plant in the above picture is from the fourth week of the experiment. When measured the plant was 4 inches tall. Some of the observations we noticed were a third leaf grew and the plant became too heavy to support itself so a stake was added to support the plant. Our group predicts that the plant will only grow another inch by the next measurement time.

Measurement #3:
The third plant in the above picture is from the sixth week of the experiment. When measured the plant was 7 inches tall. Some of the observations that our group noticed were several more leaves grew on the plant, all at different spots on the stem. Our group predicts that the final measurement of the plant will be at 11 inches.

Measurement #4:
The fourth plant in the above picture is from the eighth and final week of the experiment. When measured the plant was 13 inches. Our observations were the leaves grew larger than they were before and there are still more leaves being grown along the stem. Many times our hypothesis' were wrong which shows that sometimes the growth of a plant cannot be guessed about.

Artifact Proposal #1- Student Example

Immigrants coming to America for the first time were troubled with several different adversities. Coming from their home countries, immigrants traveled on a boat thousands of miles to reach America. The boat rides were unpleasant. Food was scarce and crowding was common. After days of travel the sight of the Statue of Liberty was beautiful. The Statue not only symbolized the end of a long and hard journey, but it promised a new start in a free country.

Freedom in America would come at a price. The immigrants were herded off of the ships, into lines where they waited to enter the main building on Ellis Island. This building held thousands of immigrants from around the world, but more specifically Europe. The immigrants, once inside, were shuffled through lines of tests and quizzes that determined whether or not an immigrant was worthy enough to come to America. Tests included health screenings, literacy tests and background checks. As the immigrants entered the building and at any point throughout the testing process an ailment was found in their health or psyche, they were marked with chalk symbols on their clothing. These dark symbols and failure of any test could result in deportment.

The different tests were difficult for immigrants. Most immigrants came through Ellis Island in families. These families could easily be broken up. If one family member failed a test, they could be deported without the remainder of their family. This caused great fear and problems for families passing through Ellis Island. Another stressor throughout the process was the simple fear of being deported. The journey to America was difficult but the immigrants knew they were going someplace better. If an immigrant was deported they had nothing to look forward to, making the trip back more difficult. Immigrants led a difficult life on Ellis Island, but many received entrance to America, which was an answer to a prayer for many.

Station 1: KidPix Pictographs

First Activity:

The first activity asks for the teacher to create a tally sheet for students to use in order to tally each student in the classroom's favorite sport. This tally sheet needed to include small words becasue young students are just beginning the reading process, as well as pictures to help the students better understand what is being asked.

Second Activity:

The second activity asked for a data sheet created in KidPix that a student would make of the information gathered from the completed tally sheet. KidPix allows for students to use their imagination when creating a project that shows different data that has been collected. KidPix has different tools such as, cirlce templats, line templates, different colors and stickers that students can use to create their projects. This program allows for an easy creation of a project, which makes it beneficial for elementary students who are just learning how to read and problem solve.

Third Activity: Discussion Questions-

1. How many students like basketball the most?

2. How many students like baseball the most?

3. How many students like football the most?

4. How many studnets like soccer the most?

5. How many students like volleyball the most?

6. What sport is the favorite of the class?

7. At recess what sport would have the most people playing?

The above are questions that would follow the data collection and project. The questions would help students better understand why they are collecting information and relate it back to learning similarities between students and how they can be used to create a project.

Fourth Activity:

This fourth activity provided step-by-step instructions for students to follow in creating a snowman. These instructions had the students answer different questions about themselves and based on how they answered the questions, differnet clothing and details would be added to their snowman picture. This allows for students to collect data about themselves and apply it to a snowman. In the end the class would be able to come together and discuss different similarities and differences within their snowmen to discuss the differences in the data of the classroom.

Fifth Activity: Dicussion Questions-
1. How many snowmen have a blue hat?
2. How many snowmen have a red hat?
3. How many snowmen have a red hat and black circle eyes?
4. How many snowmen have mittens and a scarf?
5. How many snowmen have gloves and no scarf?
6. How many snowmen have an apple nose?

The above questions are questions that would be used after each student has created their snowman based on the instructions given. These questions would be used to help tie the different data together and show how data can be different in some areas and similar in others.

Google Groups Presentation Reaction

This tool is useful because it allows students to upload documents within the group, which allows students to talk about the different topics brought up in class. This is also useful for teachers because it allows the teacher to create different groups for the students. The teacher could create a group on different group reading books, for example. If the class has been split into reading groups and each group has a different book, they can converse about the book they are reading within their books group. I also think that this is a good tool because it allows student to discuss with eachother outside of the classroom, at home or anywhere they have a computer. This allows for group discussion to extend outside of the classroom as well as within.
This tool also links teachers to one another which is a nice perk. Being able to connect to other teachers to share ideas and lesson plans helps teachers efficiency.

Edmodo Presentation Reaction

This tool is an extremely useful tool for testing all of your students daily on different questions. This also allows for the teacher to directly grade the student on their answer. I would say that although the testing and grading tool is a very helpful tool, I would personally say that this tool may be too difficult for young elementary students. I believe that this tool would be very useful for secondary students, especially because it is set up like facebook so the students will already be familiar with the layout. I also like the idea that the teacher can post assignments and "polls" or tests and then grade directly off of the website. For my future classroom I don't believe I would be able to use this tool because it is extremely difficult to create.

EPals Presentation Reaction

This resource allows the teacher to create a safe email for students, where the teacher can view all of the incoming and outgoing mail. This is an amazing tool because it can connect students to other studnets around the world. For an elementary classroom, again it is important for students to learn about other cultures. This tool can connect a student with another students or adult around the world. I also thought it was a cool idea that a student could be in contact with differnet businessmen or other working individuals when they begin learning about careers. I know that most schools do career days or other types of activities about careers. I think that this could help students learn about different jobs through talking to a person in that specific job field. I think overall this tool could be very useful in an elementary classroom.

Voice Thread Project Reactions

Voice Thread allows for a conference around pictures or cartoons or projects. This allows for students to get comments on their projects. They can post comments through telephone, text, or file upload which can each be useful. I think the most important use for this tool is that you can use this to create projects that have voiceovers. I personally would use this resource in my classroom as a resource for students creating projects. For elementary students this could allow for an easy resource to create a project. The students could simply load pictures and then talk about them. This is simple which will allow for studnets to easily create a project that they would normally be unable to create. I also think this could be a great resource for me to use as a teacher. I could use this resource to grade or comment on each childs project directly online.

Skype Project Reaction

I think that Skype could be an amazing way to connect students to other classrooms around the world. I think this could be a huge learning tool, especially for an elementary classroom where learning about different cultures is a huge part of their learning and growing process. By using Skype the children can be connected directly to another culture, something they wouldn't have otherwise been able to do.
I also think that this technology could be used as a tutoring resource. Students who miss class or who are sturggling in a certain subject, they can set up a Skype time with the teacher so that they can have that extra study help without having to find a place to meet in person. Using this idea of meeting through Skype, I think it could be used to conference with busy parents. Although face-to-face conversation is important when creating a relationship with parents, I believe that informal meetings could be conducted easily through Skype instead of using email or other impersonal communication resources.

PbWiki Project Reflection

I thought this particular resource is extremely useful for an elementary teacher because it is easy to use and centralizes lots of information and links in one place. For an elementary classroom I could easily use it as a place for my students to find resources if they are going to be writing a paper or extra helping games or resources for them to use if they are struggling with a certain subject. I really liked the idea of having a particular site that parents can use to keep in contact with the classroom and teacher. By having a centralized place for parents to communicate, as well as recieve newsletters about the classroom, the parents have an organized way to communicate and stay active within the classroom. Overall I think this is an extremely helpful and useful tool.

Elementary Leaf Project for Autumn

Directions:
Find different leaves from around your house. Take pictures of the leaves you collect. When finished collecting the different leaves you will use within your project, use the Leaf Classifier on the given website to classify your leaves. After discovering what types of leaves you collected, create a blog describing the different leaves. Show a picture of your collected leaves, explain the type of tree it came from, and the shape of the leaf.

Leaf Classifier: http://www.fw.vt.edu/dendro/forsite/key/intro.htm

My Example Project:

Brittany's Autumn Leaf Project

Leaf #1: Sassafras

This leaf is a simple leaf. It is a Sassafras leaf. Sassafras tree’s have three different types of leaves on them. A fun fact is that they smell like fruit loops when you crumple them.

Leaf #2: Sassafras

This leaf is also a simple leaf. It is a Sassafras too and is shaped like a mitten. The mitten shape makes it easy to determine the type of tree it is because it is so unique.

Leaf #3: White Oak

This leaf ia a simple leaf. It comes from an Oak tree. The many edges indicate that it comes from a White Oak. The leaf is rather large.

Leaf #4: Dogwood

This leaf is a simple leaf. It comes from a Dagwood. The leaf is very round which can be a characteristic making it easy to tell the type of tree it comes from because a perfectly round leaf is very unique.

Leaf #5: Sweetgum

This is a simple leaf. It comes from a Sweetgum tree. This leaf has unique characteristics in that it has five sharp points coming out from the center of the leaf. This can be used to characterize this leaf because five points is different than the other characteristics of leaves.

Leaf #6: Chestnut

This leaf is a simple leaf. It comes from a Chestnut tree. The shape of the leaf is different than any of the others in that it has an oval shape with serrated edges. The serrated edges can be used as a determining characteristic because it is unique from other leaves.

Leaf #7: Black Oak

This leaf is a simple leaf. It comes from the Black Oak. The shape of this leaf could be confused with the shape of a Dogwood leaf because they have similar shaping. What makes this leaf unique from that of a Dagwood is its pointy edges. Unlike the Dagwood, the Black Oak has sharp edges instead of rounded edges.

LeapPad Learning Systems

I studied the LeapPad learning system as a tool that I could potentially use within my elementary classroom. The LeapPad learning system is a tool that allows for students to pick out different books, pug them into the desk-top-esq pad and read. This tool can actually help students sound out words they don't know or can't understand. By simply running the pen connected to the desktop over the difficult word, the desktop will actually sound the word out for the child. This can allow for students to work independently while still being provided help with any difficult words.

I could use this tool to help my students learn how to read properly and test themselves on how effectively they can finish a book, while knowing most of the words and understanding the book as a whole. Different teachers have used this resource as a means to promote a love for reading within their classrooms. One specific school is beginning its trasformation into a LeapPad Learning School that will provide LeapPads to each student within the classroom. This is an incredible idea in my opinion because it shows that teachers are able to provide a better learning system for their students by using this tool to help them read.

The LeapPad Learning System can be difficult to understand how to use, especially when dealing with young children. A bonus to the LeapPad Learning System is that it has a website devoted to different questions parents or teachers might have about the products as well as different demos for each product the company sells. This makes learning the technology fun and easy for teacher and student alike to use.

Weekly Reader

Weekly Reader is one resource that helps students better understand how to read effectively through a media source, such as a magazine.

The Weekly Reader website is an amazing resource that provides different children magazines and quizzes and games testing knowledge gained fromt the reading. I personally will use this website in my classroom because it is a tool that tests the extremely important standard of reading comprehension. I think that my students will enjoy reading a new Weekly Reader each week because each week there is a new theme, and many times they follow holidays and other events. This will alow my students to enjoy reading as well as test them on thier abilities to understand what they are reading.

This program is effective and efficient. It is effective because it provides students with readings and then tests the knowledge gained from such readings. This allows for the students to understand the importance of reading and understanding what they read. I also believe this program is efficient because it saves time for the teacher by having premade questions and readings. This allows for more time to be devoted to teaching rather than lesson planning.

TeacherTube

TeacherTube is an amazing resource allowing teachers to post their works online for other teachers to watch, comment, and use within their classrooms.

TeacherTube is an amazing resource for teachers looking for fun ways to teach lessons to thier students. I personally would use TeacherTube to find interesting videos that I could use to show my students a new way of learning the material. Each student has a different way of learning, by using several different methods such as visual teaching through showing videos, my students will be able to learn more effectively.

TeacherTube is efficient and enhancing. It is efficient because it allows for teahers to quickly find pre-made subject material that they would otherwise have to create on their own. This frees up time to allow for more teaching to take place. It also enhances learning by allows students to see things that they would not usually be able to experience. For example, I could show an experiment that a science teacher made and posted on TeacherTube to my class without having to be in a lab (which is impossible for first or second graders).

HotChalk

Hotchalk is an interesting website that allow teachers to organize their classroom with an online assignements, grading and homework program that keeps track of each leson inserted into the program. It alsohelps generate time schedules for the teacher to keep the on task.

Although Hotchalk has several different aspects that can be helpful in the classroom, I believe that within my classroom I will use it most for organizational purposes. This program allows teachers to have tools such as an online grading program, connections to parents, ability to assign homework online, and other helpful tools. This program will free up much time devoted to organization and classroom management, allowing for me to have more time to teach.

This program exemplifies efficiency. HotChalk is very efficient in the way that it allows teachers to manage many aspects of the classroom through one website. I would be able to enter grades, contact parents, manage my lesson plans and assign homework all through one website, which frees up much time allowing for more teachign to take place.

Quia

Quia is an interactive website that helps students test their knowledge with actual tests and quizzes they can take. I will be looking specifically at the math portion of the website for my purposes.

I plan on using Quia within my classroom to help students test their math knowledge. Many times students struggle with the way math lessons are presented, especially within the beginning level math classes that I will be teaching at the elementary level. This website, when used in my classroom will give students yet another opportunity to test what they have learned to be sure that they are doing the proper work to finish the problems. Specifically, I plan on having possibly a time after each lesson is presented to provide students the time to use Quia to test what they've learned, and make sure they understand it.

Quia math addresses efficiency and effectiveness in the three e's. It addresses efficiency by providing me the ability to set my entire class free on thier Quia tests so that I can specifically help any struggling student. It also is efficient by providing students with quick questions and answers to their problems. This program is also effective through its testing of knowledge. Students are better able to understand the lesson because they are doing interactive problems throughout the program.

www.abcya.com

Abcya.com is an extremely effective tool for teaching young students. It allows students to test their knowledge by using different games on this website, for nearly every subject.

This program is an amazing tool that provides different games for students to use to test their knowledge on different subjects. This website allows students to choose which games would be most helpful for them to learn new topics and test their information. Games such as the "money game" for older students and the "alphabetical order game" for Kindergarteners help students test what they have learned by providing incentive after each correctly answered question.

I can use this particular website in my classroom to help students test their knowledge. If I teach my students about how to count money, a standard for second grade students, they can use the "money game" to test the information learned. This particular game gives the students an amount and all the bills and coins possible, and they must pick which ones will give them the amount. I believe that this game in particular will help my classroom be fun and educational.

This website addresses the three E's by addressing efficiency and effectiveness. It addresses efficiency by allowing students to quickly test their knowledge of the subject as well as let them correct any mistakes right on the website, making it quick and easy learning. This website addresses effectiveness by actually testing the information presented. Students are able to literally test themselves through playing these games, making them effective.

Today we worked on finding links that will help us in our classrooms as well as becoming teachers. The three different links that I found helpful are EasyTestMaker , ABCya! The Leader in Kids Educational Computer Games & Activities , and The Lesson Plan Library offers kindergarten, elementary, middle school ... . The EasyTestMaker website allows for teachers to create any kind of test for their students: multiple choice, true and false, fill in the blank and much more, all of which make creating tests easier for teachers. I also found the ABCya! which is a website filled with educational games for young elementary students. This will help me have a different and fun wayto have my lesson help my students. The last link was the Leasson Plan Library which lists several different lesson plans for different subjects. This will help give me ideas for my own lesson plans.