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.