Third Grade Teacher

The course was extremnly enlightening and inspiring.  I had no idea what was in the web world.  I do feel overwhelmed and want to go back through the course and digest it slowly.  I hope we will have availability to the material.  There were many times when I just had to say, “stop looking,” to myself, or I knew I would not finish.  I want to go back and conquer a tool at a time.  So, my next step is to use a wiki while reading a novel.  I want to go back and study the wiki examples that were posted. 

I got Will Richardson’s book on Wikis and blogs.  Now, I realize what is good about social networking on the Web….you can find practical applications.  So, I plan to continue checking my RSS feeder.

Of all the “Things” we have worked with, I am the least enthused about Social Networking and blogging.  I’m sure this a generation thing, but what I gleamed, after more than an hour, did not seem to warrant the time spent.  I did find a blog post on “100 Free Web Tools for Elementary Teachers” which I bookmarked, and I look forward to spending time analyzing.  Otherwise, after an hour or so I had read a lot of interesting blogs but not any with really useful information.  I still look to books written by experts to get quicker to the point.  I have ordered Will Richardson’s  book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, and can’t wait to read it.  To me, a book is a faster and more efficient way of getting information.  Also, my school gives excellent tech support (Shelly) which for me is a more efficient way learning.

I found Thing 24 and can’t wait to work with it.  It is a site called Live Binders.  You organize information online just like you would in a binder.  It will be an awesome way to let parents know what we are doing in English.  I will have a tab for punctuation, capitalization, spelling rules, jingles, and writing.  I intend to put the online binder on my edline page. 

I also read a great article which contained Ten Problem Solving Games for K-8 students.  I reviewed several of the games and thought they were good.  Our school is encouraging teachers to fill free moments with problem solving activities, so I was particularly interested in this website.  There was a link to a site with reading and math help for tutorials.  I got some ideas about increasing reading comprehension.  Click here to link to the site.

STOP!!  I can’t take any more!!  The possibilities are endless.  I love Will Richardson’s description of Pageflakes as a “dynamic, constantly updated page of content about what’s happening.”  It could be what is happening in your classroom, what is happening in the school, what is happening in the community, or what is happening in the world.  After looking at several pagecasts I realized the importance of design.  The easiest and most appealing, for third graders, was “Elementary China Webquest.”  Often the pages were too complicated and I went into information overload and just closed the page.  In my third grade classroom I could make a page about weather and track the temperature, humidity, sunrise, sunset, etc. and use this information to make graphs and charts.  Pageflakes will work wonderfully for assigning current events assignments.  I think creating a pagecast around a novel would work well including pictures from flickr, podcasts, vocabulary, current links for the setting, and etc.  Can’t wait to dedicate some time to this….for now on to Thing 22.

I love Google Docs.  I found it easy to create the document, to add a table, and to edit the document.  Actually, I was so glad I had the spelling doc on Goggle Doc because I needed to retrieve it from another computer, unexpectedly, and there it was.  I did have a little trouble with the changes I made disappearing for some unknown reason.  So, I will be using Google Doc to create a weekly spelling sheet to share with the other third grade teachers.  I can foresee using Goggle Doc to schedule conferences.  I post a table with me available times, I send the link to my parents, and they fill in the time that works for them.  I have enjoyed being able to kept track of my own progress while taking 23 Things and would like to create a project for my students where they keep track of their progress on Google Doc.  This would probably work best with a Social Studies Unit.

I found it easy to do a bare bones podcast, but I fear it would be a different story when I add video.  I liked learning about Zamzar and think that will be useful site.  Actually, the podcast I made is an example of the way I would use podcasting in the classroom.  I use jingles to learn the parts of speech and parents are usually curious about the jingles.  I would like to include a podcast of each of the jingles we use on my homepage.  To make the podcasts interesting and entertaining I would have the kids do a dance or create motions and produce a podcast of them performing the jingles.