Twitter

Twitter has allowed me to collaborate online with colleagues and other professionals globally.  Throughout this class I have continued to develop my PLN a to collaborate with many more professionals.   The #edchat or #appyhour are a couple of chats I have participated in.  These are meaningful discussions with tons of ideas from professionals all over the world. 

Tweetdeck is very easy to organize chats and conveniently shows posts as they appear while I work on other things.  I could click on interesting links if I was interested, and immediately have a new resource bookmarked!

Anne M. Beninghof‏@annebeninghof is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter.  She provides so many practical ideas, accommodations, and best practices for teachers.  A couple examples include Ticket out the door activity as a formative or closure to a lesson.  A prompt can be displayed for students to respond to such as: If you were to fill a grocery cart with the key concepts from today’s lesson, what would it contain? Write a text message summary of what you learned today.  If this concept was a menu, what would be the appetizer? Main dish? Dessert?

Other great information Anne shared on Twitter was 30 Online Multimedia Resources for Project Based Learning and Flipped Classrooms.  This blog included information on TedTalk, and a link to Free Tech 4 Teachers for even more ideas such as Thinglink, a tool to create interactive images.

Twitter is an awesome resource that I have become familiar with to help me learn and grow in my instruction to help students be successful!  I think I will continue to use Twitter more professionally than personally.  I love how Twitter is a place to collaborate with other educators and get some free professional development!

How-To Writing

Richard Byrne- Free Technology for Teachers

I love the technology tools that Richard Byrne offers on his blog, especially the “Techy Things to do in the Summer”, and “11 New Tech Things to do in the School Year”.  These are helpful tools that I can incorporate without feeling overwhelmed.  Byrne also offers videos on how to create a blog, videos, and links to his awesome blogs such as Flipping Your Classroom with Free Web Tools, Using Show Me to Create Lessons on iPads, Video Games in Teaching Lessons Learned, Interactive Bulletin Boards!  

It can challenging to find and take the time to learn and use these technology tools in the classroom.  The key is to start simple, and get familiar with a couple new tools.  I have found that after taking time initially, it saves time in the long run.  21st century students are more engaged and motivated with the use of videos, screenrs, PowerPoints, etc. can be used year after year.  I have also developed a class blog and a Screenr video on how to work it.  These tools are great ways for student and teacher collaboration and communication!

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

Multimedia Authoring Voicethread

http://voicethread.com/share/2907702/
Voicethread was as easy as sending an email, but so much more personable!  In this voicethread, I shared my personal growth throughout the Multimedia Authoring course!

Screencast

I finally have our class blog up and running.  Checkout the screencast that shows how to access our class blog!  The hardest part of making the screencast was rerecording because my kids kept dancing and making me laugh:)  Happy blogging!

 http://www.screenr.com/DE28

Author Study Video

This video is narrated by the 2nd graders with information about the authors they researched!

Author Talks

Author Talks
Check out our Animoto video of author talks presented by students!  This was a great experience to help students learn about authors and get motivated to read and write.  They LOVED the idea of starring in a video too:)