Tool 4 Reflection

Google Docs is an awesome tool for student workshopping. Students can edit one another's work and make comments critiquing and praising in turn.

I also love Google Docs as a medium of long term communication. I have used it for years now as a means of staying connected with my best girl friends from college during times apart. With this thought it mind, my students could engage in a year long discussion tracking their growing knowledge of world geography using Google Docs.

Tool 3 Reflection

Youtube, USA Today, Teachertube, PBS, and CNN all provide good video resources for my classroom. The key here is mixing the engaging with the appropriate. Youtube in particular has a host of videos with a slightly funny or zany spin on topics, a spin that students love. I like this quick video on longitude and latitude:

And here’s a good one I found for the Discovery Channel that I think will just my kids' interest about the world as a topic of study:

 I enjoyed the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education video and I think kids in my class would as well. There are so many ways to exchange and share resources online, and it's good for everybody to be versed in the best practices. I for one love photopin and flickr creative commons.

Dropbox will be great in my classroom this coming year. I have used it as a resource exchange site for a couple of months now and am addicted. I’m excited to see the way this will make turning in and sharing material in my classroom more fun!

Tool 2 Reflection

Hearing and sharing information publicly in a PLN setting is a little difficult for me to feel immediately comfortable with, as I am the kind of person who thrives on in-person contact. However, that said, I did find a certain power and instantaneous excitement in being a part of an ongoing conversation where feedback and advice could take a dozen different shapes. Simply put, I really felt part of the digital community more so than ever before.

I found a great blog site while browsing, and I just had to share it with any fellow teachers reading this.

The blog’s called Learning is Messy and can be reached here: http://learningismessy.com/blog/?p=1197. I’m linking you here to a particularly exciting post entitled Innovation Starts with Autonomy. I think it gets to the heart of an educational passion of mine: how each instructional day should be infused with opportunities for student enrichment.

This link http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2012/08/myths-in-history-from-colonial.html will take you to the great blog, The History Teacher’s Attic, specifically a page entitled Boston 1775 on the Myths in Colonial History. Fascinating stuff.

Visit these blogs when you get the chance! 

Tool 1 Reflection

I found myself a little uncertain of whether or not my avatar had taken to my profile. I found the how to videos massively helpful and enjoyed creating my monkey avatar.

I'm excited to learn more about how to make my classroom excel in the 21st century.