Skype

Skype is a free application that allows you to call people from all over the world using the internet. When you call another user that has Skype you talk or chat for free. Best of all you can tell when another user is online and what their status is so you know if they are available. To set up Skype on your computer you need to download and install it from here on Skype’s website. Once installed follow the instructions to set up your Skype account. For talking I like to use a Logitech USB headsets because the system easily detects them without any issues.

Educational blog websites

There are a number of educational technology blogs that are worth looking at.  Kathy Schrock has created a list of them at: "http://kathyschrock.net/edtechblogs.htm" .

Value of a PLE

 Knowing how to use a blog was the most important aspect of creating a PLE.  I now feel almost as comfortable using a blog as I do reading a recipe.  I want to use my other blog as an online journal, and place to keep my thoughts.  I also intend to use one for the purpose of journaling for myself, and also I want to use one with my future Elementary classes.  

I would like to create a picture slide show on my blog but haven't quite figured out how to do that yet.  But I'm not afraid to play with it or ask questions if I have to.  I thought creating the layout was not very intuitive at first.  Thanks for a great semester.  I probably learned more than anyone else.

Internet Safety

I found an article by Elder David E. Sorensen called "You Can't Pet a Rattlesnake."  He talks about a time when he was a boy and almost petted a Rattlesnake that he thought was asleep.  His father fortunately caught him and said "David, my boy, you can't pet a rattlesnake."  That is good advice where pornography and other negative influences on the internet are concerned.  Elder Sorenson said: "..build fortifications in the form of personal ground rules to protect your priceless virtue.  When you're on a date, plan to be in groups and avoid being alone.  I know men, young and old, who have simply determined not to turn on the TV or surf the Internet anytime when they are alone.  Fathers, it is wise to keep computers and televisions in the family room or other high-traffic areas in your home--not in children's bedrooms.  I also know of fathers who while on business trips, wisely choose not to turn on the hotel television."  There are spiritual poisonous snakes out there and we need to wisely avoid them.  As a parent and grandparent I intend to be very open with my children about the subject.  I was especially taken with the article on "Technology and a House of Learning."  My husband and I discussed our roles of preside, provide, protect and nurture and their meaning in a modern world of poisonous snakes.  I also want to have a dialogue with my siblings  to sensitize and empower them on these issues.  I have already sent out an email to many of my family guiding them to several of the articles we read in class.  I also teach the 16-17 year old Sunday School class and plan on including some wise information in one of my lessons on this subject.  The URL for this article is found on lds.org.

Kerpoof.com

I went to Kerpoof.com to check out some of what is available for educators there and found it to be quite interesting.

Kerpoof provides free multimedia software that can be used directly from any browser, on any computer with Internet access and an up-to-date Flash player. While Kerpoof offers paid, premium services directed to at-home, entertaining use of the site, all basic content directed to in-school use is entirely free.

Kerpoof can be used to create original artwork, animated movies, and stories, among other things. All shared content is carefully reviewed by trained moderators before it appears on the site.
Kerpoof publishes a free monthly electronic newsletter that describes new features on Kerpoof, new lesson plans published on the Kerpoof Teacher's page, and gives ideas for using Kerpoof in the classroom. We want the newsletter to be a great resource for you and welcome feedback for improvements and also encourage you to share idease for using Kerpoof in the classroom. Kerpoof can be used to help as a creativity starter for writing. Or ask them to write a fictional story about a scene. It can help them with reading comprehension, social studies (you can use the Mt. Fuji scene to teach about Japanese culture), or study the life cycle of a caterpillar using the Butterfly Pavilion scene.

Are you teaching about the food chain? Our Northwest Territories scene (sponsored by Northwest Trek in Tacoma, Washington) can be the perfect place to create illustrations of several food chains. We've got plants to be eaten by deer and bears to eat the plants. We've got toads to be eaten by rattlesnakes and bald eagles to eat the snakes. There are insects, small rodents and reptiles, larger rodents, and several types of ruminants. Then we have all kinds of beasties from higher in the food chain, bears, wolves and birds of prey to name a few. And they're all real inhabitants of the Northwest Trek wildlife preserve. Students can even have math experiences. You can use any of our nature scenes to create intricate worlds that will test your students' powers of observation. Can they identify and describe a list of animal types you describe? Can they find fourteen yellow fish swimming in and around the sunken ship? Turn it into a math lesson by asking them to categorize and graph difference groups. Kerpoof even offers you sample lesson plans. It's a great resource.

You can find an archive of all past issues of the Kerpoof Scholastics e-newsletter online: Kerpoof Scholastics News Archives.

Letters and sounds objective

The Standard we chose to find technology for was Kindergarten Language Arts Standard 4, Objective 1a: Upper and lower case letters. We found a wonderful website for helping children with their upper and lowercase letters called "Starfall.com". The URL is http://www.starfall.com/n/level-k/index/load.htm?f. This is an interactive website where children can choose a letter, hear how it sounds, and see a word that starts with that letter.
Pedagogy: have each child open Starfall.com, click on the ABC's, find the letters B, G, and S, and listen to the sound. Then find one item that starts with that sound. After that have child make those letter sounds using clay, write the sounds on a sheet of paper, and draw a picture of an object that makes that sound.
For our Math Kindergarten Standard, we chose Standard 2, Objective 2a: Identify and describe simple repeating patterns with numbers and shapes. Pedagogy: Have children go to the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives and play the game where they have to chose a colored circle to complete a pattern. THe URL is: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/topic_t_1.html. Then I would have the children chose different colored clay, make little circle balls of different colors and create their own pattern.

Using digital cameras and other technology in the classroom

This week in class, we had a small group of ECE students talking about how to use technology appropriately in the Early Childhood Classroom. We came up with a lot of great ideas that I want to share here:
1. Technology should be interactive. Young children learn better when they are not just passive watchers.
2. Technology should be used regularly for real tasks.
3. Computers are intrinsically motivating for young students.
4. Computers enhance children's self-concept and improves their attitudes about learning.
5. Technology gives students more learning choices.
6. Computer use increases co-operation among students.
7. Use of speech synthesizers like in "Kidsperation" gives them both visual and audio re-inforcement.
8. Technology enlarges words for those who struggle with vision issues.
9. We should use technologies that allow students to explore not be task focused.
10. Some things a child could do with technology can be found on the early connections web site: www.netc.org/earlyconnections/. For example: Make and display a graph. Explore with digital tools like a digital microscope or camera. Tell a story in pictures and words with art software, record a book, etc. Put together a digital record of a special activity, or make an electronic slideshow of a class book. Share and document learning with digital photos of skits, projects geometric patterns etc. Take family portraits of a school's open house and send them home.
What if every Child had a lap top? (OLPC) We had a chance to learn about the XO, a new kind of computer designed for children to use. It was invented by a man from MIT named Negraponte. It's cost is about $200 and when you buy one, you also purchase one for a child in a developing country like Cambodia. It was fun to have Dr. Graham's son help us get around on this new computer. I enjoyed reading about some of the activities available for children on this computer in the "OLPC Help Topics" article on Moodle. Kids don't need teachers to show them how to use these computers. They are very intuitive. However, I think a teacher could give them assignments that would enrich their use of the computer.
After our XO experience we did a project using a digital camera. We discussed creative ways we could use digital cameras. Some ideas were:
1. Take pictures of students at the beginning and at the end of the year to show how they have changed.
2. Take nature walks and record observations by taking pictures.
3. Drawings made from pictures.
4. Take pictures for a class story.
5. Take pictures of children doing a class project and make into a power point.
6. Take pictures of a sequence of events (the growth of a plant from seed)
7. Role-play a story , take pictures, and make a class book.
8. Take pictures of shapes
Our group chose Kindergarten content, Standard 1, Objective 3a, which is about identifying and expressing ideas and information about feelings in a variety of ways. We decided to take pictures of people expressing different emotions and then use these pictures to help students be able to recognize emotion in people. The pictures could be of different classmates, and then we would have a discussion about emotion. Perhaps we could draw pictures of these different emotions and label them in another activity. Some of the emotions we recorded were: Excitement (Prof. Graham), Anger, Sadness, and happiness (Prof. Graham's son). See the pictures at the beginning of this post.
What was the TPACK (technology, pedagogy, content, and knowledge) used in this activity? The technology was the digital camera. The Pedagogy was demonstration and practice plus experiential learning by students taking pictures themselves. The content was identifying and expressing emotion from the Kindergarten Core, Standard 1, Objective 3a. The knowledge gained by the students was: gaining greater understanding of emotions, gaining skill in digital camera useage, and learning new vocabulary words about emotion.