Week 7 Thing 17

I love listening to Old Time Radio podcasts. I get most of my podcast from Itunes since it is so easy to organize, search and transfer with the application.

Here is the website for a favorite of mine, Boston Blackie
I also enjoy listening to Dragnet

I am very interested in creating a monthly video cast that would allow the kindergartners to show what they are learning and narrate it. I think it would be so much fun and motivate the kids to learn and absorb material. They would become the teacher in this scenario.

I had subscribed to a podcast for Open Court Reading a few years ago, but I did not find it very helpful. In looking for other Open Court Reading podcasts, I came across this website and podcast in Itunes, Independant Work Times . It received nice reviews from other educators.

I also found a few school podcasts. I thought that would be a fun club to think about next year. I could run a podcast club, similar to a monthly newspaper club, but online. We could publish the podcast on the front page of the school website for parents to hear the happenings at DCC.

Week 7 Thing 16

YouTube can provide similar videos to that in educational streaming sites, but they can also provide a more personal approach to learning. We just wrapped up our planner on Celebrations Around the World, and I found this nice little digital story using Silent Night sung in 3 different languages as the background music. This would fit in nicely with our planner.



The annoying thing about YouTube is you have to tread through a lot of garbage. I might be wrong, but I think under the new security measures I would have to request special access to YouTube, which I might do now! I do like that you can create your own private YouTube channel and invite only those you wish to see your videos.

Week 6 Thing 15

I am not going to do this yet, but my teaching partner and I plan to create a video for our kindergarten choice night. I have actually tossed this idea around with our middle school tech teacher. We thought this might make a great middle school project. (But just in case it does not work out to have middle school create the project, CHeryl and I want to make sure it happens so will make a "backup" version to show.)

I have done a few digital stories and messed around with the flip cam (filmed the kindergarten performance, filmed a song we sang) but have yet to do anything with them but view them. So, I am really looking forward to creating a video for our choice night.

Week 6 Thing 14

One of my goals that came out of this class is to find a web pal kindergarten IB class in another country. Voicethread would be an awesome way to share images with each other and comment on them. I like that it does not have to be done simultaneously (like Skype) and it can be ongoing. I also like that parents can view the voicethreads. I am very excited to see if I can get this going.

I also thought that I could post things on voicethread for parents to post comments about.

I already plan to add an image of my classroom and invite my students to view it before school starts. They might not be able to add things, but I can narrate things about our classroom.

Week 5 Thing 13

The WebTools4U2Use is a great site.
I got side tracked and went back to making a Wiki again. I think I am forcing this Wiki thing on myself. I'm just not sure that I like that I have to assign parents the passwords. I will go ahead with posting the two wikis I have created and see what happend with them.

I have bookmarked the WebsTools site and want to go back to it after this class for future reference. I am very interested in doing amonthly podcast from my classroom, so I want to look around that site some more.

Week 5 Thing 12

Wikis are just what the videos say they are...a way for people to communicate and exchange info on the same platform. I think I might add a wiki to my website for parent teacher conferences and for events that parents need to sign up to send something to school. It will save me a heck of a lot of time in organization between the two classes and 50 kids.

Week 4, Thing 11

Here is my Wordle.
It is called Scrapper's Delight.

I can also be seen here, on the Wordle site.


Here is the another one from TagCrowd:

along anything away breathe everlong everything feel forever head hello hold promise real red sang sing slow stop throw tonight waited wanted waste wonder

created at TagCrowd.com

I like Wordle better. It gives you more options.

Week 4 Thing 10

Delicious

Not sure how I feel about this yet. I have to look at it from a social networking perspective and not as an organizing tool.

If I were to look at it as an organizing tool then it would not be very useful to me. I usually have no problem with my bookmarks and organizing them.

If I can look at this from a social networking tool then I can see the value. It will take some time to maneuver through the sight and become familiar with how to use it. A great deal of innovative teaching ideas that I use have come from finding websites created by teachers. I have usually gotten these websites from other teachers. The new thinking is that these will come from my PLN, not from teachers I already know.

I created an account and plan to goof around with it some more. I exported my bookmarks, but it catogorized them the same way I already have them. I need to play with the tags.

Week 3 Thing 8 and 9

So FINALLY I set up a Twitter account. My brother has been picking on me about how far behind in tweeting I am. I set up two accounts, a personal one and a professional one. I played with Tweet Deck so I can now see both accounts (pretty cool!). I found about 15 kindergarten teachers/related tweeters to start tweeting with...I am very excited about connecting with other Kindie teachers. I am following a few friends and will have to look for my sports updates and maybe a few scrapbooking buddies to follow on my personal one.

My prof. name is koolKteacher.
My personal name is AutumnCrosby.

I think it's also going to be time to go from the $5 250 out of network text messages to the $20 unlimited messages, as I can see how Twitter can be better than FB (but the FB app is free) unless there is a phone ap like Tweet Deck that sends me the data for free. I will have to check into that.

Week 3 Thing 7

I set up my igoogle page and the RSS feed for teacher tube and Ed Teacher. Now igoogle is my homepage....love the gadgets. I have a To Do list and several feeds going on it. Nice organization tool.

I did not want to sign up for the recommended 5 feeds as I did not want to be bogged down w/ more info than I need or am ready to have at this time. Sometimes too much too fast can be overwhelming and a turn off. I will just enjoy what I have selected for now and go from there.

Week 2 Thing 6

I spent about 2 hours on glogster and glogster edu sites. Although interesting, I did not see anything unique or different about them that I could not accomplish in my classroom using power point or just a regular uploaded video that I created or am using from teachertube or even youtube. Did I miss something? Also, I found the normal glogster much easier to navigate than the edu version. Again, did I miss something here?

If I taught middle/high school I would allow students to use glogster for presentations. In kindergarten I am really guiding the work and doing the data compilations, so like I said, the other sites I already use serve my purpose much better. I found several primary videos that illustrated phonics ideas. But again, the kids were not creating them (which is fine) so I would prefer to stick w/ teacher tube. From teachertube I can post the videos on my website for parents and kids to view.

I created accounts to try and work in them, but don't think I will return...at least to the edu slideshare account.

Week 2 Thing 5

Here is a neat little mashup for Flickr. This one organizes recent pictures to teach children phonics. If you click the letter E it shows pictures that were tagged w/ the word elephant. Kids could make their own picture alphabet book.

Alpha Learner

I can see using the Map mashup in Kindergarten when I teach our planner on basic needs. This mashup allows you to view photos from a certain area based on the tag.

Map

Week 2 Thing 4 continued

I set up a Flickr account and added a picture of DCC that I took and some pictures of my son. Here is the link to the DCC picture

Discovery Canyon Campus Lower Level

Flickr is a a pretty easy site to navigate and learn about. I like that you can link pictures w/ your FB account and your FB friends can view them.

Week 2 Thing 4

My brother is a web designer/graphic designer and my sister is a senior in high school (PC)and will be studying K-12 art education at Adam's State next year. Both of them use Flickr. My brother has more than 300 pictures on flicker. I like this one just because of the event. He lives in the city (NYC-"the city" to us New Yorker's) and went to Colbert Report. Steven Colbert threw his bump bracelet right in his lap and told him "good catch." We love Colbert!



In this picture my brother snapped a car that spontaneously combusted in the middle of time square. Always something going on in NYC! He keeps us updated on all the important things in life through his flicker stream.

And finally, the culminating event in my brother's life...this fortune cookie tells all! It says, Time to get some professional help. (All photos are courtesy of my little brother Mykal Cave)

Avatar

The assignment said to add an avatar in the classroom, office, school...I already had this avatar on yahoo avatar, so I just kept it. I guess you could say it was in a school...it's a college hockey uniform!

Getting Organized

I am bookmarking all these websites and setting up a folder for the web 2.0 class. I enjoy technology, but all that it is out there can be overwhelming. best to get organized now so I can stay on task.

Mrs. Crosby's Kindergarten Classroom Online

Here is Mrs. Crosby's Kindergarten Classroom online.

Off and Runnin'

And away we go...woot woot!