Monday 14 March 2011

Where do I go from here?...

The two days of Emerging Technologies workshop are now done so the big question is what am I going to do with this new knowledge.  I am pleased with what I learned in the workshop; it allowed each student to "tailor make" their own program in a way. 

My goal in learning about 2.0 was to find new tools to motivate and engage the learning of my adult basic education students.  I feel this was accomplised.  My own comfort level grew exponentially in the past few weeks; I am excited about my learning and am eager to pass this on.

I am in the process of setting up a classroom wiki.  I want to use this as a way to maintain communication with my students.  I also look forward to using Blogger with them.  I am going to have them all set up a blog of their own. My students need to spend more time reading and writing but pencil and paper is monotonous so I look forward to using technology to teach, motivate, and learn with my adult learners.

Saturday 12 March 2011

embedding a video

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0LzQIUANnHc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

icon scrabble


http://iconscrabble.com/

This is neat!
I am going to have students use this for spelling.

Friday 11 March 2011

So much inspiration on the website Ideas to Inspire

This site has endless possiblitites for teachers!  Once I started looking around at the site itself, as well as all the links that are included in it, I realized what a goldmine this is.  Here is the link to the site: http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk/index.html#1.  I really like the organization of the homepage.  Once I clicked onto the Curiculum Ideas tab I was instantly taken to all the categories and links that a teacher would be looking for without having to sort them and categorize them myself.

I spent the most time looking at the writing section.  I am interested in finding new ideas in technology to help my students to express themselves.  I found so many interesting ideas.  Some of my favorites are: 
http://blabberize.com/   and http://www.wordle.net/.

This is definitly a site to put into my Web2.0 toolbox. I look forward to using ideas and links form it with my students.

Thursday 10 March 2011

Educational Videos

As an Adult Basic Education Instructor I am always looking for interesting videos to show my students.  I find that my students are very connected technologically and are much more motivated to learn through technology.  My classroom is not equipped with a Smarboard but I do have a data projector.  The data projector allows me to easily show videos that all the students can see on the screen instead of all trying to gather around one computer.

In the past I have found and used many videos off a site called teacher tube.  http://www1.teachertube.com/
It is a useful site which is well organized and easy to navigate around.  The other thing I like about teachertube is that the videos are free to use (at least I have never come across one that wasn't).

Today, in quest of building a larger Web2.0 toolbox, I researched a site called MindBites.http://www.mindbites.com/
It had a lot of interesting videos and they were organized in a way that I found was very easy to navigate through.  The one major downside is that there is a cost to use most of the videos.  When you click on the preview you get the video and after watching about the first 40seconds a screen pops up to tell you that watching the whole thing will cost $1.98.  This payment can easily be arranged through Paypal.  All very wonderful.  However, I am a teacher (we are known to be cheap!) and I feel that the cost of watching the MindBite videos would very quickly add up.   There was a section in each category that was FREE videos.  I was able to find some interesting things in there but obviously, the selection reduces greatly in the FREE section.

Both of these sites are worth looking at if you are looking for educational videos to learn anything from crafts and cooking, to algebra and biology... even videos on knife throwing!

Shrinking online!

With everything that grows bigger and better on the internet; believe it or not, you can be shrinking with the help of this website:http://shrinkingapp.com/
I signed up for it this morning.  It allows users to chart their daily weights, food intake and exercise.  It looks like it will break down daily intakes of food into calories, fat, protein, and carbs.  Like I said, this is day one so I am still learning how it will look and work.  If this interests you you might want to check it our for yourself.

Monday 7 March 2011

Cartoon your Posters

Here is a link that I worked on today.http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/

There were literally thousands of choices of cartoon characters to choose from.  As a teacher,I
am always looking for ways to get a message out to students and spend many hours trying to desktop publish Word documents that I have created and can be used in my classroom.  I see endless possibilites here for my use as well as my students.  Finding a way to express themselves creatively is invaluable.  This is another tool to assist in that skill development.