I can't believe we are already in week 7, just one more week to go! This week, like every other week in the class was crammed full with information. It is really hard to believe that there is sooooo much information available and easy to get.
One web 2.0 tool I've seen used is on the starfall website. There is a calendar game/program on the site that one of the special education teachers that I work with uses. At first, she uses it for whole class instruction. Students can fill in the month, date, year, and days of the week. It can be set up to where it asks questions and students have to answer. Or, as a whole group, the teacher can ask the questions. For the students that she works with, this tool works well for them. Sometimes the questions can be a little difficult for the level that they are on, but starfall is a great site that students can use on any level.
Another tool that I would use a teacher would be the webquest. It took some work and time, but I really enjoyed creating a webquest and I think students would enjoy completing one. I think they would give students that sense of responsibility for taking learning in to their own hands. Using it in fifth grade would be good because entering middle school, students will see what it's like to complete projects on their own with out someone telling them 'there's only so much time left to complete this'.
This week we also completed our last technology explorations. Most of them, this week, I enjoyed exploring.
Delicious.com is a free and easy to use website. It allows you to save and organize your links on the web. Any teacher could benefit from this site, especially if they are constantly using the internet in their lessons. I would recommend this to other educators. It would be helpful to gather all your sites/links for one lesson and save them in one place. This way, you don't have to waste time searching for them again. You can also search education technology, you can subscribe to links other teachers have posted, you can share links with other teachers, and you can add links to different posts.
Historypin.com was an amazing site! I loved it! It is a way for people around the globe to communicate through history and pictures. The site aims to build a more complete understanding of the world and its events. You could use this site for visual literacy activities. I found myself spending a few hours just looking at pictures. I started out looking at pictures from my hometown, then I started looking at pictures in a group call 'how it used to be'. I would recommend this site to other teachers, it's free to sign up through e-mail or facebook.
Diigo is a digest of internal information groups and other stuff. It is basically personal knowledge management, and it archives webpages for the links you save. You can share this information and use it for collaboration. There is a free plan, but they also have an education plan you can purchase. It will give you 20 cached webpages a month with unlimited highlights, and teacher consoles. I don't really recommend this site. I think I am a little too old fashioned for this website. I didn't really like it.
Cyberchase talking calculator is on two different sites, PBS kids and softpedia. On the PBS kids site, the calculator is a little more 'kid friendly'. On softpedia, you can download the calculator for free. You can turn the voice on or off and it talks in number terms. Both of these can be an asses to any classroom. It may be especially helpful in a classroom with students who have special needs. I would recommend these to other teachers because anything to help make math a little easier to teach would be good.
Mathwiki is a wiki that talks about writing across the curriculum, particularly math. There are articles posted that talk about from theory to practice. Teachertube is on there is the teacher toolbox. This is a great resource to have in any classroom. I would recommend this because it was a free site with many many ideas.
Piclits is inspired picture writing. It is a creative writing site using beautiful images. Students can look at any picture and create a story about it. This site reminded me of the visual literacy lesson. A teacher at my school already uses a site like this in her special education classroom. From what I could tell, this site didn't cost anything. Sites like this have already been going around my school so there is no need to recommend it.
As I said, I can't believe there is only one more week left. It feels like a lot longer because of everything I have learned so far.
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