After 11 Tools: Reflections

1. What are your favorite tools you now have in your personal technology toolbox? Briefly describe a particular activity that you will plan for your students using at least one of these new tools.
I like to di videos of classroom activities, because my students can remember a lot of thing we have done. Also, they like to see their act out again and again.
I would like to use skype to communicate with other class and my students can watch other students and interact each other.
And the image generator was a great idea, my students have heros and special character that can be used to communicate special skills or special stuff.


2. How have you transfomed your thinking about the learning that will take place in your classroom?
Yes, the technology can be used to teach with teacher explanations and to teach without teacher. The students can be watching materials and videos and they will be learning and having fun.
I have seen how student worked with IPods and how they were finding out a lot of apps, and how the apps works. The student were spending some time playing and learning and then.... some student were teaching other students.
Usually I give some hardcopies of pictures or apps, or any special screen in order the student can make drawings or having some free writing.

3. Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
Yes, I like the way we can do special bookmarks and how we can share them. I like the sites that have great and FREE stuff, because we can use it, and now that I am a Digital citizen, I can add my comments, and suggestions to these sites.
My students were spending some time in Youtube, but Prek students can not surf by Youtube by their selves, the teacher or other adult have to taking care of them.
I like to do electronic books and the students can add some text or can add more images. This help to integrate the students and ahow them they can be author and illustrators too.

Tool 11: Digital Citizenship

I, as a prek teacher, going to explain my vision of digital citizenship.

At beginning the students do not know the PC, so we introduce the PC, all the components and its function, and we explain How we have to take care of our "great tool" in order all the students can use them. Here we teach respect for our PC and all facilities.

- All the students has free access with the teacher user-name and password, so this is not a prek issue.
- We encourage the most advanced students to help the others. We model the way the students have to ask for help and how the advanced student could help.
- All the student have to use the PC and IPods, so every student will use these devices and that will share with others.
- we explain the student the possibilities to learn with electronic devices as PC and IPods's. We show them How they can learn by watching videos or by listening or interacting with software by picking the correct answer or coloring drawings. The technology in for learning too, not for music or video musical videos only.

In preK we teach the basics of a good citizen, so after that, we transfer this knowledge to digital citizenship. Respect to you and each other, respect for the facilities, correct use of the devises, etc.

Tool 10: Exploring Mobile Technology And Apps

1. We actually have a lot of apps in our school. Each classroom have 5 IPod Touch and we present some apps to the students and we let the students discover other apps by them selves. This year the student start playing with some ABC apps, after that they choose the farm animals and at the end of the year they play a lot with a train app. This train app is based on the coordination to guide a train by the tracks, and this app was really an WOW app.

3. The student have the opportunity to go to the IPod Touch center. This center has 4 IPod 's and the teacher encourage the students to spend the first minutes in learning apps, and then the student can pick fun (learning too) apps. Also we include in the IPods some chants, music, learning songs, etc. I think every student can fine something they will really enjoy.

Tool 9: Sharing Information Through Jing & Skype

For your Tool #9 Assignment:

1. Jing is a great tool to present procedures that includes screen shots or special displays in the PC. We in prek, have some special software to do books for our students, and this software is great to do presentations step by step, for our peers how to use these special software.
Also, we can take special shoot s of internet pages and add notes. This is tool that have a lot of possibilities. the teacher can do a video presenting a class and the student will be able to follow the steps and repeating any part as needed.

2. Skype give us a great possibilities to share with students. Actually in our school, we are preparing a skype conference between classes, so the students will be able to see on the active board or PC screen other classrooms, and other teacher and interact with them.
This could be the first part, and after that we can share with other classes in our district and outside the district.

Tool 8: Video Resources

For your Tool #8 Assignment:

1. Select two videos that may be useful resources in your classroom. Upload them to your blog if they can be embedded into your blog. If they do not have embed capabilities, hot link them to your blog.

The videos are a strong tools to help students to clarify ideas. If an image say more the 1000 words, then a video say more than 1000 images.

The videos can be used to learn new things or to remember what we know and review what we have learned. An example is How to do chocolate, fruit salad, or how we can draw circles, triangles, rectangles, etc.

Last year we used videos to present a rodeo activities and the students were exited with the big bulls and horses.

These videos were obtained from YouTube.

Tool 7: Digital Storytelling

I, as a PreK teacher, can encourage the students to participate doing activities and procedures to take pictures or videos, and then I make the movie and the students really love to watch this movies because they are the "Stars" and they love watch them over and over.

We invite to the students to do special things as writing, structures, blocks buildings, etc to take pictures and then movies.

Tool 6: Wikis

1.- IN YOUR BLOG post, discuss how students might use wikis to aid in their learning. Did any of the sample wikis you viewed give you any particular ideas for using a wiki in your classroom for students. How about for and your team or department?
Congratulations! You are more than half-way to filling up your toolbox!
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This is a great way to coordinate work or procedures that need the participation of several persons. This is a great way to find out who has a leadership attitude and who want to cooperate in order to get the best result at the end.

We use this communication in the past with e-mail, and to follow our commnet, each person pick a different color to add comment, so everybody can do comments and we know who is doing the comments.

This kind of communication allows to coordinate our participations and let us work at our own rhytem of learning.