Thing 7A&B

I have been following a few blogs about Ireland and teachers who have set off on a journey to teach there for a few months or years. I have learned many little idioms that are used daily in Irish culture like half 2 means 2:30. Also, they say good boy or good girl when a child answers a question correctly which makes me think of how I talk to my dogs. I am learning a lot of good things to know before I journey over there in March. The blog that I received  all of the facts from was 2 weeks of full teaching in Ireland.  I even joined this page on facebook so I can see what she posts on either to learn all the new things as she experiences the culture.

I am very excited about the google reader because now I can join anything of interest and find out more through the blogs. I can join readers for school or travel. I find this so incredibly overwhelming yet exciting at the same time.

Thing 14

I created a comic strip using my vacation photos and even put it in my family scrapbook by using  http://pikistrips.com/.  I'm sure my students would love for me to use this in there scrapbooks or even to create them for different holidays using there pictures. This would be a great way for them to practice reading. I'm sure the kids would love to also create their own.

I also used  http://letterpop.com/ I made a newsletter of our Kindergarten fieldtrip and a page for our PTA scrapbook. It is very easy to use and has a ton of backgrounds that are categorized by themes. I will most definitely use this for parent letters and scrapbooks.

Incase you have not noticed I love scrapbooking. I make scrapbooks for each kid in my class and my family so any time I find something that I can use with my hobby I am thrilled.

I really enjoyed exploring each of the sites but these two listed were my favorites.

Thing 13

Using generators to make almost anything is a great way to spend an evening being creative.  I think I could use the generators as writing prompts and use the signs to post rules for centers or numerous other things we need rules for in our room. The comics would be great for the kids to create their own with a reading buddy because I think it maybe to hard for them to do on their own.

Here is an example of a sign I made with custom sign generator. I made the license plate under license plate and sign under construction signs.

Students could make their own license plates as name plates for their tables. The steps to create these are very easy. Each step is labeled 123. It is well written out for all to follow and the best part is you do not have to join a site and remember yet another password. Anyone can go on and explore, create and save their creation without passwords. WOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!

Thing 12

I downloaded pictures to use for this but thought it would be more fun and useful if I used my own photos for this activity and now I can use this in my family scrapbook. My scrapbooks have just become so much more amazing over night. I am really enjoying using our family vacation photos to make comicstrips and slideshows. My students would love seeing these at school. Also, the kids who love comics would eally enjoy reading about themself or creating their own comic to share about themself or a topic of interest. This is so much fun! I have spent the day playing with pictures in between printing my creations off and scrapping them... scrapbooking is my favorite past time so anything creative I can do with pictures seems to keep my attention. I cannot wait to make comicstrips to use with my kiddos word wall words that are on their levels. The possibilites are endless.

Thing 11

Picture by Pepe50 was found by searching Flickr Creative Commons for dogs. I love flickr!!!! I am so excited to search on this site and even download my own photos. I use pictures a lot in kindergarten. We use pictures to write stories and to develop vocabulary. Well the list goes on and on. This picture above would be awesome for writing is he tired or sad or possibly both?

Flickr is very easy to use and easy to spend hours searching to find just the right photo. I like how the photos have tags so you can find a photo to match ezactly what you are searching for very quickly. Therefore, I can find get pictures that can teach sequencing, different sizes and they are real pictures. kids love to learn using real pictures. I could find a bunch of pet photos and we could create a class book about pets that we would like to have at our home. Seriously the ideas are neverending. I knew about photobucket because i have had emails form friends to go check out their pictures on photobucket but I did not realize that there were sights were you could just search through peoples photographs. I will most definitely be using Flickr with the little people either by printing off some pictures or even going on site with the kids and showing them how I found the pictures.

Here is my example for the stretch activity. I only spent a few hours playing around with the shape collages and will use this one in our school scrapbook. It is all the pictures I took of our health fair.  I love the mosiac maker and I can use this in my kiddos scrapbooks as well and the kids can make collages with pictures of any topic that they present to the class.

Thing 10

Creative Commons is very important for our profession. We create things daily that we share because we are educators and our job requires us to teach all and this happens through sharing. I have not created anything and placed a copyright on it because anyone should be able to benefit from educational ideas. I do find it interesting how easy it is to use many things posted in the world technology.

I have noticed CC on some of the videos I've seen and thought I understand how they would like for others to notice how it can be shared. Yes, I use video clips a lot with the little people because they can pay attention to clips easier than listening to me. I also use promethian lessons and powerpoints that were created by others for educators to use freely with students.

I feel as if all educators have rights to teaching materials that have been made public. Ideas are out once they have been shared with one student or one person. Then everyone has the right to use those ideas to help others learn.

To go right along with the above comments that makes me excited to see websites like the OER Commons. I like how educators can access websites like these and share ideas and help our kids be successful. I can not wait to play around some more with this site and find some new ideas for certain concepts that we teach in Kindergarten.

Thing 9

The wikispaces sandbox was a bit scary at first. I saw all of the directions and became overwhelemed so much so that it has taken me weeks to get back on and actually accomplish this task. I don't think my sandbox is cool...I just posted what the directions stated and I liked visiting the other sandboxes to see how creative fellow classmates are at this task. Like I stated earlier it was a bit overwhelming at first but now I think I can wiki developing a few skills here and there. I like how anyone can join that is accepted and edit the page.
It was neat to see how everyone could add websites or really anything to the wiki and this helps everyone by giving new ideas for us to use with our students. I really like the concept of the wiki and can't wait to become more comfortable so I can cvreate one for teachers at our school. My sandbox page is http://misd23sandbox.wikispaces.com/crazy. The process at first was making my head go crazy so hints the name.

Thing #8 Stretch Activity

I feel completly lost and confused on the wikipedia site. On the main page was a poem about Autumn and I clicked on the discussion tab and it just had links to other wikipedia news and references to the main page. Nothing related to the poem itself which is what I think I was supposed to be looking for through this activity.

Wikipedia has a ton of information and I feel a bit overwhelmed just by the thought of going back to look for anything. I looked at the history and clicked on a few that had current article and previous articles related. Just like I posted in the beggining of this responce I felt a little lost throughtout this process. I'm not sure what I'll be using the wikipedia for in the future but hopefully after I play around with it some more I won't feel so frustrated.

Thing #8

Wow who knew this world of wiki's would be such an amazing resource for teachers? I am intrigued by just the few that I visited from the list that we were given in this activity. I wish I had many more hours in the day to keep researching new wiki's and blogs. This can start to consume all of your not so extra time. It is very exciting but scary at the same time to look up and realize how much time you have spent reading and searching on the computer just for one topic.

I have been trying to figure out a time and way to incorporate the Kindergarten Counting wiki into my math centers. I think I can have a counting center and the numbers that are missing we ccould count out objects of that many and take a quick picture. Then when they rotate and go to computers we could load the picture and add to the wiki. The kids would enjoy this... the actual wiki did not have very much to it... it was very simple compared to the other I researched. Great for simplicity for the little ones not a lot to click on or distract them, however not a great one for adults to disscuss or find links on to other resources.  This wiki made me feel like I could create one similar and use it with the little people.

The next wiki that I visited was Salute to Suessand this one was a little overwhelming to a newbie. Tons of links, resources, disscussions, kids examples, dates as to which to skype and celebrate Dr. Suess. Great ideas and a very creative resource but maybe a bit much for someone like me just getting started. I do like how it was organized just tooo much information.

The last site I wanted to mention was primary math wiki. Great idea to help teachers post lessons and love the pictures and videos to show others how to do the lessons. This wiki has a lot of information but is easy to follow and I even find it welcoming to educators to post leesons on for all to enjoy. It is organized in a way where anyone can follow a long and not feel stressed trying to find a lesson.

I do feel like I could create a wiki for Kindergarten that students and techers could possibly use together. I have all of the ideas spinning in my head right now as to which one i would want to create first. I think we could easily do a themed writing one and it would even be easy for the parents to follow at home. The best part about it is it's free for all involved.

Thing #7

Commenting fortunately is easy for most educators. We typically have a comment for everything and have been trained over the years to make those comments positive and to the point. Which is very beneficial in commenting to blogs. Some people ramble on and on about a blog when they could have made their point in their first sentence. Luckily as a reader I can skim through those types of comments quickly and move on. I have also seen some where it is a great debate and the commenting posts are arguing with the original blog posts and those are very entertaining. I'm sure this is like a sport for some people they want to voice their oppinions and try to persuade others. Reading comments on some of the blogs are the most interesting part of the piece.

Thing #6

Wow this subscribing to blogs is so exciting. I love to travel and am now a member of many different blogs related to traveling. I've also joined a few that show educators experiences as they work in other countries. This is an amazing new adventure for me.  I love how I can read something of interest and if I  have a question post a comment and it is answered. I like how when I go to the reader it shows me all the content in bold which is definitely overwhelming but I'm adjusting. I'm spendng a lot more time reading off of the computer these days which is not the most relaxing read but I am now realizing how people can leave work and come home and spend hours on the computer. I don't watch television or typically spend much time with objects that use electricity at my home. However, since this new adventure I'm sure my electric bill will go up due to the endless hours of reading interesting posts. I'm not complaining it's just changing my world one blog at a time. I guess you could say I've lived in the dark ages at home until now. My favorite new link has to be http://www.fact-and-opinion.com/irelandtravel

thing 5

Adding the google reader has sent me a wealth of knowledge. I love to travel and was excited to see some travel information. However, some are not so positive about the times to travel due to recent terrorists attacks. This is a warning for people who intend on traveling to Europe.
Travelers are being told to not take tours or students should not plan on traveling to Europe during this time. Al Quadia people have been making threats and are targeting tourists amongst others. This is a great topic to research for your own safety before traveling. Unfortunately in todays times we have to worry about terrioism attacks and our safety while traveling.
 This article shows that and gives other links to help the people who want to visit Europe be more aware of the dangers and I'm sure a way of keeping them posted of when would be a better time to travel.
The link to this information is http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03security.html?partner=rss&emc=rss