Cartoonize.net

This site is awesome for being goofy in the classroom. A possible use of this site could be to use the cartoonized pictures of the students to make a home-made or class-made storybook with their faces all represented. The site has a few advertisements on it, which is a drawback. Also, the "picture with celebrities" option is hard to match up properly because you can't shrink the picture or move it around to adjust it and make it look realistic. Most times the celebrity is huge in the forefront and you are small in the background, so it doesn't look realistic or proportionate. The "watter effect" option is deceptive because it's the same format and font as the rest of the options, but it is just a google search box.Other than that, the site is fun and interactive and has lots of options for photo editing that work, such as turning yourself into a cartoon, doing a mirror effect, and getting your picture on the front of a magazine. Lots of fun and the kids would enjoy it if you could do is all together on the smartboard and not individually on class computers.

PhET link review

The PhET site I was assigned to review was an interactive Circuit Construction Kit. Students could use this to

• Discuss basic electricity relationships.
• Build circuits from schematic drawings.
• Use an ammeter and voltmeter to take readings in circuits.
• Provide reasoning to explain the measurements and relationships in circuits.
• Discuss basic electricity relationships in series and parallel circuits.
• Provide reasoning to explain the measurements in circuits.

I found the information and concepts to be way too far above an elementary students' head, but this site might be great for highschool or middleschool. I was even a bit confused myself with what to do with the interactive game/activity, because there are no explanations for what you are building or anything. So if I couldn't understand it, my early childhood students would definitely struggle.

Comic/book creation site review

I reviewed Tikatok this week and discovered it is an incredibly clean, reliable, and education-safe book-creating site perfect for classroom projects or creativity-builders! This site is made especially for the classroom, so students can even make their own books. Options are to upload photos, scan drawings, or use the clipart gallery for the pictures. Students can choose a theme or just start from scratch, and it is divided into age group suggestions for who could handle what themes, etc. The only drawback from this site is that the books are pretty pricey to buy: hardcovers start at $18, softcovers start at $15, and digital downloads are $2.99. However, educators get 40% off, and teachers could even just save the books to their account and not have to buy them if they just wanted to show an online version of the book from the website. Great site!

PBS Resource

I chose a K-2 resource to look into, as I'd really love to teach the lower grades of elementary if possible. I found this really cool site from Martha Speaks called "Make the Band." On this site, kids can make their own band, choose the tempo of songs, vocalists, instruments, and create the rhythm and melody baseline. It is great for building a vocabulary that is based on musical terms. The tags under it are "The Arts, Music, Reading and Language Arts, and Vocabulary." This would be a great group activity to build vocabulary and reading skills as well as develop the children musically and creatively.

Article from EDcompass Magazine

Attention all teachers! I read the article entitled "The Magic of a SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard in Kindergarten" from the EDcompass magazine, and it was incredibly informative about the various uses and applications of the SMART Board in the classroom. Some of the activities she mentions include " using it for the morning message, the calendar or the daily poetry reading, graphing favorite colors or reviewing alphabet letters and sounds, and watching Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech." There are so many uses of the SMART Board and she explains how this generation is fascinated by and familiar with digital resources, so why not harness that magical spirit and grab their attention with things they like to do? They get just as much, if not more, from doing subtraction problems interactively on the SMART Board as they do sitting at their desks with a worksheet, because they are more engaged with the SMART Board. I want to use the SMART Board as much as possible in my room, so I encourage teachers to read up on the capabilities and applications of the SMART Board, because I definitely don't know enough about them yet to integrate them into most of my lessons. They will be a great tool to catch students' attention and engage learning through technology.

Gizmos Review

For my Gizmos review, I chose to look at the best free websites/utilities for home and office, and narrowed that down to teaching the lower grades. I found a great website for printable coloring and handwriting pages for Kindergartners, which is what I want to teach. This site has plenty of well-drawn coloring pages and sections for practicing letters and handwriting, so it's great for teaching the alphabet, practicing fine motor skills like gripping a pencil and coloring in the lines, and using that creative side of children to learn what they need to know about the alphabet and colors before Kindergarten is over. I would definitely use this site for my future classroom.

Gliffy Review

Gliffy is a fantastic site for organizing your thoughts visually and being able to share them with whomever you please. Ranging from thought webs to diagrams to floor plans, Gliffy has what is needed to record thoughts on paper. This site is great for visual thinkers, and helps others to understand your own thoughts and plans when they can see them visually and not just hear you talk about them. Teachers can use this site for helping students understand directions, giving examples of completed work, organizing the floor plan of their room, making webs and diagrams pertaining to class, and honestly just for fun.

Embedded Youtube Video

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Technology in the Classroom

Hey, check out this site for how to use Facebook in the classroom! Great ideas and very applicable!

<div style="width:425px" id="__ss_277102"> <strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/brainopera/facebook-strategies-for-the-classroom" title="Facebook Strategies For The Classroom" target="_blank">Facebook Strategies For The Classroom</a></strong> <iframe src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/277102" width="425" height="355" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <div style="padding:5px 0 12px"> View another <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/" target="_blank">webinar</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/brainopera" target="_blank">Kevin Lim</a> </div> </div>

Teach-nology link

I found these ideas from a link on the website teach-nology.com. Under this link http://www.cool-coloring-pages.com/, there are educational coloring pages, which interest me as a prospective kindergarten teacher. There are all sorts of them, ranging from flowers and animals to geometric shapes and president's faces and flags of the world! This site has great ideas for how to engage children into the learning process through their creative side. I would use these all the time as a kindergarten teacher to teach math, social studies, science, etc. Teach-nology is a great site to find links like that one to spice up the life of the classroom.