Welcome Back! I know that the beginning of the school year is a very busy time for everyone! My schedule has changed a little bit for this school year. Monday, Thursday, and Friday are my Elmira days , while Tuesday and Wednesday belong to Horseheads. My schedule is flexible, so if you need me on a different day, we can work it out!

For some quick feedback on how your students are doing, use your Student Response System. In Horseheads, this is the ActivVotes while Elmira uses CPS. These help you to get quick feedback after a lesson to check on your students' understanding of the information.

Web 2.0 for Spring!

   One of my new favorite sites is the Behavior Management site called Class Dojo, which can be found at http://www.classdojo.com/ . Once you have created your class, you can keep track of your students' positive and negative behaviors by giving them "dojo's". The program keeps track of the positive/negative behaviors and will then create a report that you can print off or email to parents ( a nice alternative. to behavior charts) You can also keep track of the class as a whole. This can be displayed on a whiteboard for the class to see or just brought up on the teacher's computer. I have seen K students walk up to their teacher and ask that a "dojo" be added to another student for positive behavior!

   Another site I would like to share is www.spellingcity.com.  Teachers can create and save spelling and vocabulary lists and then use these lists for tests/games. Some vocabulary lists are already created so you can use those as well. There is also a paid subscription version available where students can login and take their tests online!
   Still reading? I have saved one of the best for last! www.storybird.com  On this site, students select illustrations from various artists who have donated their work to the site. They can then create an electronic storybook. Teachers can then embed these books onto their webpages to share with others. Their is also a feature where students can ask others to take turns in writing the stories with them. This is one of the sites I talk about in my 3 Cool Tools for Individual/Collab. Projects class being offered this summer through Model Schools.

Colonial Clothes- A Fun Activity

Here is a quick and fun activity to use when studying the Colonial Time Period. Students love seeing how their counterparts dressed, so have them start with the website http://www.williamsburgkids.com/people/index.html where they will learn about the styles of dress and how that differed depending on your station in life. Once they have read the information, they can check their understanding by visiting  http://www.history.org/History/teaching/dayInTheLife/webactivities/dress/dress.cfm and dressing the people.This can be a fun culminating activity for your unit or a unique way to introduce the time period.

Web 2.0 Tool for December

One of my new favorite websites is www.kerpoof.com. It is a great site where students can publish their work, practice their spelling with Spell a Picture (use an icy background to make a polar picture), make and e-mail cards (a quick and fun activity for this time of year), or just create a picture. Teachers can apply for a teacher account so they can create classes and give students a unique username and password. My only concern is, that while it is currently free, the site is now owned by Disney and there is no guarantee that it will remain that way.

Age level:Pk-4

Interesting Information About You Tube

Here is an interesting article about add-on features for Youtube which makes it a little more classroom friendly.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/09/12-useful-youtube-accessories-for.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+freetech4teachers%2FcGEY+%28Free+Technology+for+Teachers%29

Web 2.0 Tool of the Month for August

(Web 2.0 are sites that allow users to interact with information rather than simply being passive readers of the information)

www.tagxedo.com

Many of us have used www.wordle.com to create "word clouds" of information. I also like to use Tagxedo. I like the shapes that you can choose from for your cloud and I find it a little easier to use.

Another Conference

I am blogging from another conference put on by A+ Educators. It has been excellent! I am enjoying getting to know more of the teachers and administrators from Elmira who I am working with on the Learning Academies.

We just sat through an excellent presentation on Web 2.0 tools that can be used to help engage students. I have bookmarked the sites here :

Links