Thing #13!

Wow! Pretzel 13 has been a wonderful experience. I have been exposed to many things that I didn’t know existed and became more familiar with some that I did. Some of the best things pertain to the sharing of information. I can see using google docs, wikispaces and animoto in the future. Things like Diggio and Creative Commons are not things I will use, but it is good to know that they exist and are out there for people to use. I have always been fascinated with computers and their use…I was almost majored in computer science in college.

I would definitely recommend this program to anyone that was thinking about participating in this in the future. It is valuable for those of us who don’t always have the time to explore some of the new tools that are available. This program made it easy to learn and explore new things on the web.

My one sentence description: It is very important to stay up to date and in tune with the web 2.0 tools, and Pretzel 13 made it fun and easy to accomplish this.

Thing # 12

The first thing I looked at was joglab.com. It helps you create mnemonic and acrostic poems.

You put in the letter or letters and it will supply you with a list of words to choose from. If you think of your own and it isn’t there, you can write it in the bottom.

I made one for helping students remember the diagraphs. – gn, kn, ck, wr, wh, th, ph, sh, ch

Gnomes knit socks wrong while they phone short children

The next tool I looked at was Bubbl.us is a brainstorming tool. It lets you easily make a web with the information that you create. It lets you create different levels.

Both of these tools were very easy to learn to use and would be fun and useful in the classroom.

Thing #11

Wordle- I had seen Wordle before, but had never used it. I made a wordle with my students names. Wordle was a lot of fun to do. You can change the fonts and the colors. This is a tool that I think the general classroom teachers would find many uses for.

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1950495/sunbel

Animoto- This was very entertaining. I signed up and within about 10 minutes put together a slide show of my daughter, Melinda’s, wedding. It was very easy. This would be a fun thing to use in class after special events such as field trips or special projects.

http://animoto.com/play/rSpF4qsJqXmlct9Gu1303g?utm_content=escape_link&utm_source=share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=animoto

Flashcard exchange- I have been using flashcard exchange for several years. It is so easy to use. I currently use it with a 6^th grade girl that I tutor. We put her social studies and science vocabulary on the website. We then download it to an app on her iPod. She is then able to study the words in a more motivating way then the old fashioned flashcards. I also recently downloaded the Fry phrases from their website. These are phrases from the Fry list of most common words. I can then use them on my iPod with my first graders once we get a few more phrases that they know for sure.

Comiqs- I wasn’t able to get very far with this website, but from what I saw I could see that students would love using it. I have a few students who love the graphic novels. This website would be a great extension of those types of books.

Thing 10

Creative commons seems like a wonderful idea, though I am not sure it would be used much in an elementary school. It is a great way for people to work and collaborated together without having to go through those intermediaries.

Thing #9

I really enjoyed looking through these sites. I joined both LibraryThing and Shelfari. I like the look of Shelfari better, but am going to try and use them both for awhile to see which one I like best. This is going to be very handy, because there are many times that I will pick a book that sounds good only to find that I read it along time ago. This is a great way to keep track of what I have read and to find people that enjoy the same type of books. While I will read almost any genre I seem to have a hard time making decisions on which book to read next. I am hoping that these sites can help me in making decisions.

I may try this out with some of my students next year. There are a few this year that I think would have enjoyed this.

On both sites my user name is susherwood.

Thing #8

I was able to find some podcasts that pertain to seminars or conferences on reading instuction. These are for me to listen to in order to get more information. There was a 2 hour podcast from the Florida Center for Reading Research which was a conference on adolescent literacy. I also found a series from the International Reading Association on teaching reading. I found the FCRR podcast on their website and I found the IRA series on i-Tunes.

Voice thread was very interesting. It would be great for collaborating between people that are in different places. I am not sure how I would incorporate it into my class though.

Thing #7

I had fun with the wikispaces. Every Monday we have a reading meeting. Last Monday someone suggested that we put down rules for moving from tier III back to just tier II. I put some ideas on a wikispace and sent the links to everyone. Everyone else needs a little training on how to do it, but I can see the usefulness of this tool.