Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Tool 11

I have really enjoyed my experience in learning.  My favorite tool is the iPad itself. I have watched my children take a few instructions and open it up to find even more than I even realized was available for them. 

The knowledge gained from going through the "11 Tools" is something that I believe I will use to grow as an educator.  I desire to use technology with my students and parents.  I believe I will use some of the things I have learned on my staff website.

 An unexpected outcome has been seeing the ideas of others. In addition, I have been taught some new tricks.  This will help me keep up with the students in learning technology. :)

Tool 10

With every new forum, there are new set of rules that teachers need to make students aware of.  Kids are not just born with the knowledge of what is right and wrong on the computer and what I have seen is that many times, parents don't know how to teach them the rules.

The counselors at Northbrook have developed lessons that teach proper online decorum.
After viewing this site, I see how the counselors can use, Atomic Learning and Texas School Safety sites to make new and updated lessons to teach online decorum


tool 9


Technology is here and it is here to stay. There are may teachers that don't want to use technology in their classrooms and I feel it is because they have fear of loosing control. When I was in the classroom, I taught often times using stations. I have found that kids that kids can find out more dept about a subject when stations are used.

When using stations, teachers need to PLAN. The plan needs to include the outcome the teacher wants from the students. This will hold students accountable for what it is to learned from the stations.

The great thing about the ipad is that there are many free apps that students could use in the classroom to make more creative projects
123 Charts and Animation Creator Lite are two that I have used and the final project would be  
the way to keep kids help accountable

Ipads can be used as a direct link to the internet where kids can research subject, look up words and take notes simultaneously during class lessons for better understanding.

tool 8

I am super excited that Mr. Adami decided to include the counselors in the rolling out of these new tools! Thanks, Mr. Adami and Ms. Brow for her influence, :)  I have also way been very comfortable with technology.  This being said, when I received the new ipad and immediately began to explore.  Most of the things on the sight 50 tricks for the Ipad2. Had I not learned everything,  the sight prior would have taught me a lot of new things. 

I can see how the Ipad2 can be used in a classroom.  My daughter used the ipad this summer for her summer school class.  It does everything a computer and a notebook can do simultaneously without all the bulk.  My son loves doing his multiplication tables on the ipad.

tool 7



One of the things I'm most interested in as an educator of low SES students is giving students opportunities to get to know things outside of their regular surroundings. I think sometimes kids choose not to attend colleges out of their comfort zones because of fear of the unknown. I would love to create a median where students in my high school could collaborate with freshman in colleges around the nation. I know there would be some logistics because my students are minors and kids in college are adults, but a peer collaboration would be a fantastic use of digital collaboration between campuses. When students learn about other cultures, they will have an eye opening experience and, they learn more about the world and their realization will increase.

Content objective
Students will get questions answered by peer teleconferencing with a student on partner college campuses.

When I plan to implement
I have other counselor friends that are college counselors and previous students that are present college freshman and sophomores that i could find a campus to do this with in the fall.

What tool I plan to use
Possible tools for this would be Skype, FaceTime, Blackboard or Elluminate.

A brief description of the project
Once the school year begins, I could have a link added to my district home page that would allow students to access the college campuses via the link. This beyond the classroom collaboration could be used all year.



Tool 6

The state of education is quickly moving towards a paperless school system.  Textbooks are too expensive and can be lost.  They are hard to carry with you anywhere.  Electronic books cost less and are easy to carry with you anywhere.  Emodo is one way teachers can interact with students in a teaching forum.  My daughter, an eight grader,  took an sigh language class this summer.  Her teacher used Edmodo to give and receive assignments from students.  She was very successful in this class.  I have chosen to make an Edmodo account for me to see how it could work in a classroom. My edmodo account

As I said before, I have always used Google docs with others.  I receive documents from the special education department through google docs and this summer the testing data base was created through a google docs forum. Parents called with information and I enrolled students for the STAAR test using google docs.   This is the first time I made a document for others to edit.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Tool 5

The two media tools I chose to use for this tool were, Mixbook and Animoto.  Both took pictures I had taken and put them in a presentation form.  Students love taking photos. The problem is they don't understand what should be shared and what should remain private.  Teachers could use this tool to teach appropriate things for sharing and uploading.  Here are my examples of appropriate use.
Animoto - Pictures of Ms. B with her kids
I like the Animoto tool for school use because you don't need to purchase an account and you can share with others easily.

The Mixbook tool was not as user friendly for schools.  If you are going to scrapbook with family in two different cities this would be super. My Disney Vacation 2012