Tool #8

I located 2 great videos from YouTube that would be useful with my struggling readers as they learn their letters and sounds. I like the fact that videos are usually short and enticing. Many of the filmstrips that our teachers used to show us were long and students tuned out quickly. I only remember the "beep" when it told the teacher to advance the filmstrip. These videos have animation and sounds to engage the learner. They can be used to enhance curriculum and spark learning in a particular curriculum area for more indepth research.

Tool #8

Tool # 8

Tool # 6

Wikis are fabulous and another way to engage children in learning while collaborating with others. I could see kids working together to create a book review or summary using wikis. As a reading specialist that might come in quite handy. I enjoyed previewing a 2nd grade teacher's wiki where she had her kids writing. Another class was studying graphing so they conducted a survey on favorite foods. It didn't surprise me that pizza won! Talk about engaging the learner! Wiki's could be also useful for team newsletters.

Tool # 5

I joined Diigo and located several sites that would be useful. One is called Quizlet which allowed me to create flashcards for high frequency words and the other is Library on the Web which has read aloud books. I also found an interesting video on the Future of Reading through the LA Times. The tags "digital reading, read alouds, and flashcards assisted me in locating these sites. I can see how social book marking is so powerful. Allowing kids to access these sites quickly from any computer either at home or at school. This would be quite useful for various curriculum topics when kids are doing research at school. I wonder if kids will complain about homework if it were more engaging involving technology? Instead of saying "Go get your homework done" you might find parents saying "Get off the computer".

Tool # 4

I used Google Doc to create a doc indicating 3 areas of fluency: punctuation, expression, and phrasing. I shared this with Jenny Meyer - Meyer's Muse. I feel the Google Docs provide you with an easy way to collaborate with various people and share things in a more simplified way. The Google Reader is great since it allows you to view all of your favorite blogs in a quick manner. Both Google Doc & Reader could be so useful in the classroom. When students are studying a particular topic in social studies they could select blogs that they frequently review for content. Also, the ability to share & collaborate with many kids at once is great. The features allows students to participate in learning 24-7-365 as the mentioned in the video. How wonderful!

Tool #3