Digital Storytelling

                                                                                                                                                                                                    
Digital storytelling is a way that people can use technology to tell their stories- whether it be about their own life or something educational.  For teachers, the latter seems to be the most beneficial, because there are endless opportunities that we can incorporate this tool to teach a lesson or have students create their projects.  Digital storytelling is typically based upon a theme or overall message, and this is one way that we as teachers can use this in our lessons.   Digital Stories help an educator explain different concepts, ease some lessons that may be difficult for the students, introduce vocabulary, and ask an array of questions to promote students thinking skills. As an educator, we should always be looking for different ways that one can incorporate technology to education.  So I suggest you do consider using some form of digital storytelling.


One of the different forms of digital storytelling that I would like to share with you today is VoiceThread.  This form of technology allows a teacher to use anything from pictures, audio, video or text and they vary in length of times.  VoiceThreads allow the students to interact with each other and develop higher levels of thinking skills and technology awareness.  Students can use the many tools it has such as doodling, where they can use the pen to point to certain areas that they are talking about. You can design a VoiceThread to model a lesson you are teaching, for example my lesson on the months of the year that I have mentioned in my past posts.


After much brainstorming of how I could possibly use this technology into my unit plan, I created my activity plan and decided to focus on the seasons of the year and teaching them through the VoiceThread I have created.  As you can see, each slide is focusing on one season, and asking the students some HOTS questions that allows them to interact with each other.  That is one good thing to keep in mind- don't use one answer questions when creating a voice thread, make sure the students have some sort of thinking they must go through in order to answer the questions. One thing I like from the VoiceThread is that students can respond in different ways.  They can comment, input their voice, or draw on the pictures to answer the questions. 


I definitely will be incorporating this new found technology into my future lesson plans.  It is such a great way to introduce a lesson and even use it as a follow up activity for when students are finished with their work.  It's a great source and it is available for everyone to use... so why not use it?
  

Internet Resources

Hello again! I hope you all are having a wonderful day!  So today I would like to share with you some information over internet resources that I came across.  Nowadays things are so advanced that you can really find anything you need online or with some sort of technology!  That just makes learning that much more fun and interesting-especially for the young ones.

I know I can totally incorporate many of these new found resources into my most recent unit plan over the months of the year.  I found a lot of great blogs out there of other kindergarten teachers who are willing to share their activities to everyone.  There are so many different activities online that students can do that teach them about the different months of the year.  I think one of the new found discoveries I loved what the ability to create surveys online, and using them in order to test what the students know before and after each lesson. 

These online resources are not only for this current lesson, but also for future lessons!  I can already see myself using Meebo to interact with students from other places around the nation or even the world!  Or just finding other informational websites with online templates of different lesson plans.  The possibilities are endless!  Also a big thanks to all these bloggers who offer their ideas and projects for others to use.   Here I have included my internet resources I was able to put together for my unit plan, enjoy!

Blogs in the Classroom

Recently I have been exposed to the wonderful world of blogs, and believe me it is wonderful.  I have so many visions of using blogs in my classroom.  In David Warlick's 2c Worth blog, he uses his blog to communicate to others about various events that happen in his daily life that have some sort of meaning or influence on him.  I would like to use my blog to inform parents of the students about the daily activities we are doing in the classroom.  Many times, parents want to know everything, and it may be hard as a teacher to go over every lesson in 5 min.  So why not just create a daily blog, that way the parents can also voice their concerns or questions they may be having.


Another great idea for using the blog is to allow the students to log in and work on some activities on my blog.  I can design it to be kid-friendly and that way they can access the links that I have provided so they can get their projects done, and as an added bonus they are working with technology!  There are so many gadgets out there that can serve as learning tools! 


As an educator, I know it is great help when I can get advice from other educators who are in the same position I am.  Blogging can help me accomplish that! I found some awesome blogs out there such as KinderPlans where there are various posts of new activities that can be used in the classroom.  Another neat blog I found was Michelle Sommerville's 3 R's blog.  She has awesome activities with pictures for any occasion.  I also loved that she has random contest where she will give out prizes to other teachers.  If this was not enough I also found Just Another Day in K! This blogger has links all over her blog, that relate to different writing activities.  So this is my goal, to share with other educators my activities and projects I do with my classroom, in hopes of helping someone out there like me!

IBL/PBL

Hello everyone, today I would like to talk about some fantastic new information that I have encountered, that will definitely help out in my classroom as well as yours! I have recently been working on a new Unit Plan for my kindergartners which focuses on the various months of the year, and I found Inquiry and Project Based Learning to be very helpful in this whole process.

Inquiry-Based Learning is the way children learn through the process of involvement.  I believe this is true because the best way that anyone can learn something is by hands-on activities that allows you to better understand the meaning and remember it as time passes by.  This is also where the art of questioning comes into play, Why? What?... etc.  These types of questions motivate the students to want to learn more about the certain topic at hand.  


Project-Based Learning is having the students placed in the middle of the learning process and them interacting with their surroundings in order to learn more.  This type of learning, personally, I think is great because what better way to motivate students than placing them in the middle of the situation?  It is known that we will remember 90% of what we do verses the 10% we do remember of what we hear.  


Students need to be exposed to this types of learning processes, and I feel that Inquiry and Project based learning definitely helps out in my unit plan.  I can expose the students to real life situations of why December is cold and June is hot.  The possibilities are endless, and every teacher should include some sort of these learning processes into their daily lessons!

(Check out my collaborative paper!)