Week 10

Twitter is a quick and easy resource for educators. I think Twitter would be helpful because millions of educators on constantly on sharing ideas and links. What I found great about it was that when you use the hashtag it is in a sense the “search button” because when you click on it, you will discover many other posts related to what you need. I looked at #ElemSchool, while browsing that hashtag I saw a link for @TeacherVision it had many different unique ideas on how educators could plan lessons that are also fun and exciting for the students. I really liked them because I always want the studetns engaged and enjoying themselves as they learn. I saw some great videos with activities for recycling and other science topics. One thing that I would like to use twitter for is to have students reflect and share about what they learned each day. I would like them to include a picture along with the purpose of their science lab. What they discovered and maybe even adding questions they may still have. Using Twitter in my classroom would be easy to do because the students already have access to IPads and computers. I could also use it as a review maybe put up a picture of something and ask the students a question about it like, “what is the scientific concept related to the picture.” They can all add their own different thoughts, perhaps it is a picture showing different mixtures or showing magnetism. Another thing that I think this would help with would be summarizing I think that this would be great because Twitter is short posts. If 4th grade students know that their space is limited it would help them focus on the length of their writing. Then they can practice on making sure they are focused on the main idea and not writing about something that is either a supporting idea or something irrelevant. Twitter is also good for the students sharing ideas with each other. I would like to post a topic and have students create a post with a hashtag, #sciencefairideas (or something similar) in which they include possible science fair ideas related to magnetism. The following week we can focus on something else such as listing possible ideas involving sound energy. We can do this weekly so by the time the science fair comes around there are a lot of different ideas that the students can choose from.

Week 9

Edmodo is excellent resource in many different ways. Although I am still very rusty in using it, I like what I have seen so far. I can think of different ways in which this would be helpful in my classroom. I had heard of Edmodo being used by one of my coworkers, but I had never actually looked into it. I absolutely liked how easily the students could create an account and join my group without any confusion, it is simple enough for elementary students to use which I love. I would like to create weekly quizzes for my students in third through fifth grade. Creating a quiz was very simple using Edmodo or I can use Google Drive to create one to upload. I have IPads in my science lab that students can use to quickly log in and take a quiz. I think it would be fun to create an account as a group and the entire table can work together to answer the quiz. I also really liked the poll, I think that is a quick and easy way to receive feedback on a question from the students. Another way Edmodo would be very useful in my science lab would be the ability for me to keep track with the progress of the students. Since I do have many students, the way Edmodo is organized it makes it simple for teachers to see how many students have turned in an assignment, how well they did on the quiz, and any replies they have posted. I also plan to use Edmodo with the fifth grade students when we are reviewing for the Science STAAR test. Posting assignments was simple as a teacher and completing the assignments was easy as a student. I like that we created the account as a teacher and as a student because I got to see what the students will see. I also got to see that it would be something great that my students can use to really benefit us in the classroom. One more thing that I would like to use it for is to improve the science vocabulary at my campus we really struggle with scientific vocabulary and the STAAR test because of it. Since I am the new science lab teacher this year I would like to try different methods in which students can test their knowledge constantly and I will monitor their progress. I believe I can accomplish this by using a tool such as Edmodo.

Week 8

I read the article 3 Strategies to Fire Up Hesitant Writers, it is an article that appeared in my Feedly because I am subscribed to Edutopia RSS. I found this article really amazing because I taught fourth grade for several years and most teachers would complain about that grade because we take the Writing STAAR. Many students have difficulty finding writing exciting and they often see it as something tedious to do and they lack motivation for writing papers. This article shared some great strategies for getting students started in the writing process. The one that I liked the most was having the student’s audio record themselves then transcribing it. I would see this frequently in the classroom, students claiming they did not know what to write or saying they did not have ideas for their paper, but once I would sit with them they had countless ideas. Many of the students wanted to just tell me their entire paper and were so excited to tell me their ideas but were not excited to write them. I think this would be so beneficial in the classroom because the students can say their paper and get all of their ideas out there then they can go back listen to their audio and write it on paper.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/3-strategies-improve-student-writing-ali-parrish

Another article I read was TinyTap Courses - Create Interactive Lessons for iPad & Android. I thought this would be something great that I can use in my classroom. It would be so helpful during labs in science because it is easy to create and easy to use on the IPad. You can create fun educational games for students to play. When you create games you can take pictures to import for multiple choice answers. I thought this was interesting because while my students are doing their science lab activity I often take pictures. I can upload these pictures and I can use them for an activity on TinyTap. I think it would be interesting to use authentic student work pictures and I think the students would like to see their own work as a multiple choice answer. Educators can even share their work or find other games created by others to use. TinyTap Courses also lets you save and organize your creations. Many of my students would absolutely love this and I think it would be an engaging activity for students in the classroom.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/10/tinytap-courses-create-interactive.html#.WAFUWvRBGhE

Blog Post 8 - Week 7

Google Slides would be good to use for high school students who have a presentation to do in any subject. Middle school and elementary school students can also use Google Slides when they have a group project or presentation. Google Slides is very similar to PowerPoint but the good thing about Google Slides is that unlike PowerPoint you can access it wherever you are as long as you have internet access. PowerPoint has to be saved and either sent to your email or saved onto a flash drive. If working in groups Google Slides is very easy to use to collaborate and share the slides. 

I really enjoyed creating the survey and incorporating all the different types of questions. At first when I read the assignment I thought it was going to be more difficult and time consuming than it was. I was surprised at how easy it was to create the different types of questions like the multiple choice, checkboxes, dropdown, linear scale, and multiple choice grid. Google Forms would be really easy to create a quick assessment or survey for the students to answer. Administrators can benefit from creating surveys on Google Forms and receiving feedback from teachers. 

Google Sheets is great for collecting data from several students. As we are using it this year to log our replies for this course. I normally use Excel to enter data from assessments but I think this would be great when we are collaboration with other teachers. For example, I share students with two other teachers and it would be great to all be able to access the spread sheet. 

Google Docs would be a useful tool for teachers for planning purposes. Planning with your grade level can sometimes be tough to do because of time. Often we find that we do not have sufficient time to plan together. Using Google Docs to write out lesson plans will be good because we can share them easily and all edit the lesson plans. 

Google Drive is an extremely good tool to be familiar with as an educator because although it is the same as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint these tools are free with a Google account. They are also easily accessible from anywhere and can be shared with colleagues. I think Google Drive would be great for high school students to use and Google Slides, Google Drawings would be easy enough for middle school and upper elementary school students.

Google Forms

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1sITqUaKjBtY3UT5CXx0U5vthSEl-ZyyE2uIWlsup02w