Analizing Technology Access and Knowledge

This is my first pod cast.  I have surveyed my students to learn a little more about what access they have to technology outside of the classroom and how they use that technology.

Let me know what you think
Kathlyn

Anoher Resource........

I was surfing the web this morning and ran across an amazing tool for educators who are trying to integrate and fund technology for their classrooms.

Feel free to check it out!  

Kathlyn

Digital Wish

www.digitalwish.org

The sites Vision...
We are striving to make www.digitalwish.org the most comprehensive technology integration resource for teachers on the internet.

Virtual Museums

 Virtual Museums

I have to share this amazing idea and resource.  Instead of having students create a traditional report incorporate student reports into a Virtual Museum.  Checkout the link below for all f the details.

http://christykeeler.com/EducationalVirtualMuseums.html

 I am actually going to do a project in collaboration with another teacher in my building using this tool.  I am so excited!  Our third grade students are going to be doing research on a landmark in North America.  Then we are going to have the students compile the information and present it through this tool.  I am so excited, what a great way to incorporate 21st Century technology and skills in the classroom.  Hope some of you will find this tool useful!

Kathlyn

What are 21st Century Skills Anyway?

Education has reached a place where things must change.  Students today are going to need an entirely different set of skills then those that have been needed in the past (Friedman, 2005).  The entire nature of work has changed and will continue to change, we are no longer preparing students for jobs on an assembly line, and we need to be creating learners who can collaborate, across time and distance to solve large complex problems (Laureate, 2010). 

The web site Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (www.p21.org) is organized by a series of members whom value the educational system and want support positive change in the classroom.  This organization wants to build a positive collaboration between educators, business, community and the government to bring today’s students what they need to be successful.  In looking through the site there is a wealth of information that can support advocates, teachers, educational leaders and the community as we move into a new working world that is much different than the one of the past. 

I did find the amount of information on the site to be a bit overwhelming.  I was browsing the site for resources and tools and there is an abundance.  One element of the site that I found interesting was the amount of stress that was places on the 3R’s of learning, which according to their definition includes all core area subjects http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/P21_Framework_Definitions.pdf).  When you hear 21^st century skills many people feel it is an abandonment of content area learning, and that is not true.  Learning 21^st century skills is about taking core subjects to a new level and in a new way.  The support framework and definitions on the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills does an excellent job of explaining this. 

If you are all unsure and uneasy about the concept of 21^st century learning this is a great place to begin learning about the knowledge and skills our children will need to enter the workforce. I urge everyone to learn more and help transform education for the next generation.

Resources

Friedman, T. (2005, April 3). It's a flat world, after all. The New York Times. Retrieved from

http://www.nytimes.com

Laureate Education, Inc. (2010b). Skills for the 21^st century. Baltimore, MD: Author.

I am forever looking for kid friendly search engines for my students to use for research.  Here are some more that I have discovered. 

Enjoy

Kid Rex
http://www.kidrex.org/

Boolify
http://www.boolify.org/index.php

Ask Kids
http://www.ask.com/

Google Kid Search
http://www.kid-search.com/

     I was looking to set up a project for my third grade students and I want them to be able to search the web.  In my search I found this great list of links on a web site.  Here is the link for the website I found.  I hope you find it useful.

http://21stcenturyclassroom.weebly.com/kid-friendly-search-engines.html

Kathlyn

Why Blog?

                There are plenty of reasons to blog.  First, to communicate information to homework, relevant links.  Many blogs share much of the same information that one would find on a traditional web site, however blogs can eventually take things one step further and allow for communication (Richardson, 2010).   Blogs can be more then an online storage of information, it can become a discussion that continues beyond the school day, beyond the classroom, with endless potential (Richardson, 2010).

                With all I have learned and read about blogs I spent some time thinking about how I would like to implement blogs into my classroom.  I teach 3^rd grade and I have some access to computers in my classroom and I have weekly computer lab access.  Additionally, some of my students have internet access at home but not all of them do.  With all of these factors in mind especially the age of my students I struggle with creating a public blog where they can post and put out content into the world.  I just feel that at this point in time I need an internal method to practice these skills, in a way I can monitor activity and keep them safe. 

                My first step in introducing blogs to my classroom will be to find other classroom blogs.  I would like to create a feed of blogs that I can review and show my students.  We as a class will post to one or more of these blogs, and check for responses to our posts.  I feel that this will help motivate students to blog and will help teach them the etiquette of blogging.  It will also be an oppurtuntiy for me to address internet safety with my students.

                After some introduction to others blogs, I would like to create a class blog with my students where we post information publically as a class.  In this situation, the blogs will be posted by me with content that we have written as a community about what is going on in our classroom.  We are currently using Edline to publish our webpages, and I know that there is a blog feature associated with my account so I am hoping to get permission to activate this element on my existing site.  I am hoping that I can get parents and other members of the school community involved in commenting and responding to our class blog.

                Finally, the next step will be to create an Edmodo account and help my students set up individual log-ins.  I feel that is will be a great tool to start my students to start individual posting and commenting to the web.  I feel it will be easy to use and will allow for a safe environment without the need for email addresses.  I am going to begin using this tool in my classroom to post a weekly reflection question.  Instead of having the students answer in a traditional way I am going to work on having them respond to the question online.  Once students have learned how to respond I am going to begin teaching them how to appropriately respond to others posts.  I also plan to use the voting tool to acquire information from students. 

                Initially, I am going to have students write their posts in the classroom.  I want to be able to help them learn to post and walk them through the process.  Once students obtain a comfort level with posting I will encourage those with internet access to post their entries outside of the classroom.  This will allow those without home access to use the classroom computers.

                I am excited and nervous to try this technology with my students.  I am still learning and I want to be sure that I am able to support and guide them through the process of learning and mastering the amazing abilities of the Web 2.0.

References

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.