Glogster: A tree's new best friend

Some of you may know Earth Day is just right around the corner. Some people may think of me as a borderline hippie. For clarification, I take showers daily, brush my teeth, and shave…therefore, I am not 100% hippie. I am always interested and active in finding new ways to help the earth.

Sometimes, when I think of a teacher, I envision a big, messy desk with papers and projects everywhere!

This is not ok with me for three reasons:

1. You cannot find anything you need at the time.

2. Things get lost or damaged.

3.  It seems to be a waste of trees!!! This is especially important on Earth Day!

I’m up for anything that helps keep a teacher’s life organized and more simple!  I recently stumbled across a site online called Glogster EDU (click here for the link). Glogster is a free online interactive poster. You may be thinking what I thought at first, what’s the need or desire for an online poster? But after awhile I got to thinking, this is a great teaching method to use in the classroom! Teachers or students can put together a poster online using pictures, videos, audio, text, data, drawings and attachments. I feel that putting together a poster for certain projects would be faster and just as effective than putting together a website for an activity.  

Reasons why I think Glogster EDU is a great tool for the classroom:

1.  It’s free

2.  No more big awkward sheets of paper to store (like on a desk,  perhaps)

3.  Won’t fall apart on you like a paper one would

4.  Portable

5.  Provides a variety of ways to teach

6.  NO PAPER! (saving trees)

As a future teacher, I have to think of ways to cut corners financially and physically without taking away a child’s learning experience. I feel like putting together a poster for certain lessons would be faster and just as effective as putting together a website.   Most schools do not have an increasing spending budget, so some supplies, like paper, are on a strict limit of availability. Overall, I would love to create something on Glogster for my personal life or the classroom. And I am sure the trees will thank me for it later! Peace out! 

Image used with permission from Flickr by Vbecker.

iWonder

Lately in the headlines I have been hearing about schools buying iPads to use in their classrooms. My first thought is cool! But then after a while I think to myself, is it really worth it? What is wrong with a computer? A computer at least has a keyboard to practice typing skills and such. With an iPad you hunt and peck while you type. What makes the iPad so special?

In case you did not know I am planning on getting my endorsement in Special Education. I read an article at bx.businessweek.com and learned how iPads can be very useful with special education students, including severe cases of special education. There is a special application called Proloquo2Go that can help students who have trouble speaking. The application contains images and common phrases for the user to select. Not to mention, the touch screen is a huge benefit for some special education students. The iPad is simple to work with and is user friendly to people with vision problems. 

If the Proloquo2Go application is not what you need, there are many other assortments of special education applications to select from the Apple. Apple has had such a high demand in special education applications that they have created a page within the apps store to make it more convenient for buyers to buy these unique applications. 

These new applications for an iPad are pretty exciting. They open new opportunities for students with disabilities whether it is communicating or learning. I wonder if I will ever have the opportunity to work in a classroom with iPads. I wonder what we can learn about students with disabilities through this technology. I wonder about all the doors that it will open because students can use this technology to express themselves like never before.

Image used with permission from Flickr by arnybo

Promethean Board: Stealing the fire from the chalkboards

If there is one thing I have to say about a Promethean boards is that I have been living under a rock.  I knew they were out there and actually my school bought one my senior year of high school for the computer classroom. I did not take my classes at my high school my senior year because I was taking classes at Iowa State, so I never got the opportunity to be in a classroom with one. My Iowa State classes did not have Promethean boards either so I just figured my school was ahead of the crowd and was one of the first schools around to have one. 

 

After moving up to Cedar Falls my interpretation of my school being the very few to own a Promethean board quickly changed! The majority of my classes at University of Northern Iowa had promethean boards. I was pretty impressed and honestly did not know all the capabilities of the board. Then this spring I did my field experience at Edison Elementary in Waterloo and ALL the classroom had Promethean boards. I was amazed! Most of my professors at UNI use them to give PowerPoints, which really doesn’t use the Promethean board to its fullest abilities.  My field experience mentor used the board for some of her math lessons. There last lesson they were learning about identifying coins and adding them up.  I thought it was a fun new way to switch up a way a lesson was taught. Then recently I found on http://community.prometheanplanet.com/en/planet_guide/w/wiki/weekly-top-10-downloads.aspx you can download premade games and lessons for the Promethean board! How neat is that! This would be great for when a substitute teacher comes in and does know exactly how to teach a lesson. The downloads can guide the students in the proper path and correct then if they do something wrong on the board. At my field experience I was in the special education room with 3 other grade levels. It was a challenge to teach a group of students a new lesson and then have the other students working on something else. Because the teacher was busy teaching one group of kids, she was not available to help or redirect the other students I the right path. I think the Promethean Board Download would be excellent in this classroom situation. The downloads could teach and correct the way of a student’s learning. Most of all what I have learned from prometheanplant.com website is that most teachers are not aware or use the Promethean board correctly. There is a lot more to the board then some may think me for sure in this case. I think most of teachers are just given a Promethean board and encouraged to use it. They are never really fully thought about how to use it. ALL the teacher and professors I know who use them always get frustrated and when it comes down to it, it’s just because they don’t understand how to use it to the best of their advantage.  

 

Image used with permission from Flickr by mrkimmi. 

Here is a YouTube editoral that explains how to download resources from prometheanplanet.com.

 

Warming Up to the Kindle

My passion in the past to own a kindle has not been on high demand. I had heard stories about college students owning kindles to replace their heavy textbooks. I agree that is nice, but I don’t really mind carry my books around. Then I heard about schools using kindles in the classroom and how nice it was to have all the books in one device. I am ok with it but really I enjoy going to the library and picking up a book and reading it. I have been scared that the kindle will replace all books in the library. That is an assumption of mine but still it could happen.

Recently I have changed my way of thinking about the kindle ever since reading this blog site http://www.edukindle.com/2010/06/more-research-says-bigger-fonts-help-kids-read/. The post title is what caught my eye at first, “More Research Says Bigger Fonts Help Kids Read”. Because I struggled in school as a kid (especially in reading), one of my goals as a teacher is to help the students who struggle to the best of my ability. I understand acatully how frusterating it can be at time and how not just one method of teaching works for all. So after reading this post title I just had to read more!

In the blog post they discussed that with the kindle deceive you can enlarge the print. So you may be thinking no biggy huh? Well with a recent study done about enlarging print for the students received better test scores on the SRA test after one year of using enlarged print. The increase of scores ranged from 41% to 70%! That is amazing to me! The research says that it improves a child from making fewer decoding mistakes and lowers their anxiety levels because there are fewer words on a page. To me this makes perfect sense…in fact why didn’t we think of this sooner! 

Image used with permission from Flickr byjimmiehomeschoolmom.