Tool #7 Making Videos

Making a video from photos of my Westie, Cloe, and my son's new puppy, Belle, was extremely rewarding! Of course, students would enjoy putting their photos to life with favorite soundtracks. Warning: Patience is required! Allowing wait time to process this video for downloading on my post, was the difficult part. My laptop is operating on "s-l-o-w" these days, so the shared family desktop has been a life saver.

Dedicated to friends who simply depend on, "Hello"!

Tool #6 Classroom Wiki

I've hit a wall in creating a class Wiki. Hopefully, it will be used for classroom updates, letters, photos, homework, etc. For now, it's a work in progress. Onward, to forge ahead through the remaining tools while my Wiki is under construction!

Tool #5 Tagging and Social Bookmarking

As a quick reference and a management tool for favorite sites, tagging and bookmarking information is pivotal for sharing within a PLN. I started first with Delicious, but decided to use Diigo instead, only because I'm trying to stay within Google as much as possible. After watching the video which compares both, Diigo seemed slightly more advanced and from my little experience, the Google account is managed more efficiently than Yahoo.

Some of my favorite sites are listed under Favorites; educational themes, tagged Habitats under Living/Nonliving, and Sum dog, online math games, tagged puzzles with an example under Puzzle Maze. For educators, I'm new to the techniques given in Love & Logic, but feel it's important to update our management skills in order to stay current with many of the growing social issues in our classrooms today.

Tool #4 Cool Tools for Sharing Information

It's too cool that Google Docs has a common place for my grade level team to update the weekly newsletter! This eliminates redundancy from consolidating multiple emails onto a master template. It will be ideal for input on homework assignments, recording minutes, and updating various templates. I sent a household To Do List for my husband and son, and promptly received their edited version, Wish List! Very efficient wouldn't you say?

IGoogle homepage is a central location for displaying my personal choice of apps: Gmail, calendar, to do list, weather, news, etc. The Google Reader keeps track of blogs I'm following, and students will easily be able to access sites I want them to visit, by using Reader.

Tool #3 Image Generators and Mashups

Wordle, Word It Out, and Big Huge Labs, are kid-friendly and appropriate for the primary grades. Requiring more time to create and setting words to an image, ImageChef, or Bubblr. Comic Strip Generator seemed less appropriate for younger students, but Spell with Flickr and Flickriver are two sites worth experimenting with and using in the classroom.

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