2/22/10

Today we learned about word processing. I never really thought about offline collaborative stories before- but it's a great idea! It's kind of like a game that I've played, but it would be useful in the classroom as well. We also talked about google docs and learned how to create one. I have used google docs before, but I've only edited them, never created one or shared one. Google docs (and calendars) would be really useful in the classroom for group projects and it would also be great to use to communicate with parents and other teachers.

Class on 2/16/10

Today we learned how to upload videos to our blogs using tools in firefox:



And we learned about copyright. I never realized before that you don't have to do anything but record your idea on a medium in order for it to be copyrighted- I always thought that it had to say "copyright" or have the symbol somewhere on it for it to be copyrighted. I also learned about rules for a teacher to use copyrighted things in the classroom- like only using a certain number of things or words, and including a notice of copyright on it somewhere.

YETC

Wow! The resources that Nathan showed us in the YETC are so exciting! There are so many cool things available to us that we could use in our classrooms. He showed us things like Spelling city, Mathematics worksheet factory, Storylineonline.net, Format factory, Pioneer-library.org, Kiddierecords.com, zacbrowser.com, zotero.com, wikispaces.com, Xmind, and Phun, plus lots more that are linked to the YETC website that we can search through on our own. I think my favorite of these so far would be the storyonline.net- I would love to use it to motivate kids to want to read because they are probably familiar with the people that read the stories. The math worksheets factory is really useful too because it would be really simple to individualize worksheets for my students. I also want to share some of these websites with my little brothers because I think they would have a lot of fun and learn new stuff too: it would be cool if they got more excited about playing with them instead of normal video games! I just can't imagine if I am this excited about it, how excited would my students be about it? Although they're probably more used to it than I am... Just in the ten years since I was in elementary school they have added so much technology into the classroom. My little brothers, in 3rd and 5th grade, have computers in their classrooms and they don't think anything of it but it would have been a big deal for me at their age!

Practice Post

Hello! This is my first blog for this class.