Safari vs. Firefox.....?

I have a question for you: 

Safari

or

Firefox

Okay so here's the story:

I have a "Quote of the Week" at the top left of my blog. It's right above my count of "visitors to my blog." I update it every week and last week I went to update it on Safari. To add this I simply went to "layout" and then added a new gadget labeled "text." My new quote wouldn't update so I had to delete the "text" gadget and add a new one. However, when I went to add a new one it would let me type in it but it wouldn't let me click "okay." It just wouldn't do anything so I constantly had to close it and delete it. Today I tried again to add a text gadget and once again, surprise surprise, it didn't work. So... IDEA! I thought I would try to use Firefox and see if it made a difference. TOTAL DIFFERENCE!!! It worked like a charm. Didn't even take a second to load! It updated so quickly. So now I am left with a dilemma. Do I stay using Safari or switch to Firefox?! I'm a total mac person so I've always used Safari and never thought twice about it. However, my brother is a big PC person so we always have fun debates about mac vs PC.

What do YOU use? (Firefox or Safari?) 

Are you MAC or PC?!

Blogging in the Classroom SURVEY RESPONSES!

Hello! Some of you took my survey about blogging in the classroom and I have the results! Feel free to look at my results and comment on what your thoughts are!

As you can see below... 

1) Not many people had a classroom blog!

2) Most people say they WOULD create a classroom blog

3) See for yourself the pros of a classroom blog

4) Edublog wins!

Kindergarten Teacher Visitor!

Today in my ECE (Early Childhood Education) class, we had a guest come and speak to us about teaching. I have to admit, I didn't expect it to be as inspiring as it turned out to be! Lindsay Stuart joined our class and spoke about many things in her Kindergarten room.

She includes literacy in her day to day Kindergarten centres by having camping or fishing permits. What a fantastic idea! This causes the students to have to write their name, teach about dates (because permits are only good for one day in Kindergarten!) and teaches them about real life! Lindsay said one girl came up to her and said, "But I'm aboriginal - I don't need a fishing permit!" And Lindsay responded with, "You are absolutely right!" This opened up a whole conversation she could talk about with her kids.

Another aspect I really liked was how Lindsay explained that she doesn't simply answer a student's question when they ask. If a student doesn't know something and has a question, they have three options:

1. Ask an expert 
2. Look in a book
3. Look on a computer

How great is this! It teaches the students to learn and how to find out answers that they are wondering about, rather than just have a teacher tell them the answer! 

She mentioned PLN's!! (Personal Learning Network) I'm so glad I've learned about those in this class (or else I would have been lost, not knowing what she was talking about!) She talked about PLN's in regard to having "people to rely on, not a documsharing resources is!
ent to rely on." She expressed how much you can learn from other people and how important

Lindsay said when she started blogging in the classroom, she didn't post any photos. However, now she has progressed and posts pictures and videos! She uses "animoto" which is apparently an online program (FREE FOR TEACHERS!) that puts pictures to sound and she posts to her blog. Lindsay also explained that when she started blogging she didn't post a lot. She now posts "I Can" statements and puts the outcomes right by the pictures about what they're learning! This way if administration or parents view her blog, it shows the students' learning right there! Why hide it? Why not share assessment! I love that!

She talked about the apps that she uses in her classroom with the iPads:

• Skitch
• Book Creator
• Doodle Buddy
• Skype

Three Ring

Three Ring is an online portfolio website. Lindsay said she's started using it with her kids so they can post drawings or artifacts from the school day and their parents can see and comment. This way the students are posting things they are proud of and involve their parents and family in the learning process. 

Some messages Lindsay sent out to us today are:

Start small, think BIG

By this, Lindsay explained: don't try to do everything at once!! It will stress you out and burn you out. Instead, have plans and ideas and keep them in mind and strive to reach them. Take baby steps and progress. Set goals when starting a classroom blog. For example, set a goal that you will try to blog 2 times a week. This is not a lot and this way you won't get burnt out!

Share

By this, Lindsay explains to share everything!! She showed us her year plans and her "I Can" statements that relate to the curriculum. She told us she would post them and email them to us to we can access them! 

Use Technology NOT for skill enhancement, but rather as a tool for learning

I love this point because I think it's important that children learn that technology is helpful and useful as a tool, but we still need to master skills without using technology. 

See Lindsay Stuart's Blog Here

Blogging Survey!!

Hello All! If you have a quick minute please take my survey! I'm interested in seeing your experiences/thoughts about Blogging in the Classroom!

Blogging in the Classroom

Since beginning this class I have learned how to blog, gained blogging experience and even learned to love blogging! I regret not blogging in my internship about my class! I think in the classroom it's a great way for students to view their progress, parents to keep in touch with what's going on in the classroom, and for teachers to moderate. When I get my own classroom, I think I will definitely consider starting a class blog. I think the kids would be very excited and keep them more involved with the idea of community that I want to have in my classroom.

I can remember being in grade 5 and having a fantastic teacher. She was very technological and we LOVED IT! She even made a class website for us and we had a class mascot. We were called the 5B Chameleons. I can still remember that off the top of my head, so clearly it made quite an impact on me! I remember being so excited to go home and check the website to see if she updated pictures or to read what she would type about our school day. 

I think that having a class blog would cause students to build as a community and connect to the class outside of school at home. Obviously I would have to get the parents to sign consent to have photos online, or just not put the childrens' faces online. In today's world, most parents and even lots of kids are always "connect" to technology. I think parents would appreciate this because they could check the blog whenever they have time and check up on what their child is doing in school. I strongly agree with keeping communication with the parents so they know what is going on in their child's life. Blogging would be a great way to do that. 

After you've read this blog I have a few questions for you to comment to me about: 

1) Did you create a blog in your internship? If not, do you wish you could go back in time and make one with your class? 

2) Would you create a blog in your classroom this fall? 

3) What are the pros and cons of having a classroom blog that come to mind? 

Educational Websites Update #1

As many of you know, I have made a new page labeled "Educational Websites." Here I have listed favourite websites easy to use for teachers, kids, and teachers and kids. I even listed my absolute favourites so you can see those! I would LOVE for you to add to my wonderful page. I think this is a great idea to have as a teacher because it's like keeping all my bookmarks on one page that I can easily access! I have bookmarks on my computer but if I'm teaching at school that won't be that much help, will it? So I've created a special page I can easily access and click on my websites to use in class!!!!

PLEASE ADD YOUR FAVOURITE EDUCATIONAL WEBSITES FOR TEACHERS OR KIDS!!

Comment on this post for me to add them, or comment on my "Educational Websites" page and I'll add them :) 

Thank you :)

Piktochart

Since I heard about the website "Piktochart," I have been wanting to test it out! I thought it looked so neat and easily accessible to use for both teachers and students in the classroom. Basically it's like making an interactive poster. Normally I would use Microsoft Publisher or Powerpoint to do something like this, but this website is so cool! Very easy to use and navigate.

As neat as this website is, I have a few critiques... I found it a little slow at times to upload pictures. I also found it slow to change the background colour. I tried and it kept slowing down and glitching. That is why I am stuck with this lovely turquoise colour...

As you can see, I created a poster about my blog. I displayed what operating systems that have viewed my blog, how many visitors, my pages, my labels, my blog title and my web address! I really liked using this because it made it so fun to make posters and it's very VISUAL! So for teachers who have very visual learners... this is PERFECT! There is no need for lots of typing and paragraphs, but simply less typing and more visual pictures. As you can see, you can probably read my poster in about 20 seconds and understand it!

Padlet

Padlet...What is Padlet?! 

Padlet is like having a blank piece of paper for your computer that you can easily add notes or information to! All you do is click "build a wall" and you begin. You can choose your backgrounds, layout, privacy information, and many more settings.

This is so neat to use in a classroom! I wasn't too sure how to use this website so I googled it and I found this great 6 minute youtube video explaining how to use it for classroom use! View Video

In the youtube video, the teacher basically explains that you could post a question and have your students go on and post their name with an answer. For example, "what did you learn in class today?" I learned from this video that you can password protect your padlet for your class! As long as your class knows the password they can access it.  I also learned that you can create a web address for your padlet as long as it's available. By default it will give you a web address such as: http://padlet.com/wall/ten00huyff. Now if you're okay with typing that in, that's great! But if not, you click on the little gear that says, "modify" and then click on the link picture that says, "address." Here you can type in whatever you like, for example: mrsjackson2014. So the web address the students would type in would be: http://padlet.com/wall/mrsjackson2014.

Try out this website! It's fantastic! To check out my padlet I created and add to it, see below!

Alannah Jackson's Padlet

Hopscotch

We had a few people talk to us in our ECMP 355 class: Brian, Zoe, Michelle & Jared. They each had new information to share with us and they built off each other and related their ideas to each other. I really enjoyed listening to them speak!

I downloaded Hopscotch on my iPad and played around with it. After about an hour of playing around I created a little game. Below you can see my game. I had some monkeys moving around the screen and the character you would play is a little yellow dinosaur. The objective of the game is to catch the alien in the bottom of the screen. Everything on the screen moves around. If you touch a monkey you get sent back to the start and if you touch the alien you grow 3%. Overtime, you grow bigger and it's tough to get to the alien without getting caught by the monkeys!!!

This program is definitely fun to play around with and I think kids would have a lot of fun with it. I feel like this would be a fun program for older kids because some of the concepts deal with older topics when creating the game. For example, you choose on an x and y axis where you want all the animals to start and then you choose how they move by pressing: "move x axis -100" or "move y axis 300." Younger children wouldn't understand the x/y concept on the graph.

Another concept I found very neat was that you could view other programs other people created and you could also view how they set it up! That was so neat because while planning my game there were things I wasn't sure how to do so I would look at other examples and view them and understand how they did them!

I would recommend downloading this on your iPad or phone and playing around for a while. It's really neat but a little complicated. It can be frustrating when you don't understand what to do or how to make things work the way you want. There isn't really instructions so you just have to use trial and error to figure things out!

Good luck!!

New Websites!

In my ECMP355 class from this week I've learned about lots of great websites from Steve Dembo & Adam Bellow. They've listed many websites that I've been interested in looking at and will use in the rest of my university, then in my classroom for both myself and my students. To see some of the websites they gave me and I've listed, check out my new page labeled, "Educational Websites."

Some sites from Steve are:

• Padlet
• WeVideo
• The Noun Project
• Piktochart
• desmos

Some sites from Adam are:

• Capzles
• UJAM

Has anybody used these sites? If so, what are your thoughts on them??