VoiceThread

http://voicethread.com/share/936193/

Voicethread is very interesting, I looked over some other people's voicethread's before I began mine and I realized that you could draw on the picture being presented. You can also project your voice, write a comment or do a video of yourself. It's all very cool, I will be using this in the future and now.

In my voicethread I asked questions about the networking site, Facebook. Is Facebook becoming a universal networking site? I mean, universal as in more than just your close friends but also your family, and people around the world. Could Facebook soon become the next Gmail or even Google? Could it possibly be integrated into classrooms or workspaces as a way to communicate?

Glogster & Xtranormal

Glogster, in my opinion, is definitely made for the use of pre-teens. There were a lot of pictures and add-ons that I remember seeing throughout my teenage years. I probably wouldn't use it as a teacher, and I wouldn't even suggest it to students. The pictures and links can be graphic and depressive. I would not any young children being introduced to dark and depressive site as such. The site is obviously designed for children ages 14 and older.

Here is my link to glogster: http://aloberg.glogster.com/edit/fruits-vegetables/

Xtranormal, I have played around with before. It is easy to manage. Kids can have fun making movies and I believe I will probably make little reminders on it for my future students. Great site.

Google Earth & Rubric

Pageflake

I was going to begin a pageflake account. I began to look at the other websites and I realized that all the websites are exactly the same. I already have an igoogle webpage that I use avidly, (I literally check it every minute). I don't really see the point of having another webpage that has about the same little boxes telling me about my mail, weather, favorite quotes from tv shows, favorite arts, and a calendar. I think I would get more out of these sites if I was in your position, a teacher and I had more going on in my life than just school. I mean, I currently only get four to five emails a day, sometimes 10! If I had to look up multiple lesson plans, worksheets, how to teach students a certain subject, how to get somewhere, pick up certain tickets, etc. I would find more use for more accounts from pageflake and igoogle.

FRENCH VERBS!

French Verbs

I believe when I become a teacher I would like to teach my students a few french phrases and verbs. I don't want my four years of french schooling to go to waste. A little website like this would have helped me when I needed refreshing on french verbs and chem bonds. Oh, how this would have been useful in high school. That is why I will shove it in my future students' faces.

Youtube & Math

I have a difficult time learning and understanding math. Any videos about math would really help me elaborate my lesson plan and allow the students to understand the material a lot more. All the videos I found were math related. The three videos I found were related to place value and angles. I was also able to find a website called yourteacher.com, which gives you practice, self-tests, worksheets and videos for middle school and high school math. I could still use this site for elementary school students, because elementary school students begin to learn middle school math in 4th and 5th grade. The problem with this site is that it's a pay for site. I could refer the students to the youtube videos for extra homework help. My other video is a fun video from a musical group of guys that sing about angles, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 9s, just math in general. These guys repeat important facts about math, so then the children remember and understand

the material.

Livebinder & Simplybox

I believe if I had more time for this and I wasn't so sleep deprived this week. I would be more interested in researching on bookmarking. I was at first really excited about bookmarking sites, because there are multiple times when I am at someone else's place and I want to show them some funny video or a good cooking site and I cannot for the life of me remember the URL. All of these bookmarking sites will be really useful when I become a teacher, and I don't wanna lug around my heavy laptop, I can just access the school computer and find all of my bookmarks online. I had trouble using livebinders and simplybox this time around. Simplybox wouldn't let me box any of my bookmarks, so I couldn't save any of my bookmarks on my simplybox. Livebinder wouldn't let me load my bookmarks either because of a load error. I wanted to load all of my cooking sites and share it with my friend, but no. Oh well.

Internet Safety in the Classroom

Internet Safety is very important in the classroom, because it keeps the students safe from identity theft, being kidnapped, being robbed, etc. It is our job as teachers to keep the students safe from predators outside of the school, it even means the predators online. Internet Safety means that the students are not allowed to open restricted e-mails from unknown recipients, because it is exactly the same as talking to a stranger. The students are not allowed to go to restricted websites during class time, because it not only wastes useful class time but it could also send the students to harmful sites. Copyright means that the exclusive rights are granted to the author or creator of the original work. A teacher must explain that to a student, that you cannot steal another's work without giving them credit because the author or creator did the hard work to find the information.

SMARTboard Lessons and Differentiation

http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/mentalmaths/clock.html

If a student is having difficulty learning to tell time, they are able to play with this clock on the SMARTboard. Instead of just staring at the analog clock and a teacher explaining to the student how a clock works and how to tell time. The student is able to play with the clock and is able to differentiate the difference between a minute of time, five minutes of time, fifteen minutes of time, or an hour. It is really useful to visual learners. I especially had difficulty learning time from an analog clock, I would have loved to have this in my classroom on SMARTboard when I was young.

http://www.theteachersguide.com/InteractiveLitSitesSmartBoard.htm

This website has a lot of links to other websites, that provide literacy sites for the SMARTboard. With these literacy sites, have word guess, connect the dots to letters, other little games for grammar and literature. These sites can be very useful for students that once again have a difficult time in the classroom understanding the concept of the literature, reading, or writing. These students typically need to practice a little bit more and these activities allow them to practice more.

Thinking and Linking about Differentiation

I believe that differentiation focuses on the enhancement of each student. Each student must learn the same lesson plan, despite fact they have different learning styles. Through differentiation, a teacher is able to realize the different learning styles of each student and focus how to teach the student through the given lesson plan. It allows the teachers to see their students as all the same, but as a variety of individuals learning the same lesson. The teachers must adhere with the challenges and facilitate a successful teaching environment.

I wrote the above in ThinkLink, but the website would not let me export or transfer to Word. Anytime I would want to export or transfer the page would cancel. I just copy and pasted. Here are my views and definition on differentiation. The thinklink website was very interesting. I have been noticing a lot of internet sharing websites on your lesson plans. They all seem quite the same. You are able to type and and share among others. With thinklink, you can open a new page to write on but in order to write with others you need to add others everytime you write on a new page. Another interesting fact about thinklink was that you are able to chat with the people you are typing with. You can collaborate and chat about what you will soon type on your thinklink tablet.

ScribbleLink

http://www.scriblink.com/index.jsp?act=phome&ld=1&rid=4068&cid=5349

These interactive whiteboard are great. They remind me a lot of GoogleDocs only with SMARTboard notebook and Adobe Designs integrated within.

SMARTboard Lessons

I believe if I had the time and the energy to learn how to use the SMARTboard notebook, it would not have taken me five hours to build three lessons. It would have also been helpful to know how to create lesson plans. Since I have not learned how to create lesson plans, this assignment proved to be very complicated. I had complications with the notebook as well. Since this was the first time I was using it, I was struggling how to put a button on a page which led to a link to another page. I had difficulty with the object animations, they would begin to spin or fade out when first opened but after a while the animations would stop. It is apparent which lesson plan is my first (Shapes) and which is my last (Images) as my text, images, animations, and lesson plan begins to improve a little more. As I began to understand the program more, I was able to become comfortable and begin to experiment more. A problem that I constantly had with SMARTboard was that I would click on certain objects or activities and it would take an extremely long time to respond or load. With the multiple activities open and in use, SMARTboard would have complications loading and would crash. I had the notebook crash on me at least 4 times when I was working on my project.