twitter in the classroom

Many people have not heard about using twitter in the classroom. I think that this could be a great idea if it was done in the right way. Many more children would be involved in classroom discussion if they knew it was going to be anonymous. Children do not like to speak up in class, but if they had some way of sending in their questions, then they would get it answered. Nine times out of ten, if one person has a question, there is at least one other student who is thinking the same thing. If you created a hashtag for the students to use, you could have all of the questions sorted into one page. This would be a fun thing to incorporate because they children will use technology whether you want them to or not.

technology in the classroom

In both of my placements this semester, I have noticed that they are using some sort of technology. In the preschool class I am in, the teacher uses you tube a lot to look up the phonics songs for the children to do daily. In the kindergarten classroom, she uses the tv, computer, and cd player everyday to do new things. For example today they danced along to songs on the cd player, did their math lesson using the computer and the smart board, and she used the tv to watch a video on opposites. I really think using technology in the classroom is helpful because their are a lot of additional resources out there if you have access to them in your classroom. It also is a fun way to learn! The preschoolers know how to spell all of their colors, what each shape looks like, and their alphabet sounds due to these videos. I have some children in the kindergarten classroom that cannot do these things, and it might be due to the fact that they were not exposed to these activities in earlier years.

twitter for personal use!

I love using twitter! I have already had one before so making the education one was no problem! There are so many wonderful educators out there that have so many different posts. Some people post links to things that they have done in the classroom and others post things about problem solving on a daily basis. I really like twitter because you can post as much as you want without it creating a problem. If you did that on Facebook, people would be annoyed. I also like the idea of using it in the classroom, but I feel like students wouldn't use it for that. It also helps with asking questions when people are shy, but it still has their username that pops up where other students can figure out who it is.

Glogster

This seems like a very interesting website. I think the children will really enjoy this because they get to create something on their own. The will enjoy it more than writing a word document because they can use pictures and different layouts. Some students that are perfectionists will take longer to complete these assignments because they have to make sure that everything is in the place that they want it to be. I think that this is a fun idea and a lot of different age groups can use it, just some might need more help than others.

Technology

As I sit here, I think about how much I really know about technology. I think I know a decent amount, but the more we talk in class I really don't know that much. I know about the social media sites as well as Microsoft word and power point because I use those often. Things like Wordle and Digg though, I have never heard of. I love exploring new things and finding out awesome new websites. These will be resources that I can use in the upcoming years for either my classroom or my personal use. I look forward to discovering more of these hidden gems on the web!