Tool # 8

Video Resourcing is one of the best tools I like, they are many examples on how teacher can explain new subjects to the students. And if you decide to show a video to your students is fun and at they same time the students get to learn new subjects.
The videos that I mostly use are from Brainpop Jr., these videos covered many important subjects that kinder and first graders need. If your students learn how to use these videos they can be assess by themselves by taking the the "easy quiz" or "hard quiz" after watching a video. I highly recommend it.

This video is about patterns, students that already know what is a pattern can learn different ways to do patterns and if you have a student that has no idea what is pattern, this video is a great introduction to understand what a pattern is. You can find this video at Video Streaming from our portal.

Yeaaaaaaah! the video upload, after 10 minutes but it did!

This other video is great to start telling to your students the important of being healthy and clean without being disrespectful, This video shows to your students the importance of brushing their teeths and they show techniques on how to do it properly.

Tool #7

In first grade our major concern is to teach our students to read, every single day first grade teacher are thinking what activities to do to improve our students fluency and comprehension. And the Digital Storytelling can be a good tool to motivate your students to read. I'm thinking that is going to be a great idea to have some of my students that already know how to read and that are good with fluency and comprehension to have them do digital stories.
Digital storytelling can really motivate your students because it relates to their personal experiences or interest. Enhaces their writing since their audence is not only their teacher. And most important they see how learning experiences can be share outside their classroom.
Remember Digital storytelling is a simple Digital explanation. So we (the teacher) can create an explanation to our students to learn, then we can show that video over and over during time. I like that "IDEA".

Ok, I can't upload the video uuuuggggghhhhhh! good bye!

Tool #6

More than half way to finish my tool box huh? exciting! I am really amazed of all the tools out there for us. And whay I most enjoying is all of the answers of my followers, thank you so much! love you all.

Ok, so Tool #6 talks about how a group of people can work on a project or idea together without being in the same room, or at the same time. It's a project where everybody can include or interchange ideas for it. In first grade I'm not really sure how my students can do something yet in it. But I wouldn't mind exposing them to it and show them how it works and how other students from upper grades are using it.

Tool #5

Bookmarking at delicious is very interesting and helpful. I have a couple of friends that teach in El Paso, San Antonio, and Dallas and I've tried in the past to share some of my favorite web sites from where I get ideas of activities and is quite difficult to share them through e-mail or over the phone, by using delicious can save us a lot of time and anyone can come and see your bookmarking list and use what you have found in the past, without being interrupt. That is awesome!

I also wanted to comment about Google Wave, does anyone knows about it, I heard it was very good but I still don't know exactly how it works. There is a video that is one hour long explaining all the details of it, there's anyone reading this that knows about Google Wave?

Another question, what is the best way to backup all the information in your computer? just with a usb? or cd's?

ok here are my bookmarks

http://www.pdictionary.com/english/stinky_spelling.php


http://www.softschools.com/math/worksheets/subtraction_worksheets.jsp

Tool #4

Google Doc is really awesome, the benefits from it are great, the fact that you can share a document with other poeple without sending the information or the document itself through e-mail is going to save a lot of time and memory. It would be awesome if our staff in school will really use this google tool. I see that, teachers can benefit from it if used. For instance, at the beginning we always send a letter to the parents about the rules and expectations of our first grade students. Now we can all share our thoughts in the document if we share it through google doc before sending it home.

It would be good to use google doc to contribute discussions, doubts, and ideas after faculty meetings.

Ok I'm going to create a google doc..... check it out later!

Tool #3

The Image I used on the top is from the wordle and this can be used with my students since they only need just a few words to make a wordle and they can write about their favorite words or a message to their parents or best friend.

Tool #3 is very fun, it’s about all the different webs that can help you create a video, pictures, words, like the ones you see on top, etc…. first thing am I doing when I came back to school is to update my laptop, is really slow or I’m very impatient. I also tried Big Huge Labs but I couldn't figure out how to draw the picture to my blog, so the box you see under this paragraph is from them.

The picture below I love because you can write a message or design your photos, I usually take pictures from my students and just print them and give them to them, now after they have their account in google I can write a positive message in their picture about how I feel about each one of them and send it through e-mail or maybe put all the pictures in google doc, which is the next tool. oh by the way this last picture was created at kid-friendly generator.

I really, really liked the tool #3 I will definitely be back to play more with all the options on this tool, love it :p

so what do you think? do you like my beautiful eyes? lol!

Tool #2

Ok, after going back and forth with the tools and a few blogs from different people I found that I need to post a new blog with each of the different 11 tools, so right now I’m in Tool #4 but I’m going to discuss about Tool #2 in this blog.

I honestly think that creating an online community with your students it’s a great advancement, but I really don’t think that first graders will get the real benefit of an online community, when they are barely learning how to read and write.

I took me time to create my own account of blogs and creating my avatar, and I really hope to have success helping my students creating their own account. Another disadvantage that I see, it’s that our student doesn’t have computers at home or parents don’t take to a facility where they will have access to a computer. So the only time that they will be learning about being in an online community it’s when they are in school.

Am I being negative? Or Am I being just realistic? Specially with first graders……