February 2013

Develop your Personal Learning Network

I have been following a lot of blogs and learning. I have not contributed. I am still in the lurking stage. I am looking around, trying to find what all is there. I will read and follow them. I follow some on Twitter, some groups on Facebook.

I am also in a Science Collaborative at Region 4. Meeting educators from all over Houston, sharing lessons, tips, techniques and growing and learning has been an eyeopener for me this year. The Collaborative has great workshops that are offered free to us. Lots of free resources and materials are provided. And more importantly the support from all the teachers. 

Being an eTrainer has been an enriching experience for me. Learning new technology and then using it in our classrooms as well as teaching it to our campus teachers has been great. I feel so good to see all the teachers trying some tools in their classroom.

I am trying to Connect ( reach out), Contribute (share, post),Converse (sharing and responding and building relationships) and Request (for support, will be fruitful).

January 2013

Assessment of the tools.
I use a lot of tool in the classroom. The ones that the students enjoy working with are Edmodo (ease of use, feels like facebook to the kids), Google App (save all their work in one place,make ppt,collaborate), Go Animate (kids can show their creative side), Stupeflix (ease of use), Prezi (easy to use), iMovie, ShowMe, Educreations (both of these used on an iPad), Glogster ( easy for the students to make an electronic poster) , Dropbox, ActivInspire, Popplet (mind map), Skype (students like to hear from someone other than their teacher once in a while), BrainPop, Near Pod, Sky View, Google Earth, Class Dojo (classroom management), Splashtop (use to project my desktop), Apple TV and many more. The one I stopped using was xtranormal. Earlier it was O.K then the themes and characters were not very appropriate for my 6th grade students.
I woulds like to try many more tools but the biggest issue has been time.