Thing #7 Google Tools

I've used Google calendar for about a year now and have loved it. I love that you can make several different calendars. Some that I have are: personal (dates for outings with friends, dinner plans etc.), birthdays & anniversaries, Work (staff development days, inservice, ect), and school (field trips, important classroom activities). It worked really well since you can set the privacy level of the calendars and share calendars with certain people. The School calendar I shared with my parents in the classroom. It was really easy to add a date for field trips and all of the relevant information for them. They could access the calendar anytime since it was a shared calendar--but since I didn't share my other calendars with them it kept my personal information private. However I could veiw all of the calendars at once (all color coded) and be able to see how busy or how much free time I would have on a day/week.

After looking at all of the tools I chose to further explore notebook, picasa web albums, and google docs.
Love the notebook since you can use it while looking at other web page--great for copying text, ideas from websites and much easier than copying it into a word doc or handwriting it down on paper. The best thing is that I can access it from any computer!
This was the same for google docs--still playing around with this one. Because there is so much that you can do with it I still feel a little overwhelmed by it. I'm going to go back and spend more time on this. But this would be great for working with your grade level team on documents. Especially since everyone can collaborate on the documents. Also a great way to store documents used everyday...always good to have more than one back up.
I went on and picked 3 tools to try out....so my 3rd was Picasa web albums. I use the picasa software to organize my pictures on my computer but haven't tried the web albums until now. It was fairly easy to use...especially since I already had my pictures organized with Picasa on my computer. However I don't think that I will really use it that much. Last November I had a break-in and my computer was stolen, which also meant all of the pictures that I hadn't backed up were lost :( After that happened I began using another website to store my pictures which I think works better for me since I can store them, share, and order the pictures from the site or have them sent to a store for pick up. It would just take too much time to move all of my pictures over to Picasa, but I still think it is great and love the software to download to the computer for organizing my pictures...really easy to use (and it's free!)

Thing #6

I think I could spend the whole day playing with all of the different mashups and sites. I really like the trading cards. Our librarian showed them to us a few months ago. This would be great to use at the beginning of the year. During the first few days of school take a picture of each child and have them tell the class 3 things they want to share about themselves. Then you could put their name, the classroom, and the 3 things they shared. After the class was finished then you could print them out for all of the kids to get a trading card from each of their new classmates. It would be a fun way to get to know each other.

The motivational posters would be great to use throughout the classroom, especially with pictures of your current students.


The mosaics were really easy to create and would be a great add on to a research project, writing, visuals for your lessons, etc.

I just hope I can remember all of these ideas come August.
I didn't get to play around with all of the programs but will be going back to check out the ones I missed!

Thing #5

Well, I've spent most of the morning on Flickr. Once I get myself more familiar with the 1st grade curriculum I'll be able to really use this to my advantage. I picked out two photos. This first one is of a daisy...I love daisies. I thought this photo was neat because of the close-up shot of the flower.

The next photo I found was a really beautiful picture of a butterfly. I know that I can use this next year with my class. There were so many different pictures and different views of butterflies. I can't wait to go back and find more pictures to use. My mind is already thinking about how to use the pictures on this site....writing prompts, pictures to go with stories or poems, the possibilities are endless!!

Thing #3

Well setting up the blog wasn't as difficult as I thought. After playing around and watching the tutorials it seemed pretty easy. I already had an avatar set up through my yahoo account so I just made a few changes to it and figured out how to export. I had never exported the avatar before so that was something new. The hardest part for me was coming up with a name for the blog. I'm not sure why that was so hard, I guess I was over thinking it. I can't wait to get started on the rest of the "Things" and see what I can use in my classroom next year!

Thing #2

I would have to say the easiest of the 7 1/2 for me would actually be #6 Using technology to your advantage. I enjoy learning about new technology and I use it as a resource for many projects, learning experiences, and just for fun.
There are 2 habits that can be a challenge for me: # 1 Beginning with the end in mind. I don't always start out with a clear goal or end in mind. This is something I hope to be more consistent on in the future. Also # 7 1/2-Play can be a challenge. Being a PreK teacher for the past few years I know the importance of learning through play. However, in my own learning I sometimes forget about what an important resource it can be.