On our last official day of class, I find it best to simply wish all of you a very safe and happy holiday!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

You Tube at School

As most of you are painfully aware, we are blocked from viewing You Tube videos in our district. And while You Tube certainly has it's fair share of trash, it also has quite a lot of stuff that would be useful in our classrooms. I recently had a friend at work create a document that is a quick guide to converting You Tube videos into a school-friendly format, and here is the info for you!

Note: You have to do this at home because you cannot access YouTube at school. Hence….the reason you must save these files in order to use them in the classroom

• Find the video you want to save on YouTube.


• Copy the web address for the video


• Go to OnlineVideoConverter.com ( http://onlinevideoconverter.com/ )


• Hit CONVERT VIDEO TO VIDEO.


• Paste in the URL (web address)


• Change the video type to MPEG


• Hit GO


• It will say “Connecting to Server.”


• Downloading File


• When it says, “FILE CONVERTED SUCCESSFULLY!” hit DOWNLOAD.


• Save the file somewhere so that you can find it later.


• You can now play it using Windows Media Player, you can embed it in PowerPoint, or in SMARTBoard software.

From time to time, I come across another teacher's site and find some really amazing resources. Beth Newingham's site, http://hill.troy.k12.mi.us/staff/bnewingham/myweb3/, is truly one of the best I have found. Frankly, sometimes I look at it and feel like I'm not doing enough in my own classroom! But it really is chock full of extremely creative ideas as well as links to her self-created documents, labels, etc. This teacher is not only very clever, but also quite generous with her ideas! What a treat!

Puzzle Maker

One of the most difficult questions I think we as teachers get asked on a daily basis is "What do I do when I'm finished?" Well, there are many online resources to help answer that question, and here is one of my favorites: http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/

On puzzlemaker, you can create a variety of crosswords, word searches, cryptograms, etc. in a flash. As a second grade teacher, I personally like using the word searches and often make them using words from our current units in Science and Social Studies or words that follow that patterns we are practicing in spelling and phonics.

Web Site

Yahoooooo! My website is finished! Once I got the hang of Dreamweaver, it was fairly easy to get it put together. Being that my blog has been such a useful tool for me, I'm not sure how much more my website will have to offer, especially since I don't have regular access to Dreamweaver. But I am glad that I've had the experience of building it from the ground up.

Also, today is the last day of class- or at least of sitting in the building for class. After this, we'll have one last big project, the webquest. I am looking forward to getting some guidance on putting it together. I've already got my ideas layed out and am excited to get going!

I heart PREZI!

In the spirit of a true techno geek, I have a new love- Prezi.com. In search of a creative way to present on Wikis for class tomorrow, I came accross this fabulous new presentation program a few weeks back. It makes Power Point seem like "death by bullet point" as the creators of Prezi like to joke. Now I would have mentioned this site sooner, but then my creativity points might have shot right out the window! ;) Nonetheless, check it out and make sure you don't have anything pressing to do for a few hours if you're anything like me!

Free Rice

Is it possible that introducing your kids to more educational technology could feed the hungry? YES. Using the website, http://freerice.com/, your students can practice vocabulary, art history and more. Every question they answer correctly adds a virtual grain of rice to a bowl. These grains eventually manifest into REAL food for REAL people. Its true! Try it! Even better, get your KIDS to try it!

Cool Site

Teaching geometry on every level can be a challenge, and the more tools you have to assist in your teaching, the better! Graph paper is often too small for my second graders and I found this site helpful in creating homemade templates. But traditional graph paper is only the beginning- on this site you can create triangular, octagonal and any other repeated geo-shape paper you can imagine. To learn more, visit http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/

Have you ever "Wordled?"

I was introduced to the most fun web tool recently! It is not only fun and interactive, it is pretty to look at, too. It generates neat word splashes like the one I've used for the above banner. I have found a few ways for the kids to use it and they love it as well. If you have never wordled before, get to it! http://www.wordle.net/

Survey Monkey

I was pretty excited about doing the survey monkey assignment as this is a tool I have been meaning to use for a long time. And what better reason to finally do it than a grad school grade??? Anyway, I had planned to do a trading post in my classroom this week as an introduction to some tough economic concepts for 2nd graders- scarcity and opportunity cost. Then it came to me! How about doing a preliminary survey to see what the children desired to trade, let the trading post happen and use the information gathered in the survey to help explain what occurred? So far I have given the pre-trading post survey for homework Monday and tomorrow is the big day. For homework tomorrow night, the kids will complete the post-trading post survey. Already they have mentioned "how cool" it was doing the survey for homework, so thus far it's been a big success!

Webquests

We spent the morning getting to know a cool web tool. While I have seen and used Webquests a bit before, today was the first time I was able to really understand their capabilities in the classroom. After looking at several different webquests, it was easy to see strengths and weaknesses, and therefore start to see a direction in which I would like to go when designing my own. I definitely need to do some research on webquests that are more appropriate for the age of the children I teach, but I have some pretty good ideas brewing already!

And we're off!

While I have blogged for other purposes, this is a new adventure. A grad school reflection blog. Currently, my fondest reflection is simply that I'm one class down with 10 to go. And if this blog goes well, I have hopes of getting a decent grade in my second. Here's hopin'.