Tool #11--REFLECTION

1. I had lots of favorite tools....iMovie, google docs, iTouch, and delicious ranked very high. One of my most favorite tools is the iMovie. I absolutely LOVED making the iMovie that I did at the end of the year for our kindergarteners, and most importantly they LOVED watching it and being able to take their own copy home. It is such an easy tool to use. I hopefully one day will get a mac of my own. I had used photo story last year to make a slide show and it was fun to make but I had the hardest time downloading it and publishing it. iMovie was so simple. My soon to be 1st grader, was able to work on iMovie. I think this would be a great tool to use in the classroom. My students could take pictures and download them to the mac to create an iMovie on something they are learning, what a great center to have in the classroom. We could post their iMovies on our Kindergarten blog, for their parents to see.
I also liked google docs. Google docs is going to be great to use on my team to help edit our newsletter that goes home each month, and letters that go home to our parents. We are so used to passing around a paper document and having each other check off their name when they had reviewed it, and then pass it to the next person. But...how many times did I loose it on my table somewhere...LOTS! This will also help us GO GREEN...a little more!
The iTouch is something I can not wait to have in the classroom. They are going to be great to use as a center. After reading a blog that I follow, I got the idea about using them in a guided reading group. How fun would that be for the students, to use the doodle application to write a sentence.
2. Having delved into some of these tools I just have to use them in the classroom. Children LOVE technology and are so unafraid of it. It is almost an injustice if we don't expose our children to some of these tools. Technology is so much a part of their world and their world to come.
3. What surprised me(but not really) is that there is so much out there for us to incorporate into our classrooms AND many of those things are so easy for young children to learn. I just need to familiarize myself with them and make sure I use them in the classroom.