An Educational Toolkit (PLN #1)

One of the ways I will be keeping track of all of the resources that I discover will be through a LiveBinder. This will allow me to save up any ideas that I would like to use in future and it will also allow you to keep up with all of my finds to explore for yourself. Seeing as I am headed towards a degree in early childhood education the binder I have have created will mainly focus on ideas for children from 1st to 3rd grade. In that rage group there are so many ideas to be explored and so much cognitive growth occurs. Because of this I am sure that my binder will have a wide range of resources. To view my binder click here, Educational Technology Ideas. If you have any resources you think I should check out share them in the comments below, I'm open to anything.

I am new to LiveBinders and have so far been happy with them. The thing that I find most impressive is the ability to view websites inside of the binder. This way you have dual navigation between resources as well as within resources. While exploring the site I realized that a Bive-Binder can be a great search tool when you are trying to find information about a certain subject. Users will upload content specific to one area of study. For example I found one binder full of great links related to Ancient Egypt and another with loads of information about Thanksgiving. These links would be great resources for students when comping research. I'm tempted to add a link in my binder to live-binder! ha

Tahoma District's Tech-Savy Schooling

To start us off on our journey I will share some of the ways that teachers are currently using technology inside their own classrooms. One of the neatest ways I have found technology integrated into a classroom is in the form of an Xbox 360 Kinect and time traveling. The school in Maple Valley, WA is finding ways for students to truly interact in their learning with hands on experiences. With the Kinect students are able to become a digital avatar going on learning adventures in areas such as math, science, or history. Time travel is made possible in one teacher’s classroom through the use of a green screen and editing technology that creates a video of the kids in any area or period that they are learning about which can be aligned with most of their learning subjects. Technology such as this ensures student participation and it offers a new level rounded understanding that wasn’t possible before, when a student is able to see themselves in Ancient Mesopotamia or walking with dinosaurs they aren’t likely to forget that lesson anytime soon.

“It’s not a cookie cutter, here’s a test type thing, (students) have more control on exploring their learning.”

"Cutting Edge Classroom Part I: Teachers and Technology." Kent Reporter. Kent Reporter, 6 Mar. 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.

This article explains many (MANY) more of the technologies that just one school has managed to incorporate. If you have a few free seconds (or, can procrastinate for a few seconds…) you can read of all of the intriguing ways that technology adds to these student’s learning experiences.

Professional Learning Network

Hello, and welcome to my professional learning network project (PLN). This is the space I will be using to post any ideas involving the integration of technologies, in and out of the classroom, that aide in a student’s comprehension. I will be on the hunt for exciting, new, and cutting edge ways of integrating technology. These posts will likely consist mostly of the sharing of brilliant ideas from fellow educators who have discovered clever ways that technology best works for them. However, I would hope to add some of my own ideas and moments of brilliance (mostly luck) when I have a technological epiphany. So, stay tuned for plenty of discoveries, and feel free to throw in your own thoughts whenever they may come to you!