17 things......

I love, love, loved this class! I felt really out of my comfortzone at the beginning - and never thought I could have done a blog! Now, however, I am comfortable with at least 15 of the 17 things we had to do.
Lee LeFever is very good at explaining his ideas too! Not sure how much he makes for his work, but I hope he knows how easy he makes it seem for the outsider looking in!
I would recommend this class to any of my colleagues!

Thing 17...Web 2.0

After spending a significant amount of time on many different websites, I have come across a list of those sites that I find I can/will use in my classroom.
Wordle: I already use this website. We have weekly word wall words and we write them out and then use Wordle with the words.
Classtool.net: This website has Venn Diagrams, Fishbones, and flash cards.
Photobucket: I am going to use this site to make a slideshow with music and words for Meet the Teacher Night next week.
There are others that I find interesting as well...Glogster, Spokentext, Quizlet.com, Createagraph, and GLiffy.

Thing 16...Podcasts

After some doing, I figured out how to navigate this site. My kids have always downloaded music, etc from this site so all of their passwords were on it. My first reaction was why was I doing this? However, once I figured it out, I have to say it was easy.
I love Reading Rockets. We talk so much with the Gretchen Courntey iniative about the authors when reading a book (as well as in the elementary setting library) that many of the kiddos remember authors from one book to another. This way, during computer time, they can actually learn more about the author and other books that they have written!
I am on vacation in the mountains and don't have good (if any) cell reception so I will be trying iPadio when I get home.

SlideShare

Photography math problems

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This Slide Share was on Photography Math Problems and it explained story problems using pictures. The author is a kindergarten teacher but this could easily be adjusted for 1st grade use. I do not like the fact that there is no sound, but I do like the use of the pictures and the plastic animals and coins that are used. They are very easily seen and as long as you are a reader, you could utilize this presentation to the fullest. For those students who do not read, Slide Share will be very difficult.

Screenr

I made this so hard and it was actually very easy!  Arrgghh!  Now that I have it figured out, this could be a great tool for the classroom.  Since first graders LOVE seeing themselves and hearing themselves, we could do many, many lessons through Screenr.  My young students love sending books they have read or songs they have learned out over the World Wide Web for their grandparents to hear, their cousins that live in another state, etc.  I am going to start looking for ideas this week in order to start the year off with Screenr. 

Here is my first try:
http://screenr.com/Pq1s

Voicethread

I may be the only one, but I do not like Voicethread.  It will be hard to utilize in the lower elementary classroom.  I think I could set it up for Art Outreach and it would work.  I guess I am doubting that my students could work with it and be successful.  I know that I could set a lot of things up and do them FOR the classroom, I just think my students may be too young to do Voicethread by themselves. 

Wiki's

Wiki's are not a new thing for me.  My daughter's 5th grade teacher used a wiki the entire year so that we could (as parents) do the things we needed to without sending massive amounts of e-mails back and forth....holiday parties, homework assignments involving more than one child, classroom news, etc.  I think they are a great tool for the classroom and through this class I can also tell my team how the wiki can help us - and save time- if we all utilize it.