learn and grow...

I didn't think I would get a whole lot out of our campus day, despite that it has been a few weeks ago, I've been pondering some of things I did learn. For one, I have always wanted to do a website to keep teachers and parents informed of what I am doing in the library. Newsletter were too time consuming and cost a lot of money considering the amount I had to send out and that they were double sided, so after speaking with Michelle, she showed me her site she did for her LOL class. It was simple. Wikispaces. I've heard of it, but never actually went there. The major perk was that it was free and very simple. It took me little awile to get use to the set up, but soon enough I had my own library website. Working for two schools I combined it into one. Now if I only could get my profile on the school website to work, I could put up a link. I did send a home flyer which eash student with the website. So I'm hoping, and praying that teachers and parents check it out. I update with what I'm teaching in the library as well as with new books in the libraries, and featured books for our monthly Peacebuilder theme. So I'm really excited about this. I loved many of the sites brought up during on campus, but unfortunately, I just do not have the time to use them in. Working with PreK-1st Grade I feel my primarily responsibility is to teach library organiztion and the basic fundamental skills of reading and parts of the book, but I did recommend some sites to a fellow librarian. With my new found love of technology and its uses in the library, despite the actuall lacking of time to use it, I was flipping throught an educator magazine and found a wonderful article, The Top 25 sites of 2010. I cruised through them and here were my favorites most were free, or for additional services one could pay to upgrade: Story Jumper: An excellent site for digital storytelling. Comic Master: A simple and easy comic strip creator Wordia: an online dictionary, put not a typical one, b/c words have a visual video of the definition of the word Sweet Search: a safe online search engine for students to use and all items have been checked by educators A few others that I didn't have a change to look at were: kidblog, cacoo, 21 classess, middlespot, education eye, kizoa, drag on tape, shwup, prezentit, quintura for kids, todaysmeet, memoov, encyclomedia, zooburst, jay cut, spalshup, knowcase, magic studio, googlios and we are teachers. I also never realized how gaming can be used in the classroom. I just always thought of chess and the boardgames that I grew up on, but that's not what students intrests really are anymore. They are more focused on the video games. I feel that it is important to teach the other games, but I guess a comprise has to be made of what the students are interested in and what the teacher grew up on. With the big talk of the violent games during on campus, the one that stood out was Call of Duty. Truthfully, I'm not a big video gamer. I grew up on atari and nintendo, so I'm not good at the 3-d games, but my husband went out and bought Call of Duty: Black Ops. And it peaked my interest when a friend of his 12 year old nephew was killer at it. So I created account and I'm on my way up, currently I'm an E-2, but that game takes some serious eye-hand coordination. I can see why kids like it, but there definetly needs to be parental involvement to limit use, because it can be additicting! I have learned a lot so far this semester, more about myself and my new found interest of integrating technology into the classroom.