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Technology and K-12

Using Technology to Facilitate K-12 Instruction      

This paper explores the concept of technology and its use to facilitate instruction.  Thus, it is with this in mind decisions about the best use of technology to facilitate instruction should be made.

Blogs

When visiting Mr. Walker’s webpage, the Khan Academy website link is presented (Walker, 2012).  Khan Academy offers facilitation and support in learning through technology.  What is best about this site is that the tutorials are available to the end user for free.  Another valuable aspect of this technology is that they are able to learn at their own pace.  If they are viewing this at their own discretion at home, in a computer lab, or any personal computing device they are empowered to pause, replay, and/or watch at their leisure.  Khan Academy has resources to support subjects such as Math, Science, Social Studies and much more.  Another useful link provided on Mr. Walker’s blog page is Google Earth.  When utilizing Google Earth a Math, Science, and/or Social Studies lesson, can be given real world applications.  An outstanding tool is the ruler available in Google Earth to measure distances.  This can be brought to a very personal level gaining the student’s interest as it can involve their own schema.  As educators we are taught from the foundational levels in reading that bringing the “self” into the lesson is one of the best ways to interest a student and Google Earth does the job.  These are but a few of the many websites/links Mr. Walker’s Blog page references as regards facilitating K-12 instruction.

Khan Academy

This video gives insight into how Khan Academy can be a benefit to you or someone you know.

Book Review Jan Brett

This book review is on The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett thus it is geared for 1st grade level as we use Scott Foresman in GISD thus the story about the Gingerbread Man is in our basal and thanks to Jan Brett there are several other Gingerbread stories we do all week, also eating gingerbread cookies, decorate them in class if possible... Lots of fun and quality learning here. Absolutely, a favorite of mine and of course the children love this! Enjoy! Becky Giles

Powerpoint Technology K-12

This powerpoint discusses the necessity of technology and the potential classroom structure, ecourses,etc... Teachers will be utilizing technology more and more, and facilitating technology usage as well.

Technology

View more PowerPoint from beckygiles14

Thing 19 Web 2.0 Awards List

What is special about thing? Lulu is my thing of choice for top award winners re: Books it is 1st place under title "Books" in awards list. Thus, I chose it to explore and blog about. It's special because it is number 1! It can instantly publish books once they have gone thru the process vs. waiting for printing, distribution, etc... as the author can submit their books online.
What are its useful parts especially to school and the library? Year books can be done with this website for your school. This also will be handled online upload pics, select bindings, formats and more, then select your own pricing, then lulu will handle the bookorders and sent your school the proceeds. I don't know what all is involved but it appears you and your students can publish books on this site. Thus, become authors at school or for homework? I am not sure what would happen with royalties though... legally this might become an issue.

How use personally ? Shopping for books, book orders, blogs keeping up with the book publishing and distribution industry. I am hoping since they do things such as cookbooks, calendars, yearbooks, this would end up on our schools vendor list as they are able to keep costs downn and deliver and it appears expedite the process removing delays, et...

Hyperlink below to Khan Academy

Should you desire to visit Khan Academy website for yourself please do so I encourage you to explore it for yourself.

Podcast Using Technology to Facilitate K-12 Instruction

Thing 15 Web 2.0 Librarians

The author of this article is a "librarian blogger". Regarding school libraries this article serves as a reminder to us that the information in the library needs to be accessible to the students where ever they are, whenever they need access to it. We as the Web 2.0 librarians need to make certain that this is happening and that we are available to our users via Blogs, e-mail, whatever medium so that they are getting their needs met as regards information access and utilization. As professionals, We need to be communicating and interacting with web 2.0 technologies outside of our zone and in the worldwide zone.

Stephens, Michael (2006) Next Space, OCLC Newsletter. Issue No. 2,

reading

reading
Originally uploaded by mike terpstra

Orientation anyone?

Thing 14

Thoughts regarding Technorati are hard to tailor down as there is so much to see and learn. I went thru delicious and ended up on Twitter, my did I spend time searching, looking and reading. Technorati is a rater of blogs from what I understand it lists the top most popular and ranks them in ascending order. When you you post your blog you want it to have a tag (name or description) that you think someone when using a search engine might type in for a search. Let's say your blog is on 1st grade reading then you would name it something you think someone searching the web for this type of blog would google. Thus your tag for it could be 1st grade, reading, 1st graders reading. Thus you run a higher chance when someone Googles this tag/name that your blog will get a hit if the key word/tag works and accurately describes something they are looking for.

Thing 13 Social Book Marking

I ended up creating a Twitter account and explored social bookmarks, took tutorials and/or watched, listened and read about them. It is quite a lot to take in. I have to think about things for a bit before I can make any leaps as far as use... Immediately though I see this as an outstanding organizational tool potentially allowing you to actually use all of the websites you have saved. I have tried many different methods but the urls get lost or misplaced as I never really organized them due to time and in a day you come across so many when you are really cranking out the work.

I see it as a win, win regarding organization of tools you use in lessons the examples of all of the Algebra tags, Science tags, etc... caught my interest.

Twitter I am not sold on yet as I already have so much to do this appears to be yet another thing... I have my cell phone, email, home telephone, work email, blogs, ....

I think as regards putting your thoughts down on paper for the younger crowd it is a winner.

Thing 12

I am a naturalist, in that I try to balance nature in my garden and nontoxin insect removal, as well as observing nature and its blessings as well as its needs. This website directly impacts my garden at this time I have had aphids and mealybugs devouring my sunflowers and must get rid of them now they are winning the battle. thus this blog aimed right at my worst target at the moment mealy bugs. I will purchase ladybugs tomorrow if its not too late in the season.
http://gardenorganicallyblog.com/why-organic-gardening/

I chose the below re: ipod sport nano device as I am a runner and preparing for the 1/2 marathon in November thus this device can be worn on arm some attach to shoes etc.. and provide data on pace, distance, etc...
http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Nike-iPod-Sport-nano/dp/B000JVFKH8

Thing 4

I completed thing 4 as directed, blog, registration and avatar creation.

Also, sent email...

BGiles UHCL

Thing 11 Book lists

I added "all kids" from Bloggers search engine in design view - I typed in book lists under gadgets... then it directed me further and I selected their automatically updated top 40 books for children ages 3-12. Nice! I enjoyed this and appreciate the sites I visited and input my children's favorite authors as well as some of my own on my book list.

I forsee this as creating class groups, girls reading clubs, boys, etc... mystery clubs, science fiction... I will have to think this thru and get more familiar with it but I think it has tremendous opportunities for collaboration amidst the avid readers in the school community and wider community as well such as the entire district. It is a good social networking tool again very positive!

Thing 10

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrvilhauer/4333346888/
The image was a struggle but alas once again it is done. The first picture I chose was from flicker and it would not work. Thus, I collaborated and found that Google Images worked excellently for this purpose.

I chose the image because of its many positive qualities and most importantly it makes me smile.

I personally like the comic strip generator and have used a similar activity in L.A. for 4th grade. I did not have the luxury of a package such as this so the children created their own from scratch. It is a fun activity that defintely gets everyones' higher level thinking in gear as creation and synthesis are up there...

http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi

Thing 9

Create a blog post about your experience that answers these questions:


Which Search tool was the easiest for you? Google Search.


Which was more confusing?
Bloglines search tool.

What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?
I found this one to be useful The Daily Almanac at www.infoplease.com/daily, A daily math warmup for grades 1&2, as well as a daily reading warmup for grades 1&2 with a running history from prior days warmups - very handy!

Thing 8 RSS feeds and readers

As an individual, librarian or student the RSS and reader save time and turn the tables regarding information retrieval it now becomes information delivery right to your reader via the RSS feed.

After viewing tutorials and using these tools it is of course the only method to use vs. searching and wasting time you don't have. The reader is the platform the feed delivers to and you are delightfully presented with what you want at your doorstep so to speak.

Thing 7 Google endless possibilities

I must emphasize the ppt feature as this has come in very handy as an educator. I went to training years back and have used this religiously ever since... If you would like to find a powerpoint to cover a topic go to advanced search and type in topic.ppt and click on advanced search a voila you have a multitude of options to choose from and a bank of endless ways to convey material to your students in an informative and engaging way.

I also explored new features as well and looked at the GMAil feature and am reluctant to switch and concerned about an online and yes I saw offline calendar - however my security alarm went off as I don't want the world to know my schedule just in case they want to know when I am not home... but as regards the Gmail it looks a lot like yahoo thus why switch if I am already set up and good to go with Yahoo - anyone?

Thing 6 mappr

This api is awesome and has endless possibilities as regards Social Studies... For instance 1st grade learns about their community and government. I always begin by teaching them about their school community (photo from flicker here), then about living on an island (map of Galveston silhouette type from flicker here), where they live on the island east end vs. west end (photo of a house from flicker here), if you get my drift and then superimpose this map on Texas, then on U.S.A... Yes, I love it. Also, something I did with 4th Grade was to make a brochure and you see where this is going... Social Studies activity which includes information about where they live with endless opportunities and photos/maps!

BGiles

Thing 5 flicker

The nature of visuals get me everytime it is addicting and I really had to pull myself away from it... I went ahead and chose a photo that relates to our midterm project it is an insect anyone able to predict what it is?

BGiles