Unwrapping 5th tool

more from imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov
more from hubblesite.org

I used tags such as Nasa and Hubble. I certainly found plenty of related web sites but I just posted the most relevant ones. The great thing about social bookmarking is the possibilities that it offers to share web sites with others, even if that is not our intention, since it is public. Our students may be benefited by getting so much information without a big waste of time. Kids may leave comments about different web sites so the rest of the class may be aware of the content without even opening the sites. This is a great tool for our students, especially when it comes to do independent work or individual research at any station or computer available.

Unwrapping 4th tool

Sometimes we create documents using certain programs or versions that are not compatible with some other computers, or it might happen that our file gets damaged or even worse our whole pc is broken and our files are completely gone, well guess what folks that issue is solved by using Google docs. No more hassle to get access to your documents. Availability is not a problem anymore.

It is great to get to know a different way to share files, all at once with multiple contacts, plus having updates and feedbacks in real time. I found pretty interesting the application Forms since it could be used in the classroom to get responses from students to certain topics or even apply quizzes of the curriculum, which would mean less grading time consuming and immediate data feedback.

Google reader would make our life easier by offering the possibility to organize our contacts and their responses in a much more simple way that would enable us to follow and update our particular sites of interest in a very practical fashion.

Unwrapping 3rd tool

Spell with flicker seems to be a great tool for lower grades so kids get to know the letters of the alphabet, get familiar with their sound, create new words, classify different word families, identify diagraphs, etc… Now Wordle offers the opportunity to create a world cloud that perfectly fits into upper primary grades activities, for instance we could use those random words to introduce vocabulary of a new lesson or we may ask our students to work on a free writing that would include those words into their narratives. I mean the possibilities are nearly endless, it is just a matter to get creative.

Unwrapping 2nd tool

1) Personal learning networks allow participants to interact in a much freer academic environment since boundaries have been potentially extended nearly limitless. Expanding our universe of learning will inevitable increase our global perception of the outside world and our interactions with other beings will also be modified in such a fashion where distances have been shorten practically to a push of a button.

2) Interiorizing the out world via multimedia offers a totally new paradigm for the humankind that slowly sees the homo sapiens walking away to presence the arrival of the homo videns whom relies on data transmitted and transferred in such an unorthodox way.

3) Tomorrow and beyond, Using technology in the classroom, ELTH, First blog, Technology XXI century.

Unwrapping 1st tool

Creating a blog has been a magnificent opportunity to extend our technical skills to communicate ourselves with others. Going step by step to set up the blog has been a gratifying experience since we adhere ourselves to a world wide online service and community hardly ever imagine not long ago.

Practice has shown that new technologies foster academic development by offering a completely new variety of tools and approaches to be discovered and applied in order to achieve ordinary and extraordinary content objectives.

An avatar has been an innovative way to create a parallel world that is not necessarily fake but a simple and fascinating positive projection of ourselves into a virtual universe that offers a new range of opportunities to approach to people in such a new fashion.

Blogging into the classroom will benefit our students by stimulating their writing skills since their audience will not only be original but indeed familiar, therefore a truly desirable one, it will also provide the students with the chance to try new ways to express themselves since verbal and non verbal communication observe different and unique aspects that often proves that written communication usually offers a way to transmit thoughts that would have probably never been stated in verbal communication or simply expressed in a different fashion.

I would love to implement this blog innovating tool into the classroom where students may freely talk about their favorite topics and also develop an interactive chat of the required themes.