Thing # 6

Pocket Album I think is a really cute idea.  My students could use the ipad or camera to take photos of something that needs to be in sequential order.  For example: How to feed Brownie (This is our pet hamster in the class) Students could also create a pocket photo album on their life at school.  With Pocket Album you create and print a pocket-sized photo album. Choose photos for you pocket album from Flickr or upload them directly from your computer. Print it out, fold it up, and share the love with family and friends.  Here is the link to my pocket album.  It is sequential directions on how to feed our hamster.  http://bighugelabs.com/photos/4ae4d2a54a76cf507bf200ed75142630/pocketalbum3e1e48f9fb3fa7726c3adab7b83e142c531bf225
 This was found in BigHugeLabs website.   

My second choice was to do use Wordle.  As a teacher of young children, I didn't really think Wordle would be appropriate.  However, it would be a great way to group rhyming words as a class and then make a word cloud out of them! Or come up with words that we know that remind us of a theme that we are working on. It would also be a fun way to gather words from each student and make a class cloud together.   I think there could be a place for wordle in Pre-k.  Can you think of any other ideas?

Thing # 5

Mashups are pretty fun.  I enjoyed using Mosaick which shows you how to create trading cards.  I could see younger kids in elementary school enjoying this mashup. They could create these trading cards on people in history and of course write way more detail on them then I did.  Here is my mashup:

 I could see children using this for people famous in American history, black history month, Presidents of the United States, the periodical tables, even cards describing themselves and having a class set created.  Can you think of other ideas and add them in the comment section?

Thing # 4

I have been enjoying using Flickr for about two years now.  It tops my list of a place to save photos for these main reasons.  First of all the memory and how many photos it will hold for free is amazing!!  When I say amazing I mean amazing!!  The quality of the photos is superior, and it can be shared with whomever you would like to share it with in many different ways.  You can also download your picture from your album for free.  I use to love Shutterfly but the bad thing about Shutterfly is that when you upload all your pictures to that website, you will have to pay to get it back.
My Flickr sight is only for family members but I am going to share one of the photos with you but giving you a link.  https://www.flickr.com/gp/96302836@N07/2kAE44 This picture is me with my three boys.  Cameron is the oldest starting on the left, then me, Connor my second oldest and Collin my youngest.  I would highly recommend this website. Did I mention it is free?  Lol

Thing # 3

I love to do things with family pictures.  Finding apps and programs that are descent and free are not always easy to find.  I like to use befunky which is free and has some fun functions as well. One of the things I like to use are the backgrounds as well as the funny stamps you can add to pictures.
If you look closely at my collage you can see a moustache I added to my son, a pink curly wig on me at the bottom right picture, heart glasses on me on the middle picture and an orange braided pig tail on me as well at the top middle picture.
The link is: https://www.befunky.com/
I would highly recommend that you try this software particularly because of the quailty and it is free.  At some point you can pay for it to get the extras but I have not found their to be a need for that yet.  Have fun!

Thing # 2

Setting up the blog was not to difficult.  I decided to use Blogger because it is connected with my Gmail account and I have had some experience with it as well.  I watched and read all the things about blogging and really don't know if it is something I have time to use.  I am so busy with teaching and this class I don't see how it would really be beneficial for me at this time. However, it would be neat to start a blog about "Technology in the Pre-k classroom" but again it would need to be when I have more time.
I did have some difficulty trying to remember how to edit my page but it did come back to me.  I wish I had more choice of fonts but this one will have to do.  Hope you enjoy my blog and all 16 things.

Thing # 1

What I love about being a lifelong learner is that no matter how strongly you feel about certain beliefs on what is best when teaching your kids, it can change and probably will change.  I have been teaching for 26 years at many different grade levels: fifth grade, seventh grade, fourth grade and now pre-kindergarten for 18 years! In all those years I have learned that things change, change is important and accepting change is what is best for our students and for myself as an educator.  

The tutorial on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people was a very good tutorial to ponder about.  I would say the easiest of the habits for me is Habit 6 Use technology to your advantage.  I LOVE technology and it comes fairly easily to me.  Therefore it is an easy habit for me.  One of the hardest habit for me would be Habit 1 Begin with the end in mind. At our school, pre-kindergarten has been so fortunate to be a part of many speaker visits.  Unfortunately, the speakers have never truly been for pre-k but rather Kindergarten and up until this January.  We also have a population of highly intelligent children so we struggle with what is appropriate for our students.  I believe we are getting on the right track at this point and I am very excited about it.  However, because of the confusion of what is right and wrong for my students and can be difficult to begin with the end in mind.

In my learning contract, I have listed to continue to explore web 2.0 tools to continue to grow and bring new and exciting ideas into the classroom.  I do have to be careful however, I tend to jump in to many things and then become overwhelmed and I don't learn any one thing well.

Here is a link to my Learning Contract: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-O7SVk8SR4ig55zmYyW1LRkUpAGZa2aPt7KKcxKuz8Q/edit?usp=sharing