Fun With Technology!

Over the course of the semester, we have had a wide variety of technological resources that we have been able to explore. A lot of these resources are great tools that can be used in the classroom, and depending on the grade that I teach, I plan to use almost every single one in the classroom! We have learned technologies from blogs, to screencasts, to adobe spark and so much more! All of these are wonderful tools that are available to us as teachers for free! It is amazing to me looking at the school that I am in now, and how much teachers aren’t using these! I feel like a lot of teachers now a days aren’t always up to speed on the latest technology, but as far as I am concerned, I hope to teach my fellow coworkers about all the wonderful technology that is available right on our computers!

One of my favorite tools that we used this semester was the digital story that we most recently worked with. I love this tool because any grade level can use it! (The younger grades might need some help, but it can surely be done!) This tool has taught me so much about integrated technology, and I love how user friendly and simple It is! One aspect I really enjoy about this tool, is that any student can upload material to the story. Even for students that are at a lower level, this is a great tool because those students don’t have to feel the pressure to write (Especially the struggling ELL learners). They can say what they think, and add in pictures to help them portray what they want to say.

One lesson that I thought would be neat, is at the beginning of the year. In my classroom right now, we have a thing called “friend of the week,” where each student gets a week to let the class know all about them. I think that this could be a great tool for any student to use to tell about their life! They can put almost anything into it, and can even have help from the teacher if they don’t have a computer at home! The part that I love about the digital story, is that the student is narrating it, and can just be played during class time, so in case you have some students that are shy, they don’t have to present their information in front of the class at the beginning of the year!

This is such a fun tool to use in the classroom, and even with kids that have specific needs, you can accommodate it to almost any student! Some examples are by either talking instead of writing, real pictures instead of drawn pictures, working on it at school if the student doesn’t have a computer, and even uploading personal work! This tool has a variety of uses in the classroom, and I am excited to use this for my future class!