Thing #12

Well this "Thing" was both positive and negative for me... :) It forced me to take the time to read others blogs which was very interesting. I felt very intimidated by some blogs. Mine is very elementary compared to many but then I also read the pain of other newbies so I know that I am not alone on this quest of discovery. Reflecting on my feelings of inadequacy while reading some of the blogs made me take a long look at how my SPED students feel everyday of their lives. Feeling dumb is not fun!

Thing #11

OK I have finally hit a rough spot. I have tried and tried to get my library imported to my blog and have not been successful after a couple of hours. I did enjoy using LibraryThing and easily found the books that I used so far this summer in my ESY cooking rotation. I can see as a language arts teacher or librarian how this would be a wonderful tool to use with book clubs.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/conlyn57

Thing #10

This was fun! I enjoyed playing with all the different types offered in the lesson. I could so use these on my math test as places for hints for the students. In the new math books the hints are in cute eye catchy icons... I could use the same idea on test and test reviews.

Thing #9

Either I am getting the hang of this or the "Things" are causing me to be like a sponge and absorb every thing possible. I could have stayed searching these sites for hours. I have already been looking for over two... Summer school started yesterday. I am teaching in the ESY program. I thought I was teaching cooking during rotations... yesterday I find out I am also teaching academics plus cooking. Know these students are life skills... I have never taught life skills. All of my experience has been in the Resource Classroom. Looking over their IEP's and life task I cried all the way home wondering what I had gotten myself into. Calling my mother, yes I still do that at 51... she listened and then gave her all so wonderful words of wisdom, " Connie, as always you know you will learn many lessons from them, now it is in your hands what lessons they will learn from you. There is reason for everything, make this experience the best you can for your students and yourself." OK I stopped whining and got to work. Which leads me to "Thing #9". I used this lesson to search for quality read-alouds that I can use with my ESY kiddos. I have been teaching only math for the past two years so I am a little rusty on current literature. Not anymore... I now have pages and pages of quality read-aloud titles and lesson ideas from scouring the many blogs sites that dealt with this topic. I found that Google Blog Search and Blogline's were two most user friendly and with the most information on my search. I could not get School Library Blog on Suprglu to ever come up. I was disappointed in that. It has been a successful day and it is only 9:30...

Thing # 8

OK the "Things" are getting more and more fun and very beneficial. I am a news junkie but I hate listening to the news on TV because I believe that the media slants things to their point of view. I have always wanted to say, " just give me a two sentence summary and move on." Now after finding out about RSS and setting up my account I can now simply get the highlights or "needs to know" point from all aspects of life that I am interested in: national news, celebrities, quotes, and stock market. I am not sure how I can use this in the classroom but the Library would be a terrific place to have one computer set up that the students could go and get the highlights of the news from around the world. I found the following quote from one of the Google sites and would like to share it with you. I laughed out loud when I read it because it is so ME...

"I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on!"

Beryl Pfizer

Thing #7

GOOGLE... Now we are having fun! I really enjoyed this "Thing"! I am teaching a class for Paras at the beginning of the school year about the important use of manipulates in math to students with learning disabilities. I was blown away by the amount of research based PowerPoints that I found through Google Advanced Search. With all the information I found my presentation for the summer workshop is already half finished. The amount of new data based information that can be found at the touch of a key is amazing. I need to spend my computer addiction time surfing Google for teaching ideas rather than spending time reading People.com and IM'ing my friends.

I also really enjoyed spending time getting comfortable with Google Earth. My math students would love the Explore the Sky and Fly to Any Place search areas. The more instruction can be personal the better for my students.

Thing #6

OMG... I never knew there was so much fun stuff that my kids at school could be doing that would increase their computer skills plus integrate some basic math skills. Teaching Special Education I am always looking for fun ideas for our "down" time that can keep the kids interested but also have a benefit. I enjoyed looking at all of the sites. The ones most interesting were from Big Huge Labs. I could use the kids pictures from my digital camera and make individual motivational posters and individual calendars that they could use for their daily calendar work. I also like Clockr. I am wondering how hard it would be to mashup their pictures with the clock...humm. They love to see their own faces!!!