Thing #9: Playing with Wikis

I wish we had a technology popper at my school. This would be a great way for our teachers to share ideas and lesson plans. It would be really nice to see exactly what the younger and older classes are working on in their rooms. I feel like this would provide a more cohesive, fluid learning experience for all the students if the teachers were working together behind the scenes. A technology popper would be a great way for us to work together all the time, teachers could log in at any time from anywhere and contribute. This way we wouldn't have to use in-service time to collaborate since we would be able to do it from home in the evening or before work.

Here are the ideas I added to Dr. Wilson's Technology Popper:

This summer I created a unit plan on Antarctica to use with my preschool students. I came away loving so many web 2.0 tools. A great way to integrate technology into the classroom would be to create a story with the students using Little Bird Tales. The kids could each illustrate a page of the story and add their own ideas and thoughts to bring their class story to life. Little Bird Tales allows the author to record their voice. Since my kids are just learning to read this would be a great way for them to tell a story since they can't type or spell yet. I love the idea of student ownership and creating a class story would help them learn about collaborating and teamwork. Another thing I love is the Treasure Hunt. This could be used at the end of unit to see what the kids actually learned. It's also a great way to introduce younger students to the internet without overwhelming or endangering them. A Treasure Hunt uses specific, teacher selected, child-friendly websites to help the children answer questions. Here is the Treasure Hunt I created this summer.