iMovie

iMovie was a challenge for me. I had the pictures I needed and the theme I wanted to work with, but I had never made a movie before. Everything confused me; from timimg my pictures to understanding why my entire caption didn't always show up. Luckily I finished it! And I think it shows the highlights of my life thus far pretty well. If my future class wanted to get to know me better, I definitely think this would be a good starting point! Here it is...

Storybird

Yet again, the web 2.0 tool that we learned about this week was unfamiliar to me before it was shared in class. Storybird seems like a very interesting tool that both my students and I could utilize. I like that there is a teacher version of this tool, which allows me to create assignments and give each of my students their own account to create stories. This would be a good feature for my students in 2nd or 3d grade when they are starting to write more. It may be harder for them to pick a theme, photo, and story because of all of the possibilities. However, it would be great for me to choose a photo or theme and they create their story based on that.

For my own use in the classroom, it could be fun to make my own short stories dealing with relevant topics for my class. I could create stories that deal with similar issues that may be going on within my classroom. I could also incorporate spelling words or vocabulary that the children are learning about in particular units.

I really enjoy the great art that is available for use on this site. Also, being able to view and share other peoples stories with my students could be a great time saver. I think this tool could be a good one for me to remember and use in my future early childhood classroom.

Animoto

This week I shared Animoto with the class. Until this project, I had never heard of this tool before. However, I think that it is a very useful and easy to use tool to incorporate in classrooms. The process of composing you Animoto video is fairly easy. They have tutorials and good instructions throughout the whole process. The general free version is alright for short projects, but I am glad that there is a free version for teachers to use as well.

I could see this tool being good for class website as a way to display photos from field trips or projects that your class has done, with their families. I also think this could be a nice way to review content that the students have been working on. I would tend to use these tool over having my students use the tool because my class will be very young, but they certainly would enjoy watching my creations!

Google Form

After looking at Google Form, I think that it could be a useful tool for me as a teacher. Although I am fairly new to Google Docs, I was completely unaware that there was a tool in the program that would allow me to create surveys. I think it nice that there are so many different ways to set up responses; paragraph, multiple choice, etc. At first I was a little confused on the editing of your questions, but eventually realized that you edit each question individually by clicking on it's edit button.

As a teacher of young children, my preference would be to use this tool as a means to get parental feedback. I could get information from parents about their children's interests, as well as survey them on how they think certain aspects of our classroom are working.