Voice Thread

Here is the link for my voice thread:

Podcast

http://mchilds.podbean.com/

Audacity

While researching audacity, I found myself distracted thinking about the ways I could use this. I think it could be very useful in building fluency for young readers. Recording their reading and then having them reread while listening to the recording would help to meet some of those auditory learners needs. I can see it working well with fluency. I feel this would be something that would work well for our struggling learners and might also prove beneficial to those with special needs.
I am thinking it would be nice to use to transfer learning CD's such as our anthology storied onto an Ipod. This could them be used in the classroom (which doesn't change from the CD), but it could also be made available to students. Once again this would help with fluency.
I am going to try to record a few of my students reading a leveled reader to see how it turns out.

Bloom's Taxonomy

I love the phrase, "climb to a higher level of thought" as a way to describe the use of bloom's taxonomy by educators. I have always been a strong supporter of the use of Bloom's in great classrooms. Encouraging students to acheive those Higher Order Thinking Skills is something I try to encorporate and foster in my classroom on a regular basis.

I feel revived when I look at the new taxonomy. I especially like the change from nouns to verbs when describing the different layers.

When I was first introduced to Bloom's decades ago, we didn't have the technology that we have today. It is so easy to find wonderful sites filled with explanations and ideas so you can successfully and effectively implement Bloom's in your classroom. There is help out there for anyone looking to improve their teaching. There are ideas, lessons and projects to use at every level.

Here are links to the two sites I found the most useful:
http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic69.htm

http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom's_Taxonomy#end

Skype

Anyone walking into my family room on Friday night would have found themselves in complete laughter. My husband was eagerly helping me experiment with Skype. After creating his own account we spent hours sitting across the room from each other skyping on our laptops. Of course Skype was not intended to be used by people in the same room, it was still fun to practice. We quickly found out of state family members that have Skype accounts and encouraged others to sign up. I can't believe it took me so long to get acquainted with this useful tool.

With all the recent media coverage of the earthquake that devastated Haiti, I found comfort in seeing the families that were able to see their loved ones through Skype. How fortunate we are to have this technology available free of charge to all.

I was also very amazed to see how many Maria Childs exist throughout the world. I guess I am not as unique as I had hoped!

Itunes Search

Today I spent many hours exploring itunes in ways I never imagined. Until a year ago when I bought my son an itouch, I believed ipods were only for music. After Connor starting downloading tv shows and movies, playing games and getting online I realized they had other uses. Now, I am once again amazed to see what itunes has to offer. I had no idea that there were lesson plan ideas and explanations for lessons. I began my search by first entering second grade lessons which yielded no results. I then tried k-6 lessons, which was also a dead end. The third time was a charm, math lessons. There were several hits to scroll through. I found that the Podcasts (Video Math Tutor), were all above the level I was looking for but some of the clips were beneficial. The two best clips came from Michigan's MI Learning and Florida Department of Education. There was a virtual math manipulatives clip which shared a screencast on how to utilize the Illuminations.nctm.org site. It had step by step instructions that could prove quite beneficial in a primary classroom. It had exploration lessons and activity sheets. There was also a link to edutopia.org that would be great for intermediate grades. When I tried searching for individual lessons such as money or inferring, I found the disappointing results. Once again the clips were above the grade level I teach but definately great for older grades or even adults.
Overall, I was very pleased with the beginning of my exploration of itunes.