Podcasting

      I love the site BBC World News for Children website which updates children on world news through podcasts. This website breaks up the podcasts into age ranges for each student and also offers many free podcasts to students. My favorite podcast so far is Learn Out Loud which has free speeches of the Great Speeches in History. This podcast is of key speeches in history like King Georges speech which a movie was just created after, the Gettysburg address, and Obama's 2004 speech. This allows students to become part of events which happened years ago. 

ePals

ePals is great way to connect students and teachers all over the world. This site offers ready made lesson plans for teachers to use which include standards, objectives, and a calendar of when to complete each part of the lesson. It also allows you to see new lessons and units which other teachers have made and posted on the web. The beauty of this site is that it allows students to communicate with others who are on the other side of the world with very different perspectives. One of my favorite lessons was one on Holidays. This allows students to see a holiday from another countries point of view, not just to read about it in a text book. Another one I liked was a project on habitats which allowed students to talk to people from another country about what their habitat was and how that influenced them. I will definitely use this program in my class.
                                             

Digital Stories

Digital Stories allows teachers a creative and fun way to introduce new topics in a way that is interesting, quick, and different from the normal procedures. I would use my video about my trip to Guatemala to introduce some scenes a visitor to the country may see in order to get the students interested. I would probably use this most frequently as a hook to start a lesson.
                               

E Books

Creating online books can be used for any different topic, from Eating Healthy to personal biographies, to information about presidents. This allows a quick and fun new way for students to participate in learning! My book would be for the students to create after we did a lesson on eating healthy. The purpose would be for the students to create a book they could share with their parents, someone younger than themselves, or a friend to share what they learned about eating healthy. The book should include a tip about how to eat healthy, why you would want to eat healthy, and some examples of healthy foods.

Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling is a great way to get students involved in creating their own masterpiece about whatever topic you are working on. According to an article by Learning Initiative, for students "The deeper impact [of Digital Storytelling] comes from their thinking critically about effective combinations among audio and visual elements". This provides a way for students to create a work of their own which they can personalize, expand on, and truly be proud of. Digital Storytelling is so great because it has the benefit of "including an effective integration of technology with learning, an emotional connection to content, and increasing ease of sharing content". Students can connect with this project on many levels, whether they are talking about their passions, World War II, or Shakespeare!

                                   
  by  Emily Carlin 

Fakebook

One cool tool which popped up on my twitter was to create a Fakebook page for historical figures where students can add pics, timelines, and info about a person without acutally being attached to Facebook. The kids will love the format and can add friends, comments, videos, and pictures. Also, you can save it to look at it later or link it to a blog.

Twitter

    I had no idea that Twitter could be used effectively in the classroom, but now that I am reading about it I see a number of different ways where it could be helpful to have and to use. One idea I had about using Twitter came from the article 28 Creative Ways Teachers are Using Twitter which talked about posting in real time and emphasizing the character limit. My plan would be to have students write summaries about something they are learning. Because there is a character limit on the posts, students need to learn what is truly important to say about a piece they read. Also, this allows the class to look at the conglomeration of everyone's summaries, compare them, and see what works well about different peoples reactions. Since students are more comfortable communicating through text than through voice many times, it is wise of teachers to use this to their advantage by using resources similar to Twitter.
     Another good idea came from the Educational Twitter Chats Calendar article. This idea was more geared towards teachers personally, but it talked about participating in real time chats with other teachers about technology and education in order to expand skills and share teaching ideas.