You.com

I chose to use about.me to create my digital identity home. I thought that it was the friendliest to use and was the most aesthetically pleasing of all the choices. I love that it uses simple radio buttons and icons to link you my social content. I also love that it uses hashtags to explain my interests and things that intrigue me. I appreciated that this format doesn't throw gazillions of pictures at you too. One simple image is all you need to make an impression!

I chose to include the "fun" stuff about me on my page, because this is the love that I would like to connect with others on!  Cooking, Pinterest, DIY, and kitchen stuff are all interesting for me. I would love connect with others who share the same interests!

The link for my page is: here!

A sample photo:

Broadcast Yourself!

Broadcasting yourself...I don't think that this is something that I could do for a living! Kudos to the folks who do this and do this well. :)

I chose to broadcast myself and kept the content light. I picked something to talk about that I love and  am passionate about: kitchen tools! I love to cook and love to find neat kitchen gadgets, and can talk to you for hours about why the Wusthof Nakiri knife is the best knife you can add to you chopping arsenal. I often talk to my coworkers at school about kitchen "stuff" when they are in the market for something new. I enjoy reading, pricing, and experimenting with kitchen stuff, so for me this was a no brainer.

I used the website uStream (because of the wonderful free trial) to broadcast myself. I thought that I would log on and just wing it, and it would turn out wonderfully. What a joke that was! I am not a nervous person, but found myself stuttering over my words, not focusing on the webcam, and making no sense of my thoughts. Epic fail for me!

I had enough of making mistakes and decided to try again, but this time with a list of talking points. I made a list of fun kitchen tools and their uses. I chose to discuss 5 different tools and how vital they are to your kitchen. They are:

• Cutlery: Wusthof Nakiri Knife- 7 inch.
• Cast Iron Cookware: Le Creuset Dutch Oven- 7 quart. 
• Cutting Board: John Boos Wood Grain Cutting Board 
• Tools: Lamson Sharp Slotted Turner
• Pretty & Fun: Mason Cash Mixing Bowls- 4 qt. 

These are all things that I can live without in my kitchen, and wanted others to know how durable and wonderful they are too. So, I placed them all next to my laptop and made sure to highlight them and what I loved most. Having something to really focus on that was tangible was very helpful, because it took the stress off of the camera and helped me not focus on myself so much. I found that once I did this, I felt much more comfortable and ready to broadcast. I also imagined that my tools that I used were the today's specials on the Home Shopping Network. This may sound funny, but it helped me to really think about what I was talking about, but without the selling pressure. 

I really enjoyed this broadcasting assignment, but do realize that a Youtube Cooking Tools Channel may not be in my immediate future. I definitely see how this is helpful in educational situations especially if you were to hold a live help or tutoring session for students. It was an interesting experience, but I am not sure if I will be broadcasting again anytime soon :)

Attending a Webinar!

This week for our webinar assignment, I chose to attend a different webinar than the choices listed.  I think that the webinars listed are great and probably very useful, but I wanted to find a webinar that was useful and applicable to my area expertise. I googled and found a link to a great site that I knew about awhile back, but honestly forgot about! Reading Rockets! This is a great literacy website that is affiliated with University of Virginia and The Curry School of Education. They have resources, author interviews, webinars, and so much more. One of the things that I love is that lots of UVA professors, many of them authors, contribute and lead the Webinars.  Marcia Invernizzi, one of the co-authors of Words Their Way (nationally known word study curriculum) and Carol Ann Tomlinson,  the guru of Differentiated Instruction are both contributors to the webinars on this site.

I chose to participate in the Differentiated Reading Instruction webinar. I feel that this is an area as a teacher that I can always improve in, and want to know more ways to reach my students. Carol Ann Tomlinson was a participant in the webinar that I attended. She provided some excellent strategies on how to level and adjust reading groups and reading instruction to meet the needs of all learners in class. I thought that this was an excellent webinar, and was glad that I re-foudn the site!

Integrating Social Networking

I found that this activity was a bit tougher to plan and execute due to the age of students that I teach. First graders (six year olds) are an odd group of students to social network with. I first considered incorporating Edmodo into my lesson, but decided against it. Edmodo is an excellent tool for students who are good at reading and more mature and able to navigate the site/app more easily. I found that this would pose a pretty big challenge for the little minds that I teach. We regularly use the app SeeSaw in class, and my students are masters at posting, recording, and creating. One thing that SeeSaw does well is protect students privacy by not allowing other parents access to anyones account, except for their child. 

Enter: SeeSaw Blogs! Seesaw has totally revamped their site and app and added another layer of depth to their program by adding a blogging button. Students can now take their work that they would normally upload to their journal and share it on our class blog. How cool is that? The touch of a button, and work is posted to our class blog. The Qr Code for our class blog is below:

 I posted a photo below of the blog access via the globe button:

You can see how easy it is for students to contribute to our blog just by clicking a button. How awesome is that?!

Project Outline: I decided to incorporate our SeeSaw blog into our weekly reading activity from Journeys. We read the story: Gus Takes the Train and focused on short /u/ words all week. A screenshot of my lesson plan is below:

I decided to use our spelling word sort and weekly word work activities as initial posts on our blog. One thing that I think is important to teach our students is the appropriate use of hashtags. I had a good conversation with my students about making sure that they hashtags that they use are relevant to what they are posting.  I also think that using the appropriate hashtags along with posting the correct activity is a great way to not only check for understanding, but also assess students. I love that this encompasses the work, technology use, and so much more into one assessment. How appropriate! I decided to model hashtags for my students and added them to two students work on the blog. I posted a screenshot below:

Although this is a simple way to introduce children to various forms of social networking, I felt that it was most appropriate for their age and "getting their feet wet!" I hope that you agree! Please feel free to post comments or suggestions!

Twitterthon!

This week for our "7 Day Social Immersion Challenge"  I chose to participate in a Twitterthon! I have a twitter account but rarely use it for tweeting or retweeting. I mainly like to use it for trolling and keeping up with current events. I find that it is so easy to access via app and scroll. I honestly found myself getting lost for hours at a time because I would click on a handle and continue clicking links to other Twitter feeds and accounts. You can really get lost on Twitter.

I found a great amount of resources to use in the classroom and professionally via Twitter. I found that majority of the pages that I follow were for personal enjoyment. I LOVE animals and the cute video snippets that you can find online, and The Dodo is a great organization that tweets these all the time. They are pro rescue and animal, and have the best links and animal affiliations. I posted a screenshot of their profile below:

I also have become an adopted Penn State Football fan (thanks to my wonderful significant other) and  found myself actually enjoying PSU football. I followed them as well, and love the video snippets, photos and highlights that they post. I posted a screenshot of their account below also:

One of the reasons that I posted this screenshot was because I wanted to share one of the features that Twitter provides that helps you get lost in Twitterville. Suggested accounts/links! Twitter does a nice job of referencing other accounts that may be similar to the page that you are following or accessing. Warning: clicking these links can be dangerous! You will lose hours of time following one after another. 

I found that this social immersion challenge was not a bad task to take on. The wonderful thing about Twitter is that your tweets don't have to be long at all. A few characters with an optional hashtag is all you need! Twitter has brought such ease with being able to follow other accounts, a touch of a button is all is takes to get you where you may (or may not!) want to go! If you haven't given Twitter a shot, please do. You might be pleasantly surprised!

I knew I wanted to be an educator when...

This assignment was very fun for me because it forced me to step out of the digital storytelling world of IMovie and explore more options. I chose to use an app that I often times use in my class, Sock Puppets (available in the app store). It lets you choose characters and use props and voiceovers to tell your story. I hope that you enjoy!