Blog #8 Education Tools

After typing in Google "education tools" I clicked on Edudemic which is amazing. It had 50 links to all sorts of tools that will be useful for me as a teacher. I immediately added the website to my favorites tools bar. I literally just kept scrolling down pages reading all of the options in this virtual world. I could have stayed and read all 50 links but it would have taken me days to read it all. It was very hard to pick my favorites. But I have narrowed it down to a few sites I know I will be using soon.

As a soon to be elementary education teacher, I need to remember first to keep children's intrests in mind. I found that using Creaza would be extremely beneficial for children because it is a program online where students can create cartoons and brainstorm with other classmates. This program will help children with computer skills, editing and programing videos, all while using their imaginations. Project based learning at its finest.

An easy and organized way of making flashcards and quizzes can be done using Quizlet. I can remember using Quizlet in school when our teacher asked us to make flashcards. Sometimes we would even get to make our own quizzes. Basically you get to pretend to be the teacher and have your book and notes out on your desk and create your own questions. The goal was to brainstorm and gather ideas about what you(as the student) would expect the teacher to put on the real test. This gets the student involved in looking up information, making sure they have the correct answers, and organizing them into a homemade quiz. Then they can exchange the quizzes with other classmates.

Some tools that would be benifial for me as the teacher would be MasteryConnect, this allows me to keep track of Common Core standards and make sure I am sticking to them. I can not wait to download Diigo! I am very old school when it comes to reading books on electronic devices. I can't quite make the leap to buying an Kindle or Nook. The reason being, is that I love to hold books in my hands, highlight, underline, and fold over page corners. But with Diigo, it allows me to do that with everything I read on the computer. Using this will allow me to make that leap into electronic reading.

The internet is filled to the rim with kids games. The major downside to online gaming in schools is that most do not educational. On the bright side there are several webistes that have games that are just educational games that foster learning with every subject in mind. I like Fun Brain, MangaHigh, and Kerproof. These websites cover all subjects and are not blocked on school computers.

I am so happy to have had this as a blog post assigment because this has reviled some of my worries about finding the right tools for my further classrooms. I can't wait to use these. I know that by the time I graduate there will be even more opportunities and tools to make it easier.