BP4_Web 2.0 Tool

            The web 2.0 tool that I chose to explore is Shidonni. After creating student accounts, this site allows children to create an imaginary pet and an environment for then live it. They can do this by drawing it on the Smart Board or using a mouse. Once their drawings are created they become animated and come to life in the virtual world they create. The pet can either walk or fly, depending on the option chosen by the student. This is perfect for my kindergarteners. Words and stories can also be added. This process encourages creativity and a prompt for students to write their own stories. Students can continue to interact with their pets by dressing them and feeding them. Caring for their very own unique virtual pet promotes a sense of responsibility. This site also provides a service of creating a custom-made toy from the drawings made by the students. I would use this feature to create one pet made by all students for our classroom. It is a wonderful way to show students the results of teamwork. Shamir and Korat (2007) investigated the use of electronic books to support literacy development. Their study found that these books did help improve literacy development and that the improvement was partly do to the meaningful context of the story reading. I feel that having students use a site such as Shidonni and create their own stories creates intrinsic motivation for this literacy development in the same successful way found to be true with electronic books.

            Shidonni not only promotes computer literacy skills it also provides a safe platform for students to become engaged and creative. One of the social aspects of this site is the ability for students to invite friends to play and share creations. This safe environment only makes this possible for children who know each other’s usernames to connect. Pets can also be integrated into games where prizes are new art tools to use and create with. This site is a child’s stepping-stone into the virtual world, where their creativity comes to life.

Shamir, A., & Korat, O. (2007). Developing an Educational E-Book for Fostering Kindergarten Children’s Emergent Literacy. Computers in the Schools, 24(1/2), 125-143. doi:10.1300/J025v24n0109.

BP3_Diigo Group

BP1_Google Reader

     Scholastics is a site provides so many resources for teachers as well as a platform to network and collaborate with other teachers around the country. I use this site to find creative lessons, printable, and mini books for my kindergarten class. One of my favorite tools on this site is the video. I use the videos on interviews with authors as a kick off to our author study. These videos provide a connection for the children with the author before they even begin reading their books. I also show some author videos before students write their own story, just for a little inspiration.

     Kindergarten’s 3 R’s: Respect, Resources and Rants is a blog by a kindergarten teacher, Michaele Sommerville, for kindergarten teachers. This blog provides kindergarten teachers with information and ideas about classroom management, classroom layout, helpful ideas with delimas, as well as monthly theme and daily activity ideas. I found this site to be helpful even in the area of room setting up my classroom. Blog posts from other teachers is also a great aspect of this site. Other teachers bounce off posted ideas and expand on them. It is like a giant brainstorm of kindergarten teachers.

     Edutopia is wonderful place for educators to read about and watch other teachers in action. This site provides blogs sharing new ideas and showing how they are implemented.  Aside for reading the most current happenings in education, the two places I visit most often are the project-based learning tab and the technology integration tab. These places provide me with ideas and possibilities for my classroom and for my Action Research project.

     TED is one of my favorite sites.  The name of this site is derived from people in the areas of technology, entertainment, and design, giving speeches at a TED conference. Its premise is to provide a platform of ideas worth spreading. TED is a site I learned about in the EMDT program. After watching the required videos on TED, I continued to search the site and watch other stimulating and informational videos on my own. The videos were thought provoking and provided different perspectives. This is a site that I will continue to visit as a source of inspiration. I also have provided the link to colleges.  I love this site and I think that every teacher should check it out.

     Classroom 2.0 is a new site to me. I chose to subscribe to this site because it is a network of people that I would like to follow. My AR project is about incorporating technology to improve literacy and I found this site to have a wealth of ideas on how to do that. My goal is to explore and implement Web 2.0 and this site is going to help get me there.

BP2_iGoogle Screen Shots