Natalie+Maxwell

I really enjoyed looking at Mrs.Shanahan's Wiki. She used the wiki as a way for students to introduce, or describe themselves to their classmates and it also gave them a chance to communicate with one another.

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The wiki books wiki would also be a great tool when working with students on researching information. We don't do any research type projects in first grade but it would be a neat way to find information if need be. []

I also found the next wiki and it is used in a high school classroom as a way for the teacher to communicate about assignments, etc with the students. []

I like the way she had the students created the "poems" to describe themselves and I think this would be a fun thing to do in my classroom with my students at the beginning of the year. I think wikis would be a great tool to use with my room parents when planning parties or classroom activities because we could all communicate about what supplies are needed for the party and who is responsible for bringing what. A wiki would be simple way to keep all of this information in one place. I think wikis would also be a great way to communicate with the other teachers in first grade when planning grade level activities such as field trips. We could make sure we have made all the plans neccessary as well as make sure we have everything we need ready to go.

Web 2.0 Tools to use in the classroom: [] Letter pop is a tool that can be used to create class newletters. I think this website would be a great place to create my class newsletter because after you create it you can just distribute the letter online to parents. Many parents provide e-mail addresses at the beginning of the year so this would be a paperless way to get classroom information out to my parents. If they don't have e-mail of course I would then said home a paper copy.

[] Animoto is a website that can be used to create slideshows with classroom photos. I would like to create one of these slideshows at the end of the school year for my kids with photos that I have taken throughout the year. I like to take photos of them working in class as well as of special activities like field day, field trips, picnics and parties that we have. I think the kids would really enjoy watching the video and I think it would be a nice way to wrap up the school year.

[] The class tools website has a lot of neat tools or games you can create to use in your classroom. I found a digital countdown clock that you can put up on the Smart Board so students know how much time they have left to work, etc. I also found a tool that is a random name picker and you put all student names into the tool and then it will randomly select a student from the list. I usually draw popsicle sticks or something like that but this is something neat you could put up for students to see when you are selecting them for a certain task!