Tool 8: streaming knowledge

Videos are a great way to stream knowledge into the classroom - whether it be new knowledge (as an introduction to a new unit) or gained knowledge (a review at the middle or end of a unit or lesson).  Through videos' visual input, students develop a better perception of what they are learning and the world around them, while concepts they know are being reinforced.  Besides, kids just enjoy them!  :)

I started off looking for videos on TeacherTube and SchoolTube.  It was difficult to find results because my searches all involved reading intervention skills (reading strategies, word work, critical thinking).  I ended up using Blinkx which showed results from the 2 "Tube" sites, and a few more, but still nothing I could use with my students.  So I changed the topics I was searching.

I found this cute site by Scholastic called StudyJams.  It has math and science videos and interactive step-by-step tutorials.  I could use these for math intervention or to support a science article read in small group.  Here are some of the videos I previewed:

Fractions would be a great as an intro or review for 4th and 5th graders.

This one is called Aquatic Ecosystems and explains well the differences between freshwater and saltwater ecosystems.


Finally, I thought I would give YouTube a try, so I ran the same searches to see what I'd get.  To my surprise, I found several phonics videos that I can show my emergent readers!  YAY!!







The one below was cute but moved a bit too fast to show students - I would probably show a snippet each day I taught a new reading strategy for the kids to see it in action.

Reading Strategies: First Grade (first found on SchoolTube)

Tool 5: digging diigo!

Hi again,

I've spent last night and this morning exploring delicious and diigo.  I think I spent so much time trying to understand these sites because I feel I don't know much about technology, and I want to take full advantage of these tools.  Here are my conclusions:

I joined both sites (I had actually joined delicious because I was trying to send my comic strip from Tool 4 to a safe place - hehe, I didn't want to loose it).  I tried a few different tags, but wanted to try 2 that were the same on both sites to see what results they would come up with.  I tried the tags "reading strategies" and "word families."

Delicious was easy to navigate and manage, but didn't show as many results for my searches.  I bookmarked these sites:

Reading Rockets: Classroom Strategies

Arcademic Skill Builders: Online Educational Games

Diigo's layout was even more user friendly.  The links were cleaner and easier to read.  They definitely had more matches result from my searches.  I joined a group called LearningwithComputers, and bookmarked these sites I liked:

Word Way

FreeReading

I look forward to trying the highlight and post-it tools on diigo for my personal use, and also with my older students.  It will be a great way to learn, practice and work together on their reading skills.