Volunteer Calendar Wiki

I think I came up with a solution to an issue that has been bothering me for two years! I have had a website in the past, and on the website I include a volunteer calendar so parents can keep track of the dates they signed up for, as well as see open dates. Then they would email me if they want to sign up for a date and I would update the calendar. It seemed a little tedious, but it was better than my old method of having the calendar in the hall and having parents come in to fill in dates they wanted. Of course, that is also now a security issue and much more of a hassle and disturbance for parents to come in to do that.

At the Technology Workshop at Indian Hill today, it all of the sudden hit me--I could try to create a wiki volunteer calendar that would allow parents to click on the designated dates and sign up to volunteer on the calendar themselves, eliminating the middle man-me!! I created one and have a link to it from my new website I'm creating. It's still in the rough draft stages, but I have high hopes that it works well this year!

You can check it out here, but I'd appreciate you not making any changes to it right now. :o)

The Lyons Den

I just started following this blog, Literacy is Priceless, and looking back over past posts, I found a post with a website that is pretty cool called The Lyons Den. It's created by a former kindergarten teacher with tons of resources specifically for kindergarten!

Jabbster

I thought this post seemed pretty cool. It's all about a new site called Jabbster where you can create a private social network. It would be neat to try to create one of these for the parents in a classroom to keep them up to date and be able to have discussion forums with them.

Leo the Late Bloomer--Narrowcast

For my narrowcast, I decided to use Jing do a Read Aloud of a book I like to use at the beginning of the year in Kindergarten. It is called Leo the Late Bloomer, and I use it to talk about how everyone works at different paces, and people are good at different things. It starts a good discussion between my students and it's easy for them to remember the story so they like to go back and read it on their own often. I thought it would be neat to make a video of the story being read aloud for students to listen to if they are working on the computer as well! I do not have a scanner available at home, so I took pictures of the pages instead. Once my classroom is clean and I can get in again, I will have more tools to help improve these projects!

Three Tools for Opening Documents

Have I mentioned how much I like Free Technology for Teachers? :o) I am pretty sure most of my great finds are from this site! This post is interesting because it talks about an online program for opening and viewing documents. This has been a hassle for me as a teacher. We have switched from Macs to PCs at our school in the past couple years, and this year we updated to the newest version of Microsoft Word. I had several parents email me after this update and say they couldn't open the attachment that I sent out because they didn't have the right software, so it caused some headaches for people. I also have issues with using old documents that I've created or emailing documents to open on my Mac at home. These programs listed would help to solve some of those problems.

An About-Face on Facebook?

I just read this article by Greg R. Notess, and I am also undecided about whether or not Facebook has done an about-face and is worthy of more educational or professional uses. As far as education is concerned, it would be intriguing to create groups for a class or use Facebook to search for people with similar interests or people who are associated with something about which you want to learn more. I feel like Facebook pages are more professional and organized than MySpace pages, and they are fairly easy to learn. But I also feel that it would be hard to get parents and administrators on board for using Facebook in the classroom. It is also hard to trust everyone on Facebook to be genuine and on it for the right reasons. However, I also think that because Facebook has been opened up to everyone now, it has the potential for everyone to think a little smarter about what they share and don't on their own pages. If I was in high school and had my parents as friends, I would make sure there would be nothing to get me in trouble on my page! As an adult, I have colleagues as friends on Facebook, and I make sure that everything on my page represents me well because of that.

Turning Blogs into Newsletters

This post on Free Technology for Teachers is definitely something I'm interested in learning for my classroom! It is about fivefilters.org, which is a service to turn a classroom blog into newsletters! I typically send a newsletter home each week with students, as well as post it on my website. It would save me so much time to just be able to turn the blog into a newsletter! I also would like to cut down on how much paper I use in class, so instead of sending home paper ones with each student, I would simply send them home with students whose homes do not have internet so they can keep up to date without having to follow the blog.

Smarty Games and Others

On Free Technology For Teachers there was another post that included comments about a website for kids called Smarty Games, as well as some other sites that are good for kids. I am intrigued by Smarty Games because it is for kids at various elementary levels and includes games in both math and reading, as well as stories to read.

Smart Bean - Resources for Parents

I was reading a blog on Free Technology for Teachers and I just read about this website called Smart Bean - Resources for Parents that is an online magazine for parents that focuses on using online resources for learning, as well as just basic parenting ideas. I am always looking for good references for parents to put on my website, so I will definitely include this one!

Another K Activity Site

This post from the same blog that I just mentioned also has a great website for Kindergartners. There are a variety of activities that practice a wide spectrum of skills for students. They are also very colorful and appealing to kids!

http://www.classroom20.com/xn/detail/649749:Comment:339313

K Activity Sites

A blog called Technology in Kindergarten--Classroom 2.0 has shown me some interesting things, and I found that this post has some great websites that kindergarten students can use themselves. I'm always looking for new websites that are kid-friendly, so I will definitely look into these!

http://www.classroom20.com/xn/detail/649749:Comment:336248

Blogging Mistakes

I found this blog helpful on Edublogger. It gives the top 5 mistakes new bloggers make and how to fix those mistakes! I'm starring it so I can reference it often because I know I'll be making them. :o)

http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/2009/06/27/here%e2%80%99s-my-top-five-mistakes-made-by-new-bloggers-%e2%80%94-what-are-yours/

Spelling City

I just found a website that I am really excited to use next year to help my students learn sight words! It's www.spellingcity.com, and I can put all the sight words that I have introduced in class on it. Parents and students can go on and find the list to practice or play games to learn the words, as well as take tests to see if they know them. My students would definitely be excited to practice their sight words if there was a game involved at home!

This is the first blog I've truly created. I started one through our school's website creator program and linked it to my website, but it never really took off, meaning I never really did anything with it. The purpose of it was for me to make requests of parents and let them respond if they could help so that everyone would know that the role has been filled. It didn't work so well.

I am excited to start using blogs in my classroom, and I am trying to think of how it could work with Kindergartners. My thought right now is to have the class come up with a question they want to ask parents each week and posting it, so we can see and read parent responses together.

I have a website already, but I would like it to be more interactive, letting parents comment or ask questions through the website instead of just emailing me about things. I would also like to try to be more paperless--right now I send home a newsletter each week as well as post it to my website, but it would be great if I could post it in a blog that would alert parents to read it instead of trusting that they go to my website each week to read it. That way I could eliminate the need of sending a paper one home (at least to students whose parents have internet at home).