Internet Resources

As I was reading through the Emerging Ed Tech book, all the topics were extremely interesting but about four or five caught my eye; blogging, cloud apps, brainstorming, and educational games. I was introduced to blogging at the beginning of this course and I'm happy I was. There are different ways to start blogging, you can become a member of different organizations that allow you to post blogs; Educause or Classroom 2.0. Another ways to blog is creating your own blog website. Or  you could make your own profile on different websites where you are able to blog. These websites are edublogs.org and blogger.com. However, after a certain number of days with using edublogs, you do have to subscribe and pay a fee to keep using their site.
Another topic was cloud apps, this includes Google Drive and other teacher back up websites. Google drive is becoming more and more popular over time. Google Drive is associated with google and automatically saves work documents or files. Some aspects to Google drive is mobility, back up, upgrading, and potential. What I mean by mobility is you can access the documents without internet. However, there is a catch to that, you have to select which documents you want access to if you don't have online capabilities. Back up is the saving of the files and documents, you don't have to worry about losing a document if the power goes out; it's already saved. Google drive gives you an option to upgrade if you want more GB storage, depending on what you want to use it for. The meaning for potential is since the documents are automatically saved, students can't use the excuse, "my dog ate my homework. Other 'cloud apps' options are free file sharing and note taking. Free file sharing would be good if teachers want to share files of an activity or homework assignment, they can access a website that does it for them; http://google.com/enterprise/apps/education/. Note-taking is an option to let the students take their notes online through a website, simplenoteapp.com.
Brainstorming tools caught my eye in the book, as well. Another name for this is Idea mapping. The websites the book give are readily used for brainstorming ideas and techniques. According to Ben Davis, "the [students] seemed most interested in was the fact that they could network". These tools let the students surf the web by playing games and learning. The three tools are Bubble, Mind meister, and mind mapper. The last topic is educational games. This topic interested me because I came across all the benefits that the games offered. Some benefits are positive attitude, positive development with ADHD children, cognitive and social growth, and the increasing of the attention span. What I liked about the educational games was that children of all ages and learning abilities are able to use this tool. A slow learner will be able to play just like the smartest kid in the class.

All of these tools will be very useful to me; blogging, cloud apps, brainstorming, and educational games. I already have great ideas about how I can use these tools in my future kindergarten class.
What potential implications do ya'll see with the use of the brainstorming tools? My implications weren't as strong for this tool.

Future Classroom

Considering I have a lot more knowledge on blogs and how they work, I can see myself using them in my future classroom and during student projects. Blogs are becoming more and more popular in schools nowadays. They are an essential key in learning.
I would have my students make a blog at the beginning of the school year and have them use it frequently; every week. During their weekly blogs, I would have them discuss what they've been learning and questions they may have. With the use of blogs, other students could reply and interact. Blogs are a well developed teaching method. Students would be engaged and hopefully stay interacted with one another by replying on others posts.
As I was reading through one of David Warlick's blogs, I noticed something extremely interesting which caught my eye. One of David's thoughts was distinguishing if children are 'students' or 'learners'. This quote from Warlick caught my eye, "What surfaced in my own thinking was that educators continue to think of their charges as students, rather than thinking of them as learners."
This was an interesting remark because once I put more thought into it, I realized this statement is entirely true. In my view as a future educator, I believe children are both students and learners; they intertwine with each other. They are a student in the classroom, but at the same time, they are learners as well because everything they do requires some sort of learning.

Unit Plan

Inquiry based learning is the process of seeking for new information by asking a series of different questions. Through the process of asking questions is where students learn along the way. Inquiry based learning produces more student involvement throughout the classrooms. Students want to learn more, thus, they stay active during school.
Project based learning is working in groups of three or four to solve problems or projects given to them by their teachers. During this activity, students are engaged and motivated to solve the problems. Project based learning focuses on 21st century skills. Students look a variety of skills through project based learning.
Both inquiry and project based learning are included in my Unit Plan in different ways.