Welcome to the LA lowdown. Here you will find information about the use of 21st century tools in today's society. Follow me as I learn how to apply each of these 11 tools in my 5th grade language arts classroom.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Tool 9

I think screencasts are a great tool for students and teachers.  As teachers, we can create screencasts to help supplements instruction.  Students can create screencasts to teach each other how to do different tasks on the computer.  I might use this in my classroom to show students how to navigate the web to a website like Odyssey, Easy Tech, Brainpop or tumblebooks.  I could even highlight the steps for a Wordle.  For language arts, the opportunities are endless!

Skype is another useful tool for the classroom.  Videoconferencing is a perfect example of students being able to instantly interact with others without ever leaving the classroom.  One of my goals this year is to Skype in bookclubs with other classrooms across the state.  In addition, currently I'm using it with a colleague who couldn't be with me to learn the ins and outs of sharing information through Jing and Skype.  It is like she was never away from us.  Taking it a step further, parent conferences are coming up and she will easily be able to participate even though she can't be on campus!  Skype is just another example of one of many numerous ways the Internet brings people together across campus, towns, nations and even the world!

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