YouTube

YouTube can be fun to play with for hours as you get lost in stories and ideas from people all over the world. But did you know that it can also be educational? Well it can be and is.

I have started making a playlist of clips that will be useful in my classroom. Some of these clips I can use right in the class with the children. There are fun pictures and music, both are great for learning. A few are more educational to me as the teacher. I thought I had this amazing idea to add Legos to my curriculum, after seeing how the children ages 3-6 reacted to playing with them at daycare. After looking up educational movies on the YouTudes I found that many other people have also come this same conclusion. So I have saved some of their videos for support to what I am implementing.

Here is a peek at my newest playlist that I believe with keep growing!

Video Tutorial

Holy Cow! This was so fun but also hard for me. I have never really ever done something like this before but as I have learned so much. I enjoyed it so much I would like to keep learning and practicing.

There are many different tools out there for us to use that are free. For example Educreations, and  Screencast-O-Matic. These are both great and could be very useful in the classroom for teachers and students. The program I used was Power Director 14, this is a program that has a free trial for a few days.

Video tutorials can be helpful in our classrooms so many ways. I am focusing on helping parents see and understand how we learn in the classroom. My video is just that. Me working with a student (Kaylee) on a Lego project.

LEGO Learning (LadyDoodle Learning)

Poof, a star is born. Whatever star there is! -Samm (Kaylees daddy)

Storybird

Storybird was so fun. It is a place you can create a story and pick illustrations for that story. This free online tool will be helpful in so many ways. I am excited to make stories with my preschool kids.

Here is a book I made with the help of Kaylee. We had lots of fun. Our Class Year Book

I look forward to exploring this tool better as I use it with my class.

Thinglink

Thinglink was fun to play with and figure out. You could use it for so many things. Children in the classroom could use it for reports and presentations. I am not sure how the children in my preschool could use it on their own, but as a class we could always do a project together.

On my thinglink I used on the Farm as my theme. Through the links you can learn more about animals and what they eat.

Here is a link if you wish to try it for yourselves. thinglink

What is on the Farm? thinglink...

Online Photo Editing

For this project I used the advanced google search to find these pictures that were labeled for reuse. I was very glad and surprised to be able to change the way I look for photos. This new information will so great for use in my classroom. Older children would be able to use this for projects in the classroom.

After I found the pictures I wanted to use i saved them to my drive. Using 3 different photo editing websites I was able to learn how to change the photos with many different tools.

This grumpy puppy was created in ipiccy. I added texture, used the liquid tool to make his eye and mouth bigger, and used the paintbrush to add a little face to the orange thing.

Ipiccy was for me the most simple editor to learn. I think this would be fun for all children even those in my preschool (with some help).

Grumpy Puppy in ipiccy

                                    

I played with this monkey picture in picmonkey. This was fun, the tools were every similar to ipiccy but I personally enjoyed ipiccy better. I used so many different tools I am having a hard time remembering what i use. I did change the coloring, the texture, added stars in the background.

Young Love picmonkey

I used pixlr to edit this photo. This editor was more complicated yet i was able to do a lot more precise work. This would be great for older children, whereas the other two younger children could use easily.

For this photo I used the Lasso/Select/Deselect tool to select just the girl, under adjustments I selected the hue saturation option and was able to change the coloring of the background so that my dancer popped out. After I used the Blur tool to soften the edges of the girl so that it blended and looked a little more natural.

The Red Dancer pixlr

Pinterest in the class room

Pinterest is a great way to share and find ideas from others. I have loved using this tool in so many ways. There are many resources to help anyone in almost any project/activity.

Children in my class can use pinterest to find ideas for activities they would like to do. It is a great tool and the best part it's free!

I have created a board with pins that would be great in my classroom and named it Educational Pins.

Here is just one of the many pins I am planning on using this summer with my kids.

Google Docs

I made this document in Google Docs. (Utah Core Overview) I was able to play with a lot of different tools available. I added add-on fonts, I inserted an image, I added a hyper link, and I modified my personal drawing in Google Draw and added it to my doc as well.

I love that this tool is available to us, when I started college I had to pay a lot of money to be able to have a wordprocessing progran on my Macbook in addition to the cost if the computer itself. Now I am able to buy a computer and have no additional software costs thanks to Google.

This will be very benefical to children in schools and save a lot of money for their families. I hope to have it available for my classes to learn a little more about, everything.

Google slides

This is my first time making any kind of slide project. It have been fun to do. I will continue to learn and expanded my ability. I made a movie with my girls. I then used an online video editer to put the movies together so I could add it to my Slide Show

Check it out let me know what you think.

Creative Arts Slide Show this will take you there.

Padlet

I have played with Padlet.com to learn how i could use this in the future and also how i any be able to have my children in my class use it. I created a board called "What do you do in the summer?" I added photos and text with thing my family and I do in the summer.

I shared my board to Facebook and Google +. I asked people to add to the list of items, 2 people added photos and text, 2 people added their items in the comment section, and 1 person said "i clicked once on all things i like to do, hope that was right." Seeing these responses I learned that not everyone new how the program worked and I needed to explain how to add an item to the board.

I deleted my first Padlet link and re-posted, this time it tells my (students) how to add to the post/item to the board. I will check back in a few hours and days and write a new post on how this works out with my (students) having more instruction.

As for using this tool in my class room I hope I will be able to help my students use this. I know they will need help in creating their boards because I will be teaching preschool but i believe we could have a lot of fun with this.
This is my board so far!

Created with Padlet