There are just a few thoughts that I had as I used this tool.  First of all I liked the easy way that it laid out the students and showed clearly the ones that needed more help.  In the past i have used the AimsWeb sight, and though it has some of the same tools, it's not quite as easy to lay it all out like it was on Data Dashboard.  This particular assignment didn't do much for me just because being a Kindergarten teacher means that I don't have any data for my new class yet.  So I had to use data from last year.  I guess it was beneficial to play around with the settings and tools for future reference though.  I think it will be a nice tool when I am doing my quadrant sorts to put the students into skill based groups.  Makes things a little easier for me! 

Day 1/Monday
       Today we are beginning by learning about what storytelling is, how it has evolved,  and how we can be creative in telling our own stories.  Digital storytelling helps build 21st century skills. 
Six elements of a good story:  1) Live Inside Your Story    2) Unfolding Lessons Learned     3) Developing Creative Tension    4)Economizing the Story Told   5)  Showing not Telling
6) Developing Craftsmanship
    Storyboarding....Walt Disney is one of the best examples for using storyboarding.  I LOVE Disney!  I can definitely relate to storyboarding and planning out the story on paper before doing the actual work. 


Day2/Tuesday
   We have spent the morning learning about using IMovie on the laptops.  I was surprised at how different it was than using it on my IPad.  I learned a lot about creating different projects.  I had a few problems with trying to get my pictures to fit the frame that I wanted, but I was able to figure it out eventually.  I loved creating the trailers!  I think that they are a lot of fun and it makes it really easy to make a professional looking trailer. 
    As far as implementation in my classroom, I don't see myself ever using this in Kindergarten.  At least to the extent of having the students create anything themselves.  I can see myself creating movies and having them do little acting scenes or giving me ideas for what we could do, but I wouldn't be having them do any of the actual editing.  I think it would be a blast to have the kids reenact a story that we have read and record it, but I am worried about having time for anything that like with the new curriculum that we have been given.  Reading Street is so time intensive, especially in a half day Kindergarten, that I don't see any spare minutes anywhere.  I even have to give up my library and computer rotation times!  But I will keep it all in my mind and hope to find some time that opens up as I get used to the routines etc. 

Day 3/ Wednesday
    Garageband today was a lot of fun.  I love music, so this is a tool that I personally was excited to learn about.  As far as using it in my classroom, I would be pretty limited.  I think the kids would really enjoy playing around with the different sounds and recording their voices, but it would be difficult to teach them anything technical about music at their young age.  We could play with beat and rhythm in small groups!  That would be a lot of fun! 
    The rest of the day we worked on our final projects.  I finally came up with an idea for mine!!  I decided to use my spring break trip in 2010, because it's what I have the most pictures for. 

Day 4 and 5
   We worked on our projects.  I enjoyed playing with IMovie and practicing those skills.  I don't think that my kids would ever be able to make their own IMovies, but we could do some in small groups...hence my action plan!! 
   I enjoyed watching everyone's movies.  People are so much more creative than I am. 


Overall I really enjoyed the class.  I have fun with using the creative storytelling technologies that are available.  I hope that I can use them, however simplistic it may be, in my classroom this year!  

These kinds of stories always make me so sad.  It is just so unnecessary for people to pull others down, and yet our world is full of it.  I found this particular story to be more senseless than usual.  I couldn't believe that someone-- especially an adult, would tear a child down that way.  Obviously if this person was a parent as well, they would understand the precious and unstable self-esteem that often accompanies teenagers.  I am so confused as to why they would go to such lengths to bring this poor girl down. 
    As for the consequences and law enforcement, I think that it's an extremely difficult thing to judge.  I definitely believe that the woman who set up the fraudulent account should face some repercussions.  If our children see adults bullying others and not facing any sort of negative consequence, how can we expect them to learn that it is wrong?  And yet I am not sure how law-enforcement could deal with this particular case because it's so common.  Cyber-bullying happens all the time, and it's wrong.  But it is a rare thing for it to result in suicide.  So how do they distinguish the severity of punishment if two people do the exact same type of bullying, but one results in suicide and the other just a lowered self-esteem?  I'm not sure how well I am making sense!  I think that consequences should be along the same lines as a child would get.  If it is a first time offense, they get a warning, second time- maybe a fine, and on until they are serving jail time.  But how do you monitor things like that?? 
     Could this situation have been prevented?  Absolutely.  I think that if Megan had been better educated about online bullying, or if her parents were more involved in what was going on, she might have been able to see the signs earlier.  Education about the issues is huge!  Also I guess harsher punishments for offenders?  But that gets into the difficulties of tracking offenses and judging severity.  I guess I just wish that our world could play nice with each other!!  World peace anyone? 

Prezi--- I used this for my final presentation during our first class.  So I have had a little exposure to it.  It was fun to use, but it was also slightly complicated.  There is no way that my students could create one, but I could create something to present to the kids.  They would definitely be more interested in that than a powerpoint, but it requires way more creativity on my part.  I found creating the actual prezi was frustrating.  I don't know if I am just not creative enough or what, but I didn't really like it. 
VoiceThread---
  There were a lot of pretty good ideas for using this.  Most of them are geared for older grades, but I could fairly easily adapt to Kindergarten on a few.  I admit that I had a hard time coming up with ideas for using social media in Kindergarten. 

DropBox:
  I love this tool, but I don't see how I can use it with my students.  Possibly with the parents.  But I think I would rather use GoogleDocs for that.  Great for secondary though!
I can see how it is good for collaboration on group projects, but I would be worried that other students would go through and change their assignments without their knowledge. 
GoogleDocs:
   Fun experiment.  I will have to experiment with this a little more to find ways to use it in my classroom.  I think it will be more useful to me for use with parents than with students....surprise surprise!!  :)
GooglePlus:
   I have used this a little before.  But I never have gotten into it.  I agree that it's just not really the tool for me.  I think that Facebook is just the same for my purposes.  It's not available for K-12 use, so would have to use my personal account. 
GoogleHangouts:
Video tool like Skype.  Allows people to video conference, or "hangout" together.  UP to 10 people together at once. 
Skype:
  Fun!  I definitely could do this in Kindergarten :)

So I will absolutely admit that I was pretty hesitant about this activity when we started out.  I didn't really get it.  But after the activity in class last week I was converted.  Just reading the firsthand account made me so much more interested in this particular historical event.  I felt like I had a window into the bombing, and I could feel the emotions that so many who were involved were feeling.  Because I had the chance to participate and add to the tweets, I think I was that much more interested during the actual process on Twitter.  I thought it was really cool to see how all the time lines matched up and what was going on in different places at the same time.  I really enjoyed seeing the work that others had put into it as well.  There were some accounts that I really want to go back and actually read.  I know that this particular activity would never work out in Kindergarten, but I can see immense value in older grades.  I would do this again in a heartbeat!  Loved it!

Twitter--
  I thought that using Twitter for high school or even college classes is a fabulous idea!  For me....not so much.  How do you do it in Kindergarten?? 
Obviously students would be unable to "tweet" on their own.  But we were coming up with some ideas that incorporated using the parents.  For instance, we could have a class twitter hashtag, and write a brief summary each day of what went on, and then ask parents to tweet back what their student said about their experience that day.  It would just be fun to see what was brought up. 
I do know of a few parents in my classroom who are actively involved in Twitter.  I think that there are many possibilities with Twitter, and I hope that someday I will have a chance to further explore them. 

The Pearl Harbor activity was really cool.  I think it's a great idea, and I know that I myself learned a lot that I didn't know about the event.  I think that doing something like this is a classroom would really make things come alive for the students.  They would be able to better relate to those from history.  I really liked it!  I have no idea how it would ever be related to Kindergarten though....have to think about that one. 

Facebook--
   I like having students do "pseudo" facebook pages for historical figures.  Definitely shows some deeper understanding.  But again, very difficult in Kindergarten.  I don't even know how much my students know about Facebook at this point.  Using it to update parents throughout the day is an interesting idea.  I don't think I would remember to do it though!  haha.  Facebook Notes to send home information to parents.  I think it is pretty sad that there are those people that are on Facebook that much, but then again....I am on a lot too. 
Edmodo....very interesting!  Who knew!  Again, wouldn't work in Kindergarten. 

Wikipedia--
- I think that this is a great source to launch a research project, just as long as it isn't the only source of info.  Having the students refer to the references to maintain accuracy is a great way to teach research skills.  This is good for opinion type research.  Yet again....Kindergarten??  Umm, not so sure. 

Creative Commons.....2nd round, for use with students. 
  I enjoyed the little quiz.  I knew more about copyright than I had thought I would.  I still worry about it a lot though.  The internet makes it so easy to get all sorts of media and so often copyright doesn't even cross my mind.  I guess it will just take me some getting used to.  I am glad that they have websites that are dedicated to letting educators and others use their media without worry for copyright.
- I have never used Soundzabound.  It could definitely be an interesting resource, but I haven't had anything come up in the past that I would need it.
-My group and I looked at CultureGrams.  That was pretty cool to explore.  There is a lot of really cool information available here.  If I used it with my class it would have to be very teacher directed, because most of it is reading that they could never handle.   
Creative Commons-
Allows you to out a general license on any work that you do.  This way people don't have to contact you every time they want to use a part of your work.  Your work must be original!  You must have the rights!  Understanding of the operation of creative commons
      -Attribution License: Your work can be used pretty much anywhere, as long as you are credited for your work. 
      - Attribution-No Derivitives:  Same as above, except the person cannot change what you've done. 
      - Attribution-Non Commercial-- ShareAlike:  Can't use commercially, and must be credited and re-licensed the same way. 
     And the list goes on.... I think I will just look them up on the website :)  it makes sense to me any which way.


Fair Use::
-Defense again copyright infringment
  Hard to completely detail and define.  It was created this way on purpose.  The guidelines are open to interpretation. 
      Some guidelines:  Public Domain, Fair Use
- Loved the Fair(y) Use video.  It makes sense to me.  Thanks for providing the link to what is considered Fair Use for us as educators!  I will definitely be referring to that more often now. 
-Definitely think it's always best to err on the side of caution. 

Student Blogging:
KidBlog:  This is cool.....but HOW in Kinder????  I wonder if I started early if they could figure it out.  I do think it's a great idea for the older grades though.  I like the privacy control settings as well. 
I also love that the login provides a list option.  Definitely a plus for Kindergarten!  I put in my high kids....maybe they will be able to type something.  Though we haven't really done a lot of keyboarding.  That will be a goal for next year!

The first thing I noticed as I browsed through these was that a good majority of them didn't have a whole lot of application for me in Kindergarten.  So the 3 I chose are the 3 I could figure a way to use.  (I also had a little trouble getting some of them to load, so maybe I missed some.)

EMedia:
I LOVE this tool.  I have been using it for awhile now.  There are some really great videos for Kindergarten on here.  I love the animated stories.  There are many that we have already read in class, so it is fun to go watch the movie afterwards.  They also have Magic School Bus, which my kids absolutely love.  This is a great resource when we are getting a reward or something. 

NatGeo:
I liked this tool because I noticed that there were some resources for searching different grade levels.  These are subjects that are hard to apply to Kinder, so I love any free ideas for lesson plans I can get!  The problem is finding time during my half day to teach them...

Wonderopolis:
I just liked the idea of this site.  I don't think I could ever use it in Kinder because most of it is above their heads, but it was interesting. 

Thanks for sharing!

I almost forgot that I am supposed to be taking notes for my blog!  But no worries, I am back on top of it J  We started out talking about some of the different online presentation tools.  I was very intrigued with Animoto.  I am all about easy, and that definitely seems easy!  Not quite so intrigued with the Museum Box tool, but it seemed alright.  I think it would be cooler if the blocks were more interactive. 

On to Glogster….I have never heard of this tool before.  I liked the comparison to the poster projects.  That definitely helped me to understand what the purpose of the tool is.  I can’t really imagine using it in Kindergarten, but I could use it myself to create presentations to show to the Kinders.  On the other hand, it might be interesting to let my students attempt to create their own.  They would need help and a lot of supervision, but it could be fun to see what they could come up with. 

Here is the link to my Glog!!  http://missshanda.edu.glogster.com/kindergarten-habitats/  OR it is embedded on the site.  Just click the Glog!! page.