VoiceThread was the first technology tool I decided to integrate into the project. I visited one of our preschool classrooms to record children saying the letter in their names. Technical difficulty prevented the activity from moving as smoothly as I would have liked. Navigation of VoiceThread on the iPad was not as familiar to me as on the laptop, even though I practiced the day before, so it took a few minutes to do the recordings. The children watched as I took pictures of their name tag and added them to the voicethread. After recording their comments, the children enjoyed hearing their voices played back. The observations of the children's faces as the slideshow played clearly indicated focused attention. This supports the idea that VoiceThread could be used as an instructional tool. Students would have a personal connection to what they create; therefore, they would be more interested in reviewing the thread often. As students leave positive comments with the slides, positive student interactions would increase, along with student self-confidence.
I felt Tagxedo would be a fun way for children to explore letters and the names of classmates. I simply typed in the list of student names to create the first image. I was curious to see which names would be prominent since they were typed only one time each. Since some names were larger than others, I determined the first names typed were the ones that were enlarged. As I selected other shapes for the names, I tried to choose shapes that would be familiar to the students and of interest to them. After a few creations, I realized that a change of font should be considered. After all, students will be exposed to a variety of fonts in the environment. Tagxedo is an easy site to use. I spent quite a bit of time exploring the different color schemes, shapes, and fonts.
Another fun site for creatively displaying images is Mosaic Maker. First, I took pictures of each nametag of the preschool students in the class using the iPad. This took quite a while, but I have the images saved for future uses. Another idea is to take pictures of the students and nametags together to give additional support. Since there are 16 students in the class, I was able to create a table of 4x4. However, if I wanted to do a table of 2x8, I could. I liked changing the colors of the background until I decided what worked best. The mosaic was quickly generated. After looking at the print options, I probably should have created (4) 2x2 mosaics instead so the names would appear larger. Nonetheless, the students have a resource of all the names in the classroom on one sheet.
ScreenChomp was probably the easiest tool for creating a teaching demonstration. I was able to upload a picture of a student's nametag (same one used in Mosaic Maker) for the background to support the demonstration of how to identify and make the letters of the name while using the markers. I was able to record my voice while drawing the letters on the whiteboard. The playback includes the entire demonstration that can be replayed many times. This is another visual lesson that students can access independently when trained how to open the link.
Searching for free apps on the iPad fills lots of my time. Kids Doodle caught my eye when I was looking for a drawing app for students to use to write their names. Of course, students could just write their names with a pen and pencil, but the electrifying line options available with Kids Doodle add a magical feel that entices students to spend more time writing. The key is getting preschoolers to stay focused on the task at hand. Allowing them to spend the first few minutes being creative helps to guide them toward name writing, the desired activity. The nametags, mosaic, or ScreenChomp demonstration would serve as supports for this app.
Teachers have created lots of classroom activities for name recognition practice and have posted them on the web. I found lots of ideas that I wanted to save for later use either because I did not have time to devote to exploring all the information or because I already had enough plans at the time. I created another board on Pinterest just for these sites. Now I can easily go back to the sites when I'm ready.
I was glad to learn about Google Docs in class. I've had to complete many surveys over the years and now I am able to design my own. As I tried different options, I discovered how to add page breaks and how to direct questions to different pages based on certain answers. Using this understanding, I was able to create a survey to assess teacher appeal to the iPad.
Web 2.0 has been one of the best courses I have taken. The practical application of the technology makes this class so worthwhile. The technology can be applied within a broad range of student learning levels; therefore all educators would benefit from this class.
