New Year's Resolution: Technology Linky

Another day, another linky! lol! Today I am linking up with Kathleen from Growing Kinders to bring you my technology resolutions.

I've been hopping from blog to blog reading about all the cool things everyone does in their class and I must say, I am one of the unfortunate ones. BOO! No smartboards or class sets of ipads here. I would definitely love to try and write a grant if someone could steer me in the right direction (wink). A few years ago each one of us received three computers for our classrooms- but there was no money left for maintenance. Crazy huh?! So, needless to say how many years later almost half of those computers are now sitting in a storage room broken or left with no anti-virus. Out of my three, only one is still alive today. I do have an old laptop that I let my kids use and on Friday's I bring in my ipad as an incentive, but one ipad and 19 little 5 year-olds sometimes creates more chaos then fun :(

I have a multimedia projector that I use to showcase short stories and fun songs from youtube and teachertube.com. I also recently projected images of polar bears from nationalgeographickids.com and my kids just had the most fun. I think they just like it when the lights turn off. They say they feel like they're at the movies...lol! 

my videos are taking forever to upload so here are the links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUubMSfIs-U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0icbq
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-V4zzXzpT8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPWZu4LDmQM

Two of my favorite sites filled with a plethora of technology information, as well as TONS of other information are:

 

and

{click images to go to websites}

These websites offer a lot of articles on recommended apps, websites, technology trends, educational social networds (twiducate...have you heard of that?), using apps to create study guides, & MORE! There is even an article on edudemic on how to know if you're correctly integrating technology! Click here to read more.

Have you heard of this website? It's similar to pinterest but for educators!!

You must check it out!

A few of my favorite websites & apps for my kiddos are:

Starfall.com

I spy fun from scholastic.com

madlibs.com

  

Flow Free- a fun app where you have to connect matching colors with a pipe creating a "flow". Pipes break if they overlap or cross so be careful! 

 

Harper Collins for tons of games & printable pages

crayola.com (great ideas/ lesson plans for teachers too)

Banana Math App (Drill Math Word Problems)

More Images

 

Online Storytime by Barnes & Noble

There are 16 popular children's books posted so far- my kids absolutely love this! 

Whew! If you're still with me, here are my resolutions:

1. To be more consistent

2. To have a better plan/ schedule for my kids to use the one ipad that I have.

3. To show my kids how to type their name using Word.

I'm not sure if I can call the third one a resolution since one of our standards is to teach students the parts of a computer as well as get them acquainted with the keyboard. They don't have to know where specific keys are but they need to understand that if I press a key a letter/number/object will be projected onto the screen. I always have fun teaching this because my little ones that aren't exposed to computers are always so fascinated.

Okay, enough of my ramblings...head on over to Kathleen's blog & join the fun!