Technology Integration Web Resources

There are so many web resources available to us that can be used for technology integration that I don't know where to start or what to write about first. A couple Web 2.0 tools that I have used over the last several months are LiveBinders and Glogster.

LiveBinders is a 3-ring binder that is stored on the web and can hold your notes, web resources, directions, etc. on a topic you are researching. I have used LiveBinders for storing web resources on Cyber Safety and SMART Links. Both of these binders are full of web url’s and lesson plans. Another binder I made was for professional development for teachers on Building Reading Literacy.

I think LiveBinders is a fantastic tool for integrating technology because if students are studying Africa, a LiveBinder could be created with all the web resources a teacher wants the student to use and time is not wasted by the student typing in the wrong url or going to blocked sites. It is also very useful for the teacher, because they have their resources in one place on one topic and don’t have to go back and try to find a particular resource.

Another of my favorite technology integration tool is Glogster. Glogster allows you to create a digital poster on any topic. It can be used for book reports, a research project, science reports, etc. Sound, images, and video can be added to glogs. The possibilities are endless.

I have used Glogster as the front page of my school wiki and as a digital artifact to apply for the summer institute at Discovery Education. Our Battle of the Books Discovery Group all created a glog on one of their favorite BOB books that they read. The 8^th grade computer class created a glog for the front page of the Ellis Middle School Book Club wiki.

One of the things I want to work on using Glogster for is a research project. I saw this really cool idea in the May edition of “The Journal”. Traci Blazosky, a first grade teacher from Pennsylvania,  created a virtual field trip on tree frogs. She used Google Earth, Glogster, Blabberize, Discovery Education Streaming, and other web sites on tree frogs. I thought I would create a lesson plan for teachers on endangered animals using the above resources. I would show this lesson plan to the teachers, and then take each resource that I used and make a workshop out of it. By the time we were finished with the workshop, the teachers will have created their own lesson plan/virtual field trip to use in their classrooms.