TPACK and Acvitities

How can educators take advantage of these items to better improve instruction?

Easy! Its a recipe!
A quality lesson can only be made using 3 ingredients:

1 idea of content
1-2 ideas of pedagogy
 1 or more tools of technology.

Start with content and decide what your students need to know. Then add the pedagogy; How are you gonna teach it? Then last, add the technology that will HELP the implementation of the lesson. If teachers follow these easy steps of the recipe, they will have success and create a "delicious" lesson for their students!

My Favorite Tech Tools

 We are sure that you have some favorite tech tools and gadgets. In this month's blog post, choose your favorite (or two) and tell us about it. Don't forget to include ideas of how it can be used as a teacher or as an instructional tool. 

I absolutely LOVE my Ipads in my classroom! I use them all day everyday and my kindergarten students really enjoy using them. I use them for reading centers by having students play phonics games on apps we downloaded. I use Biguniverse for leveled reading groups during guided reading. I use them as a behavior incentive during reading workshop and allow my "super silent readers of the day" read their books on the Ipads on Biguniverse instead of the plain paper leveled books. I use them during STEM as a math review center using math games and apps or for science looking up weather and other activities.  Lastly I use them as interventions for my low performers on Tier Plans to review letter sounds or sight words during my pull out time for some extra guided practice. They are wonderful tools in a classroom and we have 5 but that is plenty as long as you think in a small group setting.  

Top 10 Reasons I Became a Pinnacle Leader

10. To make my classroom technology rich.
9. To experiment with new technologies.
8. To learn more about programs on the web.
7. To prove kindergarteners are capable of using technology purposefully.
6. To become a leader in my county.
5. To become a leader in my school.
4. To add something awesome to my resume.
3. To meet others who could give me ideas.
2. Because I am getting my masters in Instructional Technology.
1. To become a better teacher!

School year, part 2!

The first part of this year was overall the best I have ever had. I love the new common core curriculum and the teaching style and I like the new additions like the writing units and phonics lessons. Figuring out testing was the biggest obstacle but nothing too bad to stress over. I love having the laptops and Ipads, even though it has taken a while to get my little ones able to independently use them and stay on task. I compared my first semester to Elf since I was always smiling. :-)
Second semester, I am so excited for because my students now understand the procedures and are finally becoming more able to use the technology independently. They know my expectations and some of them are now able to navigate to certain websites all by themselves! We are even typing sentences now at this point and next week we will be "publishing" our how to books on the computers using powerpoint to make books. I will soon add them to google and let them make books on google presentation but I want to get some more typing practice in.
I am just going to keep on smiling like Elf and keep up the positive attitude and faith my students can do anything they set their little minds to. Witten's Kittens are gonna have some fun this semester!