Kidspiration

Kidspiration: A Content Exploration Tool for Elementary School Teachers

Kidspiration is a software program that offers a visual way for elementary school students to explore and understand words, numbers, and concepts.

This program is a content exploration tool, more specifically a open-ended tool. Kidspiration provides opportunities for students to interact with the content and solve problems. This tool can be manipulated to accomodate carious content areas. In the picture above, an example of how to sort parts of speech is displayed. The students are given various vocabulary words, and then they are to sort them into the types of speech each word is. Following that, they are to write sentences using the words. The tool offers a great amount of educational value since the students are able to interact in a fun way with the subject area, in this case, language arts. Then, the subject area is reinforced by having to apply what they just did by writing out sentences.

Professional Development Podcast Summary

Self-Driven and Classroom Based: Professional Development in the 21st Century

The link to the podcast above was found on the http://k12online.ning.com/video website, which contains many podcasts that are excellent for elementary and high school teachers to view.

In this particular podcast, professional development is discussed. The man talking in the podcast beings by talking about how many of us teachers here in the United States have the luxury of using technology in our classroom, whether it be smartboards or powerpoint presentations or computers at each student's desk. Meanwhile, many places in the world do not have these capabilities. Wherever you are as a teacher and what exactly you have, it does not matter. All teachers share a common trait: the classroom. The classroom, as the man says, is a "vital part to our identity". It's where teachers grow as teachers. It is there in the classroom where teachers should develop professionally and be learners themselves. He believes that teachers growth should not be reflected on the current trends, such as the boom in technology. Instead, it should be emerging from their classrooms and starting there. Classroom-based professional development means for teachers to build on relationships with students, involves students in classroom development, and focus on classroom as an evironment. Teachers need to be first and foremost teachers. In order to be teachers, they need to reflect on what they are doing in the classroom and learn from that and then involve and teach their students. Most importantly, the man in this podcast believe that classrooms have to become places where the teachers continually engage in practice and experiment on what is best for the learners.

Pro Teacher! Evaluation

Pro Teacher!

This website offers teaching ideas and resources for elementary school teachers, such as teacher blogs, classroom management strategies, child development discussion, and subject matter content.

Since it offers so many resources for elementary school teachers, it is very useful. It is very efficient for teachers; it seems to cover many topics and issues that come up for elementary school teachers. You won't need to visit any other site; it'll save you time!
The website is also effective, with great quality and will definitely be of use for elementary school teachers.
Also, the website is enhancing for teachers to use. You can partake in discussions and read and contribute to other teachers blogs. It offers opportunity for your voice to be heard and also to listen to others!

The Lesson Plan Library Evaluation

The Lesson Plan Library

The Lesson Plan Library is provided by Discovery Education and contains free lesson plans in numerous subjects for elementary, middle, and high school students, that are written by teachers for teachers.

Teachers can use this tool in their current, or future, classrooms to plan their lesson plans accordingly, with subject topics varying from animals to the micro world to the human body. It is very useful and from the many I have observed, the lesson plans really seem to engage the student with the material being learned. The website offers efficient lesson plans in being able to teach in a short amount of time and for students to grasp the material. Also, the lesson plans are effective for teaching students, since many of the lesson plans involve having the students have a hands-on approach with the material, thus making their own learning enhancing.