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A webinar presented on May 9, 2012 on Early Childhood Investigations.

Not sure how best to categorize this site- lots going on, from studies" on parents' and educators' attitudes regarding digital media use in young children" to" ways ""new" literacies can converge with emerging media to produce a powerful new learning equation that can stimulate both our early education system and our children's abilities to innovate and create."

Families.com is a great website for parents and families. There is a lot of information on a variety of different topics. This site provides a discussion forum where members can post topics to gain advice or knowledge from other members. I recommend it as an easy way for parents to stay informed and connected with other parents.

Advice blogs and discussions on a variety of topics but not about technology.

This website would be useful for parents and families. Not only do they offer a plethora of blogs, there are message boards, as well as money saving ideas and coupons. This website offers a lot of support to parents or all different types of families. For example, you can sort the blogs you are reading, by selecting "Jewish Family", "Single Parent" or "Fatherhood" just to name a few. Members can comment on blogs and offer their opinions and support. The only thing I did not love about this site is that there are lots of advertisements.

"A Wetpaint website is built on the power of collaborative thinking. Here, you can create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich, user-generated community based around the whatever-it-is that rocks your socks. A social website that's so easy to use, anyone can participate."\n About Us. (2009). retrieved February 28, 2009 , from WetPaint Web Site: http://www.wetpaint.com/page/about \n\n Technology has become such a great assessment and device to drive and promote learning in the classroom. I believe that it would behoove teachers to take advantages of these new tools and incorporate them in the classroom. Technology has open so many new ways to allow teachers and students to collaborate while learning, and WetPaint is the way to go. By using WetPaint, Teachers can create blogs for their classrooms; which may include, syllabus, information, assignment, etc. The students of the classroom can join the bog and post new information, ask questions, work on projects, etc. WetPaint can be used in classrooms of different ages. The teacher can disable ads and other information that children may not need to see. Parents can also read the blogs. This allows a chance for parents to know what their children are learning and promote these ideas at home. WetPaint is can become child-directed, if the teacher is will to make it that way. If teachers allow children a chance to learn about and experience this in the classroom, WetPaint can become a very child-directed technology. The possibilities are endless with using WetPaint.

This blog is written by an early childhood teacher out of Florida. She uses this to update her parents and communicate with them about what is going on in the classroom. She posts entries here and there and also uploads pictures to share, which offers a balanced view of the classroom. She has it organized by recent posts, where parents can click on the title and also by categories. Additionally she has a bar on the side of her page which offers great websites and resources that parents can access.

Scholastic website is well-organized and has good resources available. One can sort online learning activities by age level, including Pre K-K activities. The blog appears to be the same as Christina's Classroom (Christian Germano).

This is a blog written by John Funk who "has worked in the early childhood field since 1979. He has taught preschool, first and second grades, and he spent the largest part of his teaching career in kindergarten. Mr. Funk was named "Utah Teacher of the Year" in 1996. He has worked as an early childhood specialist for a large school district and has managed early childhood services for Salt Lake CAP Head Start. He is past president of the Utah AEYC. As an early childhood, reading, and literacy consultant for the last decade, he has written on early childhood subjects and products for McGraw Hill and Leap Frog. He served on the editorial panel for Young Children magazine published by NAEYC. Currently, Mr. Funk is the Manager of Educational Programs for Excelligence Learning Corporation, and he teaches courses in children's literature and early reading at the University of Utah."

Babies and young children can learn about the world around them through all sorts of real-world objects and safe replicas, from dolls to cardboard boxes to mixing bowls, and even toy cellphones and computers. Babies can learn a great deal just by exploring the ways bowls fit together or by imitating a parent talking on the phone.

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's (ELI's) 7 Things You Should Know About... series provides concise information on emerging learning technologies and related practices. Each brief focuses on a single technology or practice and describes: What it is; How

The idea of this website is a great one--it allows you to create animations and work off of ones created by others. Creating animations is made very easy with DoInk. By being able to see the work of others, it's a good way to get ideas and inspiration. I think that children could have a lot of fun with this; however, the content of the site isn't very appropriate for young children in that some of the animations posted by others may be disturbing for them. There is even a minimum age of 13 to be able to use it. If DoInk were to make a kid-friendly site with this same idea, I think it would be a lot of fun. It's very interactive and allows for an endless amount of creativity and expression. It could be a great website for children to work on by themselves, with friends, or even family members. Once an animation is complete, it can be posted anywhere on the web. This would be great for a classroom blog or to share with family members.

This is a tool that allows users to manage their twitter accounts and tweets from other users on one program on their personal computer. This tool can be combined with other social networking sites. Teachers could use tweet deck to send out tweets and information to their students or parents of their students about what is going on in their classroom

Only useful if someone contacts you to edit a document, or if you upload a document and contact them. More person to person, then person to internet community.

Writeboard is a collaborative document creation tool that can be used between a number of people. This tool quick for anyone to start up. On the homepage you can create your document to be edited by naming the document, then provide your email address. Once the wrtieboard is created you can begin typing! Once the document is complete you can invite people to view and edit your document as well as leave comments. Once the document has been edited by another person, you will be able to compare your document with the newest edited document. One of the challenges I faced when using this tool is the format of the document when typing. In order to indent or make a word bold or italic, a special code needed to be entered. For example, to make the word "Introduction" bold, you would have to type *Introduction*. This actually slowed my typing down, but I feel if this is a tool that you use often, these are codes you could catch on to. The strength of this tool is the option to invite anyone to edit. I feel that this would be useful for teachers to communicate back and forth to share activities and edit them. Or it could be useful as an assignment for students to share a paper and to edit the others. This would help their editing skills. I also like the option to compare and contrast your original document with one that has been recently edited. I think this would be helpful in seeing what improvments were made and choose whether or not you'd like to accept them. I think that this tool would be better for high-school students, or any teacher. The tool would be difficult for anyone younger to use.

Technology in the lives of our children is here to stay. As a creator and developer, I am very pro technology. While there are many things to celebrate there are an equal number of things to be concerned with. My primary concerns are divided into 2 main areas: technology's impact on human to human interaction and the negative effects of shorter and shorter cycles of information, impacting our ability to focus our attention. Throughout of development cycle, we met with a number of parents. The number one thing everyone expressed was, wanting more time for themselves. Being a parent is exhausting and every one needs a break. What concerns me is the kinds of content, the kinds of experiences and fundamentally, the kinds of rhythms involved in those experiences. I don't want the digital baby sitter to over stimulate my kids or to weaken their ability to hold focus. Everything has a rhythm; every person, every moment, every place. As human beings, this is our primary relationship to our world and to each other. Providing parents with experiences that support their child's rhythm is key to the use of technology in the home. When seeking out digital content, I encourage parents to look for things that provide longer times of focus. Save the fun and flashy events for highly active time. Communicate to your child the quality of time as you make content available to them. its focus time - a movie, its fun time - a game, its quiet time - drawing. One of the things we've done with our digital book, is to provide a free downloadable coloring sheets. Every experience should not be digital. In fact, I believe strongly that facilitating the transition back to the analogue world is part of my responsibility as a digital content creator.

Wendy Ewald shares from lessons learned working with children, using photography to express themselves. Lots of interesting ideas.

A technology event at the NAEYC Annual Conference & Expo on November 7 from 1 - 8 pm.

Meetup, Tweetup and share with your ECEtech colleagues at the NAEYC Conference in Atlanta on 11/7 from 1 pm - 8 pm. Learn more! http://ow.ly/dbL8c

Every Wednesday at 9 pm Eastern Time on Twitter! #ECEtechCHAT