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In the past, my students have used Photostory3 to show and talk about their learning as a starting point for their Student Led Conference with their parents. I'm now teaching in a mac school so Photostory3 was not an option. After considering iMovie (and all of it's amazing features) I felt that it had too many features that might be distracting for what I wanted. The ease at which a mac allows you to record your voice, and video using the inbuilt webcam and mic was still going to be the foundation of recording our learning but I still needed to find a suitable platform. A wiki was a consideration and then the brainwave of VoiceThread appeared in my head late one night! The more I considered VoiceThread, the more it's interactive features appealed to me. Using Photostory3 meant a final product. Nothing more added, no room for comment by parents and unless you sent the exported movie file, or embedded it on a wiki, no way for other family members in different parts of the country or in other parts of world, to see it. Using VoiceThread was easy! We've already used it several times this year, so the "tool" and how to use it was already established. Here's the step by step organisation we used to complete a digital protfolio for each student in Room202.

Life as a teacher, especially one fresh off attending your own classes, can be hard. You have to wake up early, work late and manage a classroom full of kids, each with their own diverse needs and expectations. Luckily, there are numerous teachers out there who are willing to share their expertise and classroom experiments with teachers young and old. Here are some great blogs that offer insights into what classes of kids are doing around the world as well as providing some great advice on everything from dealing with parents to figuring out grades.

don't let the 100 make you go ARRRRRRRRRRRR Infowhelm! It is broken up into grade areas so hopefully you can find one nugget of gold to help make your classroom blog even better.

With all of the new trends and tools in education technology, there's no reason for special needs students and their teachers and parents to be left behind. This list of 100 useful tools can help anyone with a learning disability like ADHD, dyslexia or test anxiety, as well as students with visual or hearing impairments, use the Internet and other technology systems to help them with reading, math, organization, social skills, and more.

KidRex is a fun and safe search for kids, by kids! KidRex searches emphasize kid-related webpages from across the entire web and are powered by Google Custom Search™ and use Google SafeSearch™ technology.

Good! Have a look and see if there are any ebooks you might use.

"Economics in the Elementary Classroom posted Sep 3, 2010 6:31 PM by lezlie harris [ updated Sep 3, 2010 6:50 PM ] I am so convinced that little children learn more by pretending and playing. I recently found a role-playing economics unit on the Scholastic site. During this unit, the teacher creates a community in the classroom where children apply for jobs, keep time sheets for those jobs, tally their wages, receive a pay check, cash it at the bank, and shop in the class store. Wow, how powerful is that! Think of all the concepts that can be taught within this unit! I can teach data, charts, graphs, money, persuasive writing, and many social studies standards. Since I am always trying to convert classroom activities into elearning activities, here is a Google Template for submitting job applications. My 2nd graders have loved submitting these applications. Their responses are so sweet! I may copy them to include in my parent conferences."

Very cool templates

"There's no right age for having that money talk with your kids. If he or she can spend or borrow, they sure can learn to save and invest. As a recent Reuters article says, it's important to start early because by the time your child reaches high school, their money habits are already forming. So, the buck stops with the parents. Start the money education at the dinner table or take the help of these interactive websites that impart financial literacy in a fun way."

$$ and Kids

"The Internet is wonderful for entertainment and interesting content. However, for kids, that entertaining content isn't always appropriate. It's difficult for parents to allow their kids to use YouTube, because it's very hard to filter out the bad content from the good. Luckily, many of the children's sites across the Internet publish their own version of YouTube, dedicated exclusively for kids and no one else. "

Nice, easy to record and make a QR code for students/parents to hear what the kids have to say about their learning.