UWW310 Technology & Early Childhood

I have seen this many times and it is scary that some parents knowingly allow their children to lie and put themselves out there. I have also see parents set pages up for their babies and toddlers. Not necessary and very risky!!

Facts about children's literacy. We need to work towards enabling more children to read.

Research shows that ebooks continue to help children's reading skills demonstrating the importance of new programs to help keep them involved and interested in reading.

Research that shows how more young boys would be willing to read in ebook form rather than paperback.

More Than Words is a non profit used book store located in Waltham and in Boston. You can donate used books to the store or go into the stores and buy books! This company hires and encourages young teens in the foster care system or in the care of the state get and maintain jobs. All of the proceeds from the books go toward these young individuals as they are teaching them how to run a business! I have not only bought books for the children I care for, but for myself as well!

While this video does not directly like to Early Childhood Education, I found it to ultimately begin in childhood. They followed, interviewed and surveyed hundreds of men from different backgrounds over 75 years. They found that men who were had strong relationships and were not lonely were more happy AND healthy when they were older. For me, this boiled down to sharing this video with other explaining how important it is to create strong, healthy and positive relationship with you children so that they can continue it into adulthood.

The clip about schools killing creativity really resonated with me. About 9 minutes into the video, he says that schools starts to focus on educating children from the waist up. What he means is that schools are so focused on the core subjects (math, english, etc) that they are forgetting how important the Arts are and what kind of impact not teaching children these subjects can do. He also stated that we do not grow to be artists, we are born artists and we grow out of being artists when we don't utilize our artistic side. This video along with most of the TED talks videos I have seen have really made me think about the way that children are learning and what we can do to help them be the best they can.

This article highlights the issues with curriculum and the importance of emergent curriculum. Teachers are so often wrapped up in producing a curriculum that they don't realize how important it is to base the curriculum on the development and interests of the children. Their ideas and questions can add more meaning behind the activities that they are engaging in. Often times I see teachers doing an activity just to do it instead of doing the activity to teach the children something that they are interested in.

This article was great for offering suggestions on handling the tricky subject of racism and discrimination. Discrimination happens everyday in classrooms. As a parent, I would never want my child to be put in a situation where she was uncomfortable whether it was because someone picked on her for being half african american or because she was a girl. Children should learn to understand that we are all different but deserve to be treated the same. I will be sharing this with my teachers to get some ideas!

This is a great online math software for elementary and middle school students. It is unlike other educational sites because it doesn't have pop ups or "just for fun" games. It also adapts to the individual student, personalizes instruction, develops skills and closes gaps fast, and integrates assessment with instruction. All the while keeping kids engaged and having fun.

Headsprout is a kids reading program that uses effective, interactive online episodes to teach K-5 students the reading fundamentals and comprehension skills they need to become successful readers. It adapts to meet the needs of every unique learner. It keeps students engaged and provides teachers with automated reports that track student progress. This site is a great supplement for classroom instruction.

This is one of the most engaging and fun educational math site that I've come across as it closely resembles a video game. This program has the perfect balance of engaging elements for students and feedback tools for teachers. It is for grades 1-8. Prodigy ensures that each students succeeds at their own pace using a diagnostic test to place students in the correct grade, embedded assessments, and automatic differentiation.

I saw some of the fourth grade boys in my school playing this and thought it was a restricted game! I love that they love it!

Reddit is where people go to share. It has a bunch of groups called subreddits that are used to organize the material. If you add "r/education/" or "r/ECEProfessionals/" to the end of the Reddit link, you will find it to be similar to this: sharing links to relevant education topics.

Free priintable and customizable activities for children for a variety of themes. It also includes printed words for when children start to learn to read. You can also print blank ones in case you don't see something you need or want to let the child make their own.

Digital technology has taken the world by storm - particularly in the past decade. It makes sense that this trend would have an impact on K-12 learning because there is nothing in modern American society that digital technology has not touched.

In the last ten years, technology has changed the way we work and communicate with others - and it's also changed how we interact in the classroom. In fact, some educators argue that technology can improve the classroom by eliminating the need for a physical one, and allow students to learn remotely, from wherever they do their best work.

Last year, Hanna Rosin, a well-known journalist for the Atlantic, wrote an article about her son's Asperger's diagnosis. He lived with this label for only four months, at which point the disorder was expunged from the DSM V. Now, her son is said to be on the "autism spectrum," along with one out of every 68 children in the U.S.

This has been a go-to site for printables for my classroom and send home activities when the parents ask for them. It has activities and ideas on a bunch of topics you may do with preschoolers. Be prepared to use a lot of colored ink.

This website is full of useful sign language to use in the classroom and even in the home. There are pictures and video to teach them to both adults and children.