Fill Your Toolbox

URL shortening:

URL shortening has many benefits for creating links for staff, parents and students. It keeps the link precise and easy to manage. Whenever possible, I create hyperlinks within my communication, but in all other circumstances, I create shortened links. For those who use Twitter, they know the importance of shortened URL due to the limited characters available. One hurdle I've noticed is when using a mobile device, I find it difficult to create shortened URL. I recently searched the app store for a tool, but I couldn't find one.

Tinyurl.com

• Wilkes Blog

http://tinyurl.com/nmmawe5

This is my first time blogging and I find it as a useful way of submitting assignments. In my previous extended learning opportunities, the assignments, research and hard work is submitted and forgotten about. My blog(s) are accessible and 

• School Website

http://tinyurl.com/kdnb23o

Information on my school website stays stagnant throughout the year. Updated information is housed on the class wiki where I can have password protected access due to privacy concerns. This year, we went from using iWeb generated websites to Schoolwires. Over the summer we had trainings to show us the available tools and I created my classroom site and the grade level team webpage.  

QR Codes

• In my room, we just finished studying marine invertebrates. I divided the kids into pairs or triads to research: octopus, crabs, coral, jellyfish, and squid. Together with their group we created iMovies, which I uploaded to Dropbox. With the links, I created individual QR codes that we added to the animals in “QR Reef."

  
  

  
  

  • QR codes are a great way to have students access materials in an independent center in the primary classroom. I wish there was someway I could avoid printing as much paper though. It is the secret passageway for students to access the content their teacher wants them to review.

• An example video of an iMovie my students created.  

• Introducing QR Code Reef! I had so much fun working on this project with my friends. My team has now taken on the endeavor and plans to recreate the project in their classrooms. Parents will access the iMovies at our End of the Year Celebration, along with other iMovies we are creating. Thank you to whomever created the QR Code!

Bookmarklets:

Printliminator: 

Only print out the parts of a web page you actually want. There are many times that I pull pictures from the internet to use with interactive whiteboard apps like Stage and Educreations. However, there are advertisements on these pages that are inappropriate. This tool allows me to quickly and easily remove unwanted content. More efficient than screenshotting and keeps the original theme of the page. Students benefit from printliminator because the content is focused and to the objective. I know that my little ones need content managed as clearly as possible. Students could use this effective tool for synthesizing research and material from the internet. Any opportunities they have to simplify resources the more they appear to retain.

Keepvid: 
Download YouTube videos to your computer for safekeeping. I have playlists that I’ve created on Youtube for counting, alphabet songs and sight word practice that we use in the beginning of the year. One of the biggest hurdles with Youtube is we have to login to bypass the filter and navigate the material. This tool has many benefits to my classroom and is an efficient workflow. In an environment where students have 1:1 mobile devices, I would be excited to take the saved videos download them Dropbox or GoogleDrive, so kids could access the material directly versus a link to Youtube.