Week 5 Journal

What are your overall take-aways from the methods/tools that you might use to 

differentiate the classroom environment (for teacher productivity and student 

progression)? Which of these may you use in your classroom in the future?

Most of my favorite tools seem to be the most popular with teachers 'in the know'. They are popular for good reason- easy to access and use, usually free, student-friendly, and have great staying power. I could see using these tools in the future with a classroom, as long as they have good computer access. 

For help to "remember everything" and gain access from virtually any device, I could use Evernote, Google Docs and Calendar, or Dropbox. Both the teacher and students can use these sites to store and access resources and assignments. Edmodo is another tool for these purposes, with the advantage of social networking to help with interaction between teachers, students and even parents. So far Edmodo is my personal favorite.

For group projects, Edmodo or Wiggio would be very useful in the classroom. The students would have options for setting group goals, organizing ideas, communication with other members, and submitting a final product where the teacher and group members could access it. Using Screencastomatic (make step-by-step tutorials from your computer) or Xtranormal (free animated do-it-yourself videos) would give students a fun way to present their work.

Through this class, Twitter has become a good source to share information with other teachers. It's definitely not my favorite way to communicate, but it makes it easy to gain access to resources and helpful advice from all over. I use Tweetdeck to help make my tweeting a little less chaotic. However I would not use Twitter with students as I think it is too distracting and unorganized.

There are also all the tools I've mentioned in past weeks for goal-setting, analyzing student differences, and assessing progress. The best thing to keep in mind for me is to keep it simple. With so many different technology tools at our disposal, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of Newness and use something different and/or cooler every week. But to stay organized and focus on the goal of the technology (supporting student learning and teacher productivity), I will do best by using one or two sites for everything. If all the offerings of a site are used to their potential, that's all you really need, in my opinion.