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Educators: Staying Connected

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Throughout my teaching experience so far, I've learned (without a doubt) that technology is constantly growing and becoming more necessary every single day. There are so many amazing tools for educators to use to enhance instruction and student exploration in the classroom. This week I gained a couple of new tools to add to my toolbox, and perhaps yours as well. Using the internet to find materials such as images, videos and music can be tricky. Google helps us access a lot of materials, but we sometimes (on purpose or on accident) use someone else's work without the proper licenses. I learned about a website called Creative Commons . This is a space where creators and artists of all kinds can choose to share their work with others and decide, to what degree, those pieces of work can and should be used. While the search results (from my experience) are still very limited, there's a lot of great content available that can be browsed, and the CC community seems to be growin...
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Symbaloo, Padlet, FlipGrid & More Spark Features

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This week I was introduced to a new online bookmarking tool called  Symbaloo . Symbaloo is different than other bookmarking programs I've seen because users can create a specific "webmix" or visual collection of bookmarks with a particular purpose. For example, this week I made a webmix of the educational websites that are safe for my preschoolers to use independently. By using Symbaloo, students are able to quickly choose a recognizable bookmark and begin working or playing. I also did some playing around with Padlet this week. Padlet is a collaboration tool that can be used to organize a variety of ideas and resources. I've participated on Padlet walls as a student, however I've never created a template on my own. Since my students are not old enough to use an application like Padlet independently, this week I created a mock wall demonstrating how the teachers in my building could collaborate about ideas for our monthly Family Fun Nights. You can see my ...
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Flippity, Lesson Plans & Organizational Resources for Teachers

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This week I learned about a new resource called Flippity ! Flippity is an awesome website that allows you to turn a Google Spreadsheet ( Google Sheets ) into many different learning tools for the classroom -- flashcards, crossword puzzles, bingo cards, an interactive hangman game, and my favorite -- a quiz show with gameshow-type questions. I used it to make a memory game (in about 5 minutes!) for my preschoolers matching pictures to beginning letter sounds -- check it out ! I also explored several online resources for Lesson Plans this week. Sometimes it's hard for me to find reliable, standards-based lesson plans for my Head Start classroom because so many websites are K-12 and don't include early childhood, but if you dig deep enough, you can definitely find some good ideas. My personal favorite website for instructional resources is Teachers Pay Teachers . This website community is growing, and I like these lessons because they're created by teachers and are ...
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Google Drive, Google Forms & Google Drawing: Take 2

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Back in January, I started exploring Google Drive a bit, but leave it to Google to always keep us guessing as they constantly develop new features -- it's almost impossible to learn it all. While there are so many cool things you can do with Drive, I want to share three new features I discovered this week that you may also find useful: 1. Google Drive Offline: To use this feature you have to use the Google Chrome browser (which I discovered while I tried to enable it on Safari). Using Chrome, if you go to your Drive Settings by clicking the gear icon, you'll find an Offline option under the General tab. By enabling this feature, your are able to access your Docs, Slides, Sheets and Drawings to edit or create anytime you don't have good WiFi access. Whether you're sitting in an airport or want to work on your back patio, this trick helps you stay connected even when your computer isn't. 2. Lucidchart: This week I also learned that, much like Chrome extension...
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Edmodo & Schoology: Let's get connected!

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Hey everyone! Let's talk about Learning Management Systems. If you've been reading this blog, I submitted a post about Google Classroom  a few months ago (you can revisit that post here ) and I praised it for being user-friendly with a professional, creative-looking layout. I love that it allows teachers to share and post a variety of resources. Google has so many different tools that are able to weave and work together that the possibilities are fairly endless. However, this week I learned about two new systems that share some of those same qualities, but add some additional tools that educators may find helpful as well. First, let's discuss Schoology . Schoology is more interactive than Classroom in that it allows for more collaboration between teacher & student, as well as teacher & teacher. Schoology is still synchronized with Google Docs to allow for easy document/file sharing and editing. It allows teachers to post tests, quizzes & polls with immediate r...
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Ways to Grow Your PLN: Personal Learning Network

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This week has been packed full of learning about new resources to build my PLN (which is a term I had not even heard until now). Every teacher has a Personal Learning Network , whether you know it or not. Every time you look at Pinterest, or educational websites, or teacher blogs for ideas, you're building your PLN -- you're accessing resources that help you learn and grow as an educator. I explored a few new resources this week, including EdWeb and Discovery Education , which are wonderful for K-12 teachers as well as students and parents, but my favorite was definitely Edutopia . Edutopia was founded by George Lucas (of the Star Wars persuasion) and it's goal is to improve education and to promote positive skills & attitudes in students to carry into adult life. I really like the way this website is easy to navigate, and I feel like the topics of the articles and videos are so relevant. The variety of topics is awesome, there's something for everyone -- address...
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Teachers Unite! Educational Blogs, Feedly & Adobe Spark

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As an avid Pinterest user and Google searcher, it's no surprise to me that a teacher's best resources are often other teachers . While I have come across several teacher blogs in my browsing days, this week I really spent some time looking for blogs that would be beneficial for me to follow on a regular basis -- blogs that share ideas about my kids in early childhood land. (Sometimes it feels like it's own island.) Here are some of my favorite finds: Caitlin Tucker Blog Differentiated Kindergarten Teacher Tom An Everyday Story It may seem overwhelming for a busy teacher to keep up with so many different helpful blogs and resources, but this week I learned about Feedly . If you don't know about it, you should check it out. You can easily add all of your favorite blogs to one feed that allows you to quickly scroll through new (and old) content in one browser window. It took me less than 5 minutes to add these to mine. Super easy and super convenient. ...
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About Me

My name is Megan, I live in Overland Park, KS, and I'm a Head Start early childhood teacher. I love music, art, and I'm a little bit stuck in the 90's. This is a blog about useful Google features & technology tools that can be applied to any classroom setting. Teach on!