DC Digital Literacy: Share Resource-Carrie Gaul

Carrie Gaul

I am taking this course for license renewal.  I previously taught 4th and 5th grade, and currently stay home with our children, ranging from under age 1 to age 7.  I will share how I can use the explored resources with our children and as a future teacher at the elementary level.

Communication Tool: Storybird Stories. I registered for an account on Storybird and explored its features.  This is an amazing tool that I will use with my children to creatively express and share their online research on a topic by designing a creation in the form of a multi-chapter book, a picture book, or a poem.  

Collaboration Tool: GoToMeeting. I explored GoToMeeting. Our family used it to communicate with each other last week when in different countries. It worked well every time. We were able to communicate and collaborate on ideas, and see each other on live video.

Creativity Tool:  Scratch. I expored Scratch. I will use this tool as a great way to expose children to programming, with a kid friendly approach.  It will encourage creative use and learning of computer skills in this increasingly digital world.

Critical Thinking Tool:  NCES Kids Zone Create a Graph.  I will use this tool for students to create graphs and charts on research, the weather, and class polls. Options include the creation of bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts and XY line plots.  

Organizational Tool:  Google Drive. I think this will be a useful tool for organizing documents and keeping them in an accessible place. This will help myself and students as well to locate and use important documents.

Thanks for the great ideas.  My sister is a preschool teacher and your offerings will be very helpful to her.  For myself, as someone who is now stepping into all this new technology I just realized that using programs aimed at teaching young kids technology is a great way for me to learn and not get frustrated.  There is so much that is intuitive within all this new tech.  Thanks

I agree Google Drive is very useful.  As a substitute teacher I see it often used for collaborative assignments.  I would use this in my classroom as well, but you need a clear "driver"...and that has to vary so others take the lead on assignments and not just one individual who wants to get it done.