Final Post

My Final Post

During the course of the past 4 and a half weeks I have learned many new multimedia and web 2.0 tools. All of these tools will be helpful in both my personal and professional life. Asking to speak on just one is very difficult. They are all exciting and will serve a special purpose.

Thinking in terms of both a classroom teacher and a teacher librarian, I would have to say that accessing our Grant Wood Area’s online resources page is my biggest takeaway. By accessing this page, I will be able to locate instructions on most everything we have learned during this course. Beyond that, I will be able to access information and resources for both a library and a classroom on most any curricular topic in our district. This is a resource that I am really going to try and sell to the teachers in my building. I am going to make a point to model different ways to use this site for both teacher and student. The benefits of teachers being able to access this site, navigate around it and then put the information found on the site to use, will assist with meeting many of our 21st century skill goals. In the process of meeting these goals, we are teaching our students in a manner that speaks to them and that is engaging. Getting teachers to use the information found on this site will also create 21st century learners which will ultimately better prepare them for the world they will be living and working in.
Below I have provided a few examples of different information and resources that a student or teacher can access using our local AEA 10 online resources site. Here are a few of different things you are able to do with this information.

DE Streaming Iclipart





U.S. Finds It's Getting Crowded Out There; Washington Post (Washington, DC), Marc Kaufman
July 9, 2008 pg.A.1 Lexile Score: 1420 Size: 13K SIRS Researcher
Summary: "Space, like Earth below, is globalizing. And as it does, America's long-held superiority in exploring, exploiting and commercializing 'the final frontier' is slipping away, many experts believe. Although the United States remains dominant in most space-related fields--and owns half the military satellites currently orbiting Earth--experts say the nation's superiority is diminishing, and many other nations are expanding their civilian and commercial space capabilities at a far faster pace." (Washington Post) The "explosion in international space capabilities" as countries like China, Russia and India close in on U.S. space dominance, is reported. Subjects: Astronautics, International cooperation, International Space Station, Space flight, International aspects, Space race, Space research, U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Adm., Outer space, Exploration, Global impact

Above is an academic article found on SIRS (also linked to aea online resources site)

Here is a link to Atomic Learning. Check it out! http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/home


Additional information and resources found at this site include:

• Atomic Learning: webinars and tutorials for a variety of topics including web 2.0 tools.
• Accu Weather: A wonderful source for all of those 2nd and 3rd grade teachers teaching weather.
• Ebsco and 360 learning for academic resources
• Thousands of videos for grades k-12
• Databases for all grade levels and topics.

Our aea website is such an amazing tool. Not only is it free, but it is provided by educators who know our state curriculum. They put tools on this site that they know are relevant to what is going on in our classrooms and our statewide curriculum (Iowa Core). This site is a must see and use!