My Journey Through Cool Tools and Beyond

                                                      photo from openclipart I have used the traditional PowerPoint often over the years. I also use Google slides on a regular basis. Although both of these forums are easy to use and very powerful tools I really enjoyed exploring new forums..  Buncee brought new life to an old presentation that I use with my students annually. Buncee was fun. Also, having the backgrounds and items (clip art)  built in made the experience timely and entertaining. I also really enjoyed Tellegami and HaikuDeck. Each of these sites are sites that I could see my students enjoying both as the participant and the creator.  Below is a presentation I use for students who are struggling remembering what they have read. It is an introduction to a problem solving challenge that my students participate in. They are assigned the presentation in their google classroom and then they are invited to brainstorm on a shared google doc. The questions po

photo credit from Pixabay I have a few books that a class of mine 30 years ago wrote. I have saved them over the years. Little did I know that 30 years later they could be preserved as digital stories. It is with great pleasure I present to you Harmony the Snowflake written by my second grade after school class from Santa Ana, California. The fun part of this story is that none of my students had ever experienced snow but with a little research and a lot of imagination, they were able to create this beautiful story. Harmony The Snowflake I played with many different tools- some I was familiar with, some were new.  I used Little Bird Tales to produce this digital story. I did not fuss with perfection. I wanted to see how easily it could be done from a students viewpoint. This was a very easy format for students to use. I have students who enjoy writing stories and books. I would be very excited to feature these masterpieces on a regular basis. I was familiar with Vo

OK, so I have to be honest I thought this thing experience was going to be one of the easiest. I also thought I was quite sure that I would not even consider joining Twitter for various reasons that I will not get involved in sharing at this time. As you can see from my PLN above- as I explored Twitter I did find it to be a very valuable tool. I found many other educators to follow. I found organizations that I am involved in to follow. I actually felt a similar experience exploring Twitter that I had when I first discovered Pinterest many years ago. I can see that if I did not keep myself focused I could spend hours exploring and discovering. I will commit to exploring daily but will also do this with mindfulness and purpose. I believe having a PLN will help keep me focused. I will definitely use Twitter as a resource of information and resources professionally. I did take some time to reach out to a few people I know on Twitter. I was surprised to see so many people on Twit

Photos are a tool that always have moved me. They evoke emotion and wonder in me and I think that they do the same for my students. When teaching I often explain to my students that we always need to remember that the pictures are telling as much of the story as the words are. So, needless to say this was a FUN thing to experience. The photo above was a combination of tools. The thank you image is from Unsplash. Although credit is not necessary for this photo :  Photo by  Courtney Hedger  on  Unsplash . I then gathered some meaningful props for the color hand photo and took it on my phone, and pulled up an older photo from my google photos and downloaded it to my phone. I then used a collage tool I have on my phone PhotoGrid to put the collage together and uploaded that photo to my computer. I shared this photo on Instagram also with some of my family members. I have had an Instagram account for 2 years and enjoyed other's posts but never shared before. It was so easy. My fa

Hi my name is Lynne Ronan. I currently am employed as a teacher assistant at Brasher Falls Central School in Brasher Falls NY. I am responsible for our elementary library and our elementary computer lab. Our school runs on a six day cycle and every other day I am either in the library or the lab. I am responsible for whole class- to class and a half instruction grades K-4. My motivation in education began with my parents and numerous extended family all working in the education field. I then returned to my hometown with my children and they attended the same school I attended and my parents taught at. I also have the honor of working at my alma mater. My new motivation is my beautiful granddaughter (above with her mom) and where the future of education needs to go for our future generations. We are in the process of updating our curriculum in both the library and the lab. Our goal is to have the library embedded with maker space experiences and to provide a computer lab that ha