My Technology "Menu"

I have composed a "menu" of digital resources that I use/will use in my classroom.  It isn't exhaustive quite yet, but it's a good start.

This past several years I tried several different "Web 2.0" tools and even taught a session on using Web 2.0 tools at a conference this summer.  Last year I felt that I did too many different things and wound up leaving many of my students confused on what tool was to be used to do which part of each assignment.  This year I want to be consistent!  In my last grad class I ran in to the same problem as a student- I had to double and triple-check how I was supposed to turn in assignments.  Did I post them in Assignments? Messages? Chat room? Forums?  It definitely made me crazy at times.

My Big Campus is going to be my "Main Course" where everything will be located.  I plan to mirror much of it on my school website so that parents can have access easily.  The other main "dish" in my repertoire will be Discovery Education, since that will be where the bulk of our science content will be found.  Here's the rest:

Starters- these tools are used by students to find more information and explore the skills and content independently.  xtramath, ten marks, and Khan Academy give students more customized learning experiences, while Explore Learning (Gizmos) and BrainPop provide additional content but are the same for all students.  Wolfram Alpha is like the ultimate calculator.

Desserts- these tools help students present their learning in digital format.  Most of the tools revolve around podcasting, which I have dabbled in for the past two years and plan to emphasize even more this year.  Prezi is a great presentation software.  Honorable mention goes to Glogster which didn't quite make the cut.

Drinks- these tools go with everything; they are used by students to keep track of their learning.  Included is our Student Information System, Skyward, as well as our Homework listing online.

There will likely be more added to this list throughout the year, and I won't limit myself to just these tools, but I also don't want to overwhelm students with too many.  My experience has shown that it is often better to become "experts" at a small amount of tools instead of trying to learn a million of them.