Odle,+Jennifer+Burns+-+Cool+Tools+Review

==I am an Algebra 1 teacher at my school. Most of my students are freshman however I do get some upper classmen mixed in most semesters. I teach a mix of Intro to Algebra and Algebra 1 during the first semester with straight Algebra second semester. We learned quite a bit during our week at the Friday Institute and it is almost hard to decide which strategies I would like to focus on. I do know that I am very interested in edmodo.com, todaysmeet.com, and goanimate.com. I am very interested in applying these tools in my Intro classes and watching them learn and become accustom to new technologies. The more interesting part will be seeing them use these same concepts in their Algebra 1 class in the next semester. I plan to incorporate activities posted through edmodo and use it as a tool for the students to collaborate and post their assignments to instead of turning them in during class. I will have access to a mobile lab and I think this will help reach the students who do not have internet access at home. Todaysmeet.com will hopefully be used with a bellringer activity. Something the students can post to as they come in to class and get settled.== ==As this semester starts with the new common core I am not sure what my framework is going to be. I like the idea of the PBI but I am just not sure exactly how it is going to work since I am not comfortable with the objectives of the common core yet. However I do know that I will encourage students to use tools such as goanimate.com to help with explaining their processes of solving problems and showing their process to their peers. Not mentioned above is the idea of using my previously created blog as a parent communication tool along with email.== ==I attended the Cool Tools session on Google Docs. I have briefly used this tool since we use gmail at work so I wanted to learn more about it. I knew that it was used for documents but honestly didn't know that I could use it to make a presentation, survey, etc. In the session, creating a survey was demonstrated and then we had a chance to make it applicable. In my classroom I could see using this tool to create presentations that could be uploaded to my edmodo site and used for students who missed notes in class. It could also be used to present a project that they had to input data on a regular basis for me to review. I really liked how it summarizes the input and applies it to graphs and such. As my students use more technology in the classroom I would like to see them using google docs as well. As for the other cool tools that we were exposed to during the week, there are so many to refer to but as mentioned above one of my favorite tools was goanimate.com. I also enjoyed using the weebly for my PBI presentation. I could see myself using this tool quite often for activities as well as to link my blog so that parents can see what we are doing in class.==