Looking for some heroes

Tool # 7 Making my classroom flat; stepping beyond the classroom walls

Skype is still my favorite tool and I am VERY excited to see the teacher/school resources with projects and people looking for connections! Looking for some experts out there to add their insights.

I'm going to work on look at my new 2nd grade curriculum to come up with my lesson outline and will add it to this post in a few days. Until then, I really like this global connecting site the best http://www.ccproject.org/travel/index1.html It provides many resources that would be ready to go with teaching. This one school in Namibia has students give a tour around their campus with video. Although the students are not able to interact with each other, it is fun to see outside of the classroom. http://www.ccproject.org/travel/library/videos/vanrhyntour.html

Tool #6 Discussions and beyond

Since every one seemed to be adding the well wisher gadget, I felt like it was a must for me as well. I can't wait to see who will leave me a special note. With students having access to this social tool I can see how it will promote easy use for students to create discussion between themselves and teachers.

The two tools I have already used in class and love are googledocs and skype. With googledocs I loved that students could be emailed a document and then use them as instructions to create a project. Although I did not use the discussion piece, I look forward to digging in deeper with how to use it to further the creative process.

Skype is OUTSTANDING! I have used this at home, but just at the end of the year we used it to connect within the classroom. The students love the interaction, so understandably some kind of guidelines need to be set. I look forward to connecting with some experts related to our curriculum and perhaps even penpals. Here's my skype name if you want to connect with us: lisa.luce2