I really enjoyed discovering new technology tools to integrate into my lessons in this course. I updated some of my favorites in my Favorite Tech Tools and Links (check out the sidebar). For ways that I integrated them into my lessons, check out my EEND678Z Technology Integration Artifact page.
Some of my favorite new tech tools that I discovered were ClassHook, a tool for integrating short video clips into lessons. There are several categories of lessons, including music (YAY!) While I would like to have seen more video clips for music, this was a great place to start. Finally, someplace else to look other than YouTube! I loved the Jimmy Fallon videos in particular. I used those ideas to search up more resources from his other musical skits. What I love about the Jimmy Fallon videos is that he takes popular songs and plays them on classroom musical instruments. It is so fun to watch! I am hoping to integrate these more into my lessons. I had always known these were out there but never thought to use them.
Another resource that I found through this class is Wizer, a website that lets you build interactive worksheets for students (I included this in my Favorite Tech Tools and Links sidebar also). While I haven't used this yet, it looks VERY COOL! Something that I definitely would use in my classroom to eliminate all of those paper worksheets!!! I think I could incorporate this into my Google Classroom which I have just started using with my students in 3rd-5th grades. I am hoping to keep expanding on this idea!
A third VERY COOL resource that I found helpful for me is PowToon, a video creation website. In one of my previous technology classes I had become introduced to this resource, but as we know, how often do we have time to actually EXPLORE? I never had the chance to really use this resource. I took a chance with this class and created a video to reinforce some of the recorder concepts students are learning in 3rd grade music, so that my students had this as a resource to access outside of class. I found this much more user-friendly than Adobe Spark, which our district currently uses and I had used before to create a book trailer; however, I had alot of problems saving my data in Adobe Spark (not sure if this was a district problem or what), but this totally turned me off to using this as a resource. Since currently I am not a big Adobe fan, I think I will stick to using PowToon for my videos for now.
