Replacement+Ideas


 * 1) **Replacement Ideas**
 * **Storybird**-
 * This interactive writing site could easily replace the basic paper and pencil publishing methods. The web site allows students and participants to create, write, and illustrate their writing in innovative and exciting ways. Students will enjoy using this technology resource to share their ideas in a new way. Students will be incorporating their 21st century skills with the literacy elements they have learned in a motivating way. Storybird could be used independently or collaboratively for students and teachers to share information as well as ideas. Teachers could use this tool as a way to introduce concepts or a performance task for any content area.
 * This tool can be used by teachers as well as students as a presentation tool, a way to publish work, or a digital journal to encourage creative thinking and reflection for meaningful learning experiences.

(Storybird information added by Tiffany Wilson)
 * **Discovery Education** -
 * 1) Discovery education can replace the traditional paper and pencil assessments. Discovery education also offers great motivation by enabling games and each time students get an answer correct they can play a game of their choice. This assessment allows students to work at their own pace and gives them immediate feedback. Students can also track their performance at home or school for each standard. Students can also view videos for each standard for remediation or to refresh on a skill before taking an assessment.
 * 2) This tool replaces traditional paper and pencil assessments. This tool allows students to view engaging videos and allows students to work at their own pace which is beneficial for students with accommodations. I have several students that need "extra time." This tool also gives students immediate feedback.

(Discovery Education added by Marivel Villa)


 * **SMARTboard Technologies, Interactive Whiteboards**
 * 1) The interactive whiteboard has replaced countless technologies and rendered several classical tools of the teacher trade obsolete. Beginning with perhaps one of the most incredible things that it has replaced, countless reams of paper, and forests of trees can be saved. I utilize my interactive whiteboard in place of endless worksheets. I have often budgeted a certain amount of money for teacher resource books. Since I received my interactive whiteboard, I purchase eBooks, another newer technology. I am then able to project the entire worksheet page on the board, and using the markers, we complete worksheets as a class. This also works very well for teaching reading strategies. I am able to project an entire reading selection, highlight key words and phrases, write notes in the margin, and model good reader strategies while having the class focus on the board.
 * 2) Of course, the interactive whiteboard has also rendered the overhead projector obsolete. Gone are the days when I need to make copies on to transparency film, cross my fingers and pray that they make it out of the copier without melting fast to the rollers. One thing I used to use my overhead for was when I was teaching fractions. I had a transparent set of fraction circles that I would manipulate on the glass, as the children worked with their own set and we would discuss fractions, compare them, add them, etc. Now, I am able to use virtual manipulatives with the use of a preloaded application that came with the SMARTboard software. I can pull fraction bars on to the page, turn them, lay them on top of others for comparisons, and lead class discussion about fractions without losing pieces.
 * 3) The science lab teacher at my school utilizes her SMARTboard in incredible ways also. I have seen her use it to classify and categorize countless objects, create interactive graphic organizers, and last year she even hosted a virtual frog dissection, without harming a single frog. The possibilities are endless when you use an interactive whiteboard.

(SMARTboard Technologies information added by Amanda Yates)


 * Replacement Ideas: Moodle (Jessica Long) www.moodle.org**

Moodle is a flexible tool, and can become a way to simply deliver information, as in a class website, or become a forum for continued classroom discussion. As a class website, it could replace many aspects of the “20th century classroom,” or, more accurately, the “19th century classroom.” Time and again, research shows that homework posted in a consistent place is helpful to students that struggle with organization. But must that place be in the actual classroom? Moodle provides a consistent place that is available as a computer is. Though a student may not have computer access at his or her home, any public library, or even the school library, would most likely have access. Even smartphones can be tools for education with Moodle, and make something as checking homework or downloading a handout that may have been “lost in the shuffle” a simple affair, and one that is much more in keeping with the skill set of the “digital natives” of today. The average student is used to having information at his or her fingertips—why could the classroom not be the same? In this way, Moodle does have the potential to not only replace the “homework board” in a classroom, but it can replace the notion of a physical classroom itself. Moodle can very well house an entire online classroom, including discussion, papers, and collaborative work shopping. Moodle replaces the entire notion of a physical classroom as the only place “for learning,” and in that, it in itself is more engaging to the 21st century student. Keeping this in mind, the online classroom, though seemingly strange to an adult, is very natural to a student of today. Indeed, Wood (2010) says it best when she paraphrases Prensky in saying that, “…Digital Native methodologies need to be constructed for all subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us” (p. 299). Moodle allows what many students are familiar with, an online forum, with the skills that teachers must challenge students to adopt. In these ways, Moodle replaces not just the blackboard; it replaces the chairs, walls, windows, and doors of the average classroom experience.

Reference: Wood, S. (2010). Technology for teaching and learning: Moodle as a tool for higher education. //International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education//, //22//(3), 299-307.

Glogster: []
 * //__Replacement Ideas __//**
 * Through Glogster students are able to create digital interactive posters that can replace outdated posters boards and construction paper. This new media allows students the freedom to creatively express concepts, content, and expression. Glogster provides enough room to create posters that can replace a variety of other current forms of student activities. Some of these activities include cardboard posters, reports, simple class assignments, and read aloud presentations. Glogster gives students the ability to bring classroom activities into the twenty-first century.
 * Glogster is also able to work for the teacher with respect to replacing traditional presentation material. Teachers can use Glogster to present exiting, vivid, and interactive glogs that students can have access to for the purpose of gaining content and understanding concepts. Realistically Glogster can replace most current forms of media used to present class content. Glogster when in conjunction with student computer access easily replaces the typical presentation material such as board notes, PowerPoint’s, and lectures. Glogster's versatility is what makes it such an excellent tool for the classroom.

(Glogster added by Robert Tatarek)