I am a teacher in the Surrey School
District. For the past four years, I have been the
Elementary Information and Media Literacy (IML)
Coordinator. In this position, I have been able to work
with administrators, teachers and students. Last year
we developed the Information and Media Literacy learning
capacities. Although developed independently, they
align very closely to the ISTE-Nets-S. In 2007, I
was selected as a Canadian Apple Distinguished Educator.
As of this year, it is a group of 50 Canadian and 1200
world-wide educators with identified expertise in
educational technology leadership. My websites are at
fcweb.sd36.bc.ca/~amboe_k and
iamliterate.wikispaces.com
Kevin's Top 10 Tools as at
1 March 2008
Google Earth -
Bringing the earth to reality for students is amazing.
Students can learn about their surroundings in a way not
possible without a tool such as this. Students can learn it
almost instantly and start finding landmarks that they know.
Wikispaces - I have been using this site for the past
eight months to collaborative develop a knowledge base
around information and media literacy. The free spaces that
are available for teachers means I can recommend it for
other teachers to create their own as well. You can see how
the site has grown from three pages to over 50 pages in the
relatively short time. iamliterate.wikispaces.com
Skype
- Who doesn't like free phone calls. This is both
personally and professionally a valuable tool. We have used
it to conduct meetings on several occasions.
Comic Life - This comic strip creation tool was
purchased for our district last year and students love to
write now. Students are motivated to write and are learning
about the movie creation process at the same time.
Flickr
- Sharing photos that I have made as well as seeing what
others have created is a great service. The additional
features of creating groups to share with and geotagging the
images increases its educational value. flickr.com/amboe_k
Zamzar - I do many presentations and you can't always
rely on the network to be up when you need it most. Zamzar
allows you to convert files and online videos into
downloadable file formats.
Del.icio.us - I have been deep in Del.icio.us for more
than a year and I love the power built into it. I started
with just a few sites, now I have over 1000 sites tagged,
bundled, and shared on several of my other sites. This
amazing tool has allowed me to keep up to date, and forget
the sites I only use or need to tell someone else about a
few times a year.
del.icio.us/amboe_k
iMovie- As part of the iLife suite, iMovie puts
students in the creative driver's seat. I taught secondary
students video editing 10 years ago and it was difficult for
them to learn. I can now teach grade 2 students this much
easier tool that creates just as good of a product. We are
able to allow students to submit assignments in oral and
visual ways instead of text only.
Google Reader
- At first I didn't think I needed an aggregator. I was
using Safari as my reader, but it was limited to that
computer. Google Reader being integrated into the Google
suite made it my choice for a reader. I can't always keep
up on my RSS and blogs but it is easy to review them when I
have time using this tool. I haven't used it with students
yet, but see the potential of setting up feeds for
customized searches for different topics.
Ning
- The size of ning and its communities can be overwhelming
volume. Classroom20.Ning.com is one that I participate in
when I have time. I love that I was able to join several
different educator communities. The conversations are
refreshing and varied.
What are your
Top 10 Tools for learning? Let us know and help us to build
the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008