”All I really need to know.. I learned in kindergarten.” (Robert Fulghum)

My mum was my kindergarten teacher and I remember playing games, singing and dancing with her. Those days have always been my favourite memories. That may be the reason why I’ve become an English teacher in kindergarten today.

I really love the idea of playing games,singing, dancing, interacting and learning with kids. It’s a great pleasure to be a part of their development process and being their very first English teacher. You should be patient,enthusiastic,fun loving and dedicated and should always keep in mind that what students learn and experience in kindergarten can shape their future and affect their success or their failure in later years.

Kindergarten students learn mainly playing games, singing songs, chanting rhymes, listening to stories or doing any kind of fun activities. It’s such a pleasure for me to see how much they can learn and produce with their limited language. You can watch this short animoto:

(You can read my guest post on Barbara Sakamoto’s blog about teaching in kindergarteners in Turkey.)

I have been using technology with my students in my lessons. When you consider kindergarten, it’s more difficult to integrate technology as my kids don’t know writing or reading. Fortunately, there are some tools that I can use in my classes such as Voicethread, Glogster, Voki, Pimpampum,BubbleJoy,Little Bird Tales, Animoto, slideshows, wikis.

I had seen other kindergarten blog examples in different countries and I had always the thought of having one and this year, the home room teacher of my age 6 class and I have started our first collaborative kindergarten blog ! I can proudly announce that this is the very first kindergarten blog in Turkey!

We are using both languages,Turkish and English. Home room teacher is writing in Turkish with her posts and I’m writing in English.We’re taking pictures, filming kids, using Web 2.0 tools, giving useful links and interacting with parents and our students. Parents also are very pleased about our blog. Some of them have already commented on some of the blog posts and thanking us for creating this blog.

Kids are also very happy and enthusiastic about our blog. They have learnt the address of the blog and they visit our blog often at home and talk about what they have seen on it. We’re also showing the blog once a week in our classes and we’re talking about the pictures and the activities they have done this week. It’s so funny to see their faces or watch their expressions when they see their pictures, hear their voices or watch their films.

What I realize is that blogging in kindergarten has also increased their attention, participation and involvement in my lessons because when they learn English, produce the language or participate in the activities, they know that they can be on the blog and others can see what they are doing at school. They are proud of themselves and I’m proud of them!

Here comes the second week of  “My Faves of the Week”  series. Here are my picks for this week.

 Bibme is an automated bibliography generator. It finds information about your sources and formats the citations for you. This site can save you time while building your bibliography. It also allows you to search from a database of millions of entries to find your source.

MyStickies is a web based application that lets you put a sticky note on any web page you want. You can find your sticky notes still there when you return back to the sites. You can modify the text of the notes or delete them or tag them, you can also see all your notes on one page. You can keep to-do lists and write reminders for yourself.

WideWord is a website that lets you collaborate on a word document with others. The format is easy and quick. You write your text to a format that you are familiar from your blogs. You send your friends/students/colleagues email addresses and it sends the invitation. You can add or remove people if you like. You can keep track of the changes and see the whole history and all the documents are private. It is similar to Writeboard.

Glypho is a great way to write and read novels. You can find many great ideas for novels or you can write your own to inspire others. It works his way: You write your story idea, other users give characters and plot ideas, different users write the first chapter and people select the best chapter by voting or reviewing. It sounds fun and there are a lot to read on this site.

If you are bored with writing emails, you can send your voice now!! You add the button of Waxmail to your outlook and when you need to send an email, you just press the record button and you record your voice. You can type any additional text and send it to the recipients. It’s that easy and fun. I like it!!

WhatShouldIreadNext is a website where you enter a book you like to see what you can read next. The site analyses the database of the readers’ favourite books to suggest your next book. Also, it has a sister website, ThisOneNext. It suggests you to CDs or DVDs to watch next by searching analysing other users’ preferences. 

 SpokenText is a text to speech, audio converter. You can record PDFs, plain texts, ppts, web pages and convert them to speech automatically and listen to them anywhere you want!

“I know only one thing about the technologies that await us in the future: We’ll find ways to tell stories with them!” Jason Ohler

 None of us could image that we could watch videos on internet a decade ago but today we can easily swap videos with higher speed,resolution and higher quality. With telephones, cell phones and every kind of camera, we are capturing and sharing videos today, we owe a big thank you to video sharing sites.

And below, you can have a look at my list of these site.

With 12 Seconds, you can easily capture your 12 minute videos and share it with others. You can use your web cam or your mobile phone and you can embed your videos.

5 minute is a site where you can find short instructional videos by browsing different categories or using the search bar.

Blinkxis another site where you can search through the web to find videos you want, create personal video play lists or build a customized video wall for blog or MySpace pages. It has also adult content filter.

BlipTV is a next generation television network and its service designed for people who are making web shows. The shows may be sitcoms, news magazines, nature shows, dramas, science fiction or tech review shows.

Discovery Education provides digital resources to schools and homes with the goal of making educators more effective, increasing student achievement and connecting parents and classrooms. It has a digital library with over 9.000 titles, it has resources for k8 students to be scientists, high quality content for diverse classroom technology.

Dotsub is a browser based tool enabling subtitling of videos on the web into and from any language.

Ehow is a place where you can find clear and step by step instructions on how to do just about anything.

ForaTV is videos about people, issues and ideas changing the world. You can find video collection of live events, lectures and debates going on all the time at the world’s best universities and conferences.

Graspr is the place to find high quality instructional videos. You can easily find videos on specific topics, take notes and control your viewing experience.

HowStuffWorks is all about easy to understand explanations of how the world actually works.

iCue is a fun, innovative learning environment built around video from NBC News Archives. It is designed to help students with access to thousands of current and historic videos and other resources such as fun games and activities.It also has pop quizzes, game challenges and interactive activities.

JohnLocker aims at helping students, teachers, educators and the public get educated on variety of topics. It provides documentaries and educational videos.

KidsVid is an instructional video sharing site that gives teachers and students necessary tools to implement video production in the classrooms.

Nipedia is an online educational video database. You can select educational videos that are annotated via deep links.These links connect to articles, commentary and other rich media.

Nonfictionvideos is an online archive of documentary films.

SchoolTube provides students and educators a safe,world class and a free media sharing website. All student created videos are teacher approved by registered teachers. It’s a great site for teachers and students to show what they are doing and integrating technology into curriculum.

SchoolWaxTV is designed for schools, educators and students. All the videos on the site are teacher approved so it’s a safe place to use it with kids.

You can find many documentaries on SnagFilms.

Subply lets you to have subtitles and voice over added in any language to their videos.

TeachersTV is a channel and a website which supports the professional development. You can have instant access to professional development videos and resources, learn from other teachers, save time with lessons ideas, tips and keep update with the latest development in education.

Totlol is a video sharing site for kids and parents. All videos are appropriate for children view.

TeacherTube provides an online community for sharing instructional videos for teachers.

Tubetorial is a place where you can find “how to” videos.

On UntamedScience, you can learn about science and biology topics in a  fun and easy way.

VideoJug includes how to videos and ask to expert films that guides you step by step in a easy to follow way.

On Woopid, you can watch technology training videos. You can find your answers by simply watching.

YoutubeEdu lets us easily watch videos from hundreds of universities worldwide.

You can watch free academical video courses from leading universities on AcademicEarth.

ScholarSpot is a video sharing site that offers free university.

SchoolsTube(different from SchoolTube) provides exciting educational resource for students and teachers.

NextVista is an online library for teachers and students.

SqoolTube is a place for K-12 students and teachers where they can find videos on different topics.

StudyBeat is an easy to use digital library of high quality educational content that you can use in your classes to student learning and engagement.

StoryCenter is a video sharing site where you can tell and watch meaningful stories from real lives.

You can find free online educational videos and lessons from all over the world on Neo12.

Hulu,vimeo,youtube,googlevideo, ted , dailymotion, yahoovideoand many others that we can find on internet. Which one is your favourite?