Blog Post 14

High school foreign languages teacher Jose Picardo has created a fantastic website, Box of Tricks, where he shares many great resources with other educators. His blog won the title of most influential blog of 2011 for educational blogs. There are so many links on his blog! He is connected to everything from Facebook to Flickr, YouTube to Diigo. He has links for tutorials that he has been nice enough to share with us for SMART Boards and podcasts. There are must-have internet tools and informative websites that discuss blogging in education. He shows how to make wikis and how to use social networking in education. His I teach therefore you learn... or do you? video was outstanding. This was an all-around great blog. I started following him on Twitter and Facebook and he is now part of my PLN!

One thing in particular I thought was really cool was the ToonDoo comic strip creation program he suggests. He uses it to teach Spanish vocabulary lessons. He also suggests Animoto, a slideshow program. Both of these sites could be very useful in the classroom, but he admits problems with both programs, which I really appreciated. Everything in technology is not great, so it can be helpful to tell others what does not work for you and why. For instance, he gives a tutorial on how to download Audacity and Lame to make podcasts. I tend to lean towards making a video rather than a podcast. I think podcasts are too bland. Many students are visual, myself included, and there is no more work involved in making a video than a podcast. The most useful link in his blog had to be the A - Z resource guide. After checking out some of the sites on this list, it appears you’d have everything you need to be a technologically savvy teacher. He definitely is on top of technology. I was glad to be introduced to this blog.