Perry's Cool Tools

Twitter is the one form of social media that I never quite took the time to understand. Now that I have had some direction and time to explore, I am impressed with the amount of information available. Users add hashtags that organize their tweets into topics. A simple search offers several different resources from all kinds of individuals. When searching #tlchat and #edchat I found several different lesson ideas, available resources and interesting topics surrounding education. While I'm not sure I found anything I could use directly in my classroom, I'm sure with some more time to explore I'd come across several pertinent materials. I personally do not have a Twitter; however, I could definitely see myself getting one sometime soon. I think Twitter would be a cool medium to connect with students and families to communicate assignments, announcements and different school functions going on. I think our current forms of communication are dated. People do not always want ...

I had a lot of fun playing around with Google Drawings. At first I went through a couple of the examples and tried my hand and creating a planet of my own after watching an instructional video. Afterwards I played around a little bit and tried looking at ways I could use this in my classroom. I found that this tool would be an excellent beginning of the year activity for students to introduce themselves. The ability to search the web for countless images to add to you drawing would be great for an electronic collage. I especially liked the transparency features that allow you to drag and place items over a background. It made the drawing more crisp and professional looking.

I'm Alex Perry. I am in my 7th year as a Special Education/Mathematics teacher in the district. I currently work at the Leadership Academy. A coworker told me about this program and all of the cool things that it offered, so I decided to check it out. I was drawn to the freedom of choosing topics of interest that Cool Tools allows. I'm looking forward to learning some new things that I can use in my practices.

I had a fun time playing around with Bitmoji. There were so many different options, I did not find it difficult to make a character that resembled me. The one thing that a really like about Bitmoji, along with the customizable avatar, is the countless number of emotions the avatar can convey. I think these would be awesome to use as stickers to provide feedback to my students. They provide light hearted feedback that I think students can relate to. I know several of my students have their own Bitmoji's that they use in texts and other forms of social media (snapchat, facebook, etc.) I can see how a student would find more enjoyment and value in being awarded with a tiny sticker of a cartoon version of their teacher to acknowledge a job well done rather than a traditional gold star.  I also found it really helpful that Chrome allows you to install Bitmoji directly onto it, making it easy to insert them within documents. Just writing this blog I was easily able to s...