The second presentation that I watched was called Never Too Young by Sharon Betts.  In this presentation, she talked about how you are never too young to use technology and she gave three solutions to technology tools that can be used in the classroom, especially for the younger grades.

The first tool she talked about was ed.VoiceThread.  This is a tool where you can post pictures and then attach a voice to it as a commentary.  You can also leave comments either by writing, or by recording your voice.  I have learned some about voicethread lately and think that this would be a great tool for younger children because they don’t have to worry about typing anything, they can just use their voices.

The second tool she talked about was dipity.  This tool can be used to help with order and organization in the form of a time liner.  One of the examples she gave was showing what a kindergartners day looks like.  She had pictures in a sequence from when they got onto the bus to go to school, to when they came home.  Another example she gave was learning the months of the years.  For the months, some of the things she had under each were videos, pictures, poems, and holidays that occurred in that month.  There is also a place where parents or students can comment.

The third tool she talked about was bloging.  The bloging site that she was showing was called 21classes.  She talked about some of the benefits bloging has to even the youngest students and showed how to make a post and highlighted some features within the site.

I agree that these tools could be very beneficial to teachers, especially ones of the younger grades.  I have experienced the success of blogs in younger classes through my online mentoring with a kindergarten class in New Hampshire, Maria Knee and the Kinderkids.  The teacher writes about things that the class is doing, and the students post pictures that they have made and they each have animal voki’s where they record their voices and it looks like the animal is talking.

Sharon also made a wiki that has all of this information on is, the wiki is at http://nevertooyoung.wikispaces.com/.  I enjoyed this presentation and the information that she gave for teachers who teach the younger grades.