Sunday, December 14, 2014

The Times, They Are a Changing

So much has changed since I first began Differentiation Station. Initially I wanted this to be a place where I could share free resources that I created for my classroom with other teachers in an effort to pay it forward. Although I sometimes use TPT I never fully felt comfortable in charging my teacher homies for something that I could just give them for FREE. In the beginning as newbie teacher, I was cranking things out all.the.time. I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep for the first two years of my teaching career. Can I get an amen? But now I have curated a large quantity of resources that I utilize frequently in my resource room. So lately I've been cranking along and becoming as comfortable as a teacher who tries to meet the needs of her students and can be.

But the powers that be have CHANGED THE RULES. By changing the rules, I mean that every child in my district is getting their own tablet or Chromebook! At first I felt like Oprah Winfrey had driven down from Chicago and given everybody in the audience (aka my school district) a super awesome gift. Then reality set in. I am totally going to have to change the way that I teach. I'll give you a minute to let that sink in.

 This means that I am going to have to curate a whole new tool box of resources. These will likely not be in the form of printables but rather digital tools. Since I am going to be doing a heckuva lot of work in the coming months I figured that I might as well share the fruits of my labor with youseguys. Below is a link to a Symbaloo page where I have curated some youtube links to some of my favorite brain break videos. If you haven't used Symbaloo, it is a great way to curate resource in a visual manner so that you can easily access the links that you use most often. You can also search for webmixes that others have created. Check it out.

What are your favorite brain break songs? Have you ever used Symbaloo to curate resource?