Final Post/Wrapping Up

This class has been VERY helpful as far as my knowledge for computer programs that will be useful in the classroom goes! I have learned so much about the work that teachers put into their lessons and activities for students to do. I will be able to use these programs in my own classroom and bring my teaching into the technology age.

Website

Making a website was definitely not something I thought I could do by myself. I think that learning how to and actually making our own website is one of the most critical things we have done in class. We, as teachers in the technology age, will need to be able to communicate with our students over the web. This will make both students and teachers lives' easier, and the best way to start using technology in the classroom is to become familiar with it! My website provides students(and parents) with the opportunity to find out missing work they have not turned in and also make-up work that they need to have done when they return to class. I wish my teachers would have utilized technology more because at the end of the day it helps everyone out. Having a place to post all of our technology projects and wiki based projects was also nice because I could just go to one place and everything was there. I will definitely be using the skills I have learned from doing the website in my classroom.

Digital Storytelling Using iMovie

Digital storytelling is a great tool for the classroom. At the beginning of the school year each student could make a digital story about themselves and share it with the class to get to know everyone including the teacher. This is what I did for my digital story. I made a story about myself and called it Meet Your Teacher. This story would be great for putting it on your classroom website so you can introduce yourself to your students and/or their parents before school starts or anytime they want to view it! iMovie is a user friendly program that becomes second nature once you play around with it for a little while, and can be very useful in the classroom environment.

Digital Diagrams Using Inspiration

Using an application called Inspiration, we made digital diagrams in class. My digital diagram is on the three states of matter. With Inspiration you can make a web diagram, a concept map, graphic organizers, and storyboards. All four of these types of diagrams are VERY helpful in the classroom so having the knowledge of how to use this program is important for people going into the education field.

Blogging in the Classroom

Blogging in the classroom is  a GREAT way to get student feedback on exercises, activities, and ideas from your students. I think activating blogging in the classroom can help students express how they are feeling about certain skills and also how they are feeling about the classroom environment as a whole.

Interactive White Board Project/ActivInspire

On the Interactive Whiteboard Project, I chose to do a Counting Money project. Using ActivInspire software, this software helps teachers create 'flip charts' with many different options to make activities. Since I chose to use counting money, I had many different ideas for each slide of my flip chart. On one slide students had to match the names of different coins and the one dollar bill to their correct picture. On another slide students had to drag and drop coins and the bill into their correct containers. These are just a few of the slides I put on my flip chart, and they just get better than this! ActivInspire software, while frustrating at times, is wonderful for teachers to use for creating activities and a more fun way to quiz students on skills.

Scavenger Hunt, Picasa, and Google Presentation

This was definitely my favorite day of class so far. We went around campus to find and take pictures of objects that corresponded with the project we chose. My group chose to do the elementary color scavenger hunt. We had to go out and find objects around campus that were different colors, which was a nice get away from the classroom. We used Drop Box to share our pictures, after sharing our pictures we used picasa to make our presentation and post it to our websites. After making our scavenger hunt presentation, we also used google presentation to make individual slideshows on a topic of our choice where we had to find copyright free images to make a google presentation, and share through our websites under technology projects, like the scavenger hunt presentation.
These two projects aided in expanding my knowledge on presentations. There are more ways to make presentations besides PowerPoint! who knew?! I can definitely use these tools in the classroom to help my students learn. I also like that google is connected with picasa so you can upload to your website by using the insert button! technology made easy!!!  

Inquiry Based Activity

When we started with our Inquiry Based Activity I was not sure what direction I wanted to go with mine. We made our IBA's through our class wiki and by the end of the activity I honestly felt like it was a great way to use technology in the classroom. My IBA was for 1st grade science and was all about learning more about sea animals like sea fish and sea mammals. I split up the students in groups of 4 and each member would pick 2 mammals or fish (or one of each) to study independently! Once the students did independent research on their 2 sea animals they would answer the same five questions for both of their animals. the questions were: 1. Did you pick a sea mammal or fish? 2. What sea mammal/fish did you pick? 3. What is the average lifespan of your sea mammal/fish? 4. What color(s) is your sea mammal/fish? 5. What does your sea mammal/fish eat?. After students finished answering their questions they would return to their groups and take turns reporting their findings on their chosen animals. By having each student do independent research we know they are doing their portion of the work, but they are also working together to gain information on all of the sea animals. Wiki's are wonderful tools for the classroom and I definitely want to use them in my classroom. 

Website Evaluation Reflection

The website evaluation assignment helped me to realize that some of the sites I thought were "reliable" were actually not. I was taught that if a website was a .org site it was reliable, and that is not the case at all. As Misty said in class, if you want a .org as long as it is not already taken you can have it, this is absolutely crazy to me! When I turn to technology in my classroom I must know that the site I am showing young learners is reliable, and I can fully trust any information that students may take from said website. This activity definitely assisted me in meeting the learning objectives associated with the evaluation of websites in my classroom because it showed me what to look for in a reliable website, and what a reliable website should have - like contact information to find out if the author(s) of the site are associated with reliable institutes or universities.

Course Expectations

In this course I expect to learn more about using technology in the classroom, and expanding my knowledge on programs, like blogger and wiki's, that can broaden my student's horizons. I have already learned so much in the two classes that we have had, and I cannot wait to see what I will know by the end of the semester! Maybe by the end of the semester people will come to me with questions about technology.

Welcome!

Hey y'all! Welcome to my blog. I will post my reflections throughout the semester in TPTE 486!