iMovie

In class, we made a movie using iMovie. I made mine on the different types of leaves. To begin, I collected pictures of leaves from the public domain. Making the movie was actually pretty fun. I enjoyed learning how to use the software. We added titles, captions, music and credits to our movie. Everything seemed to go well. The only difficulty I had was occasionally struggling to make the caption stay up for the same amount of time as the picture. Other than that everything was pretty easy to use and figure out. I definitely liked that you could just drag the pictures into iMovie! I definitely think making movies for my future classroom would be a fun was to take students on virtual field trips or teach them small lessons. Next time I would like to be able to have my own pictures instead of having to find them on the public domain.

Storybird

I created my own story on Storybird!

I think this would be a very cool tool to use in my future classroom! I enjoyed making this story. Older kids would be able to create their own because the site is easy to use. Younger kids could make a story with the help of an adult, or I could simply make my own stories to share with a future classroom. Overall using this tool went well! The only struggle was the difficulty finding pictures I wanted to use. At one point I has lost a picture that I had wanted to use and it took quite a while to find it again. Next time, the only thing I would do differently is allow myself more time to create a creative story!

Animoto- in class presentation

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Inspiration 9- Digital Diagrams

In class, we created digital diagrams pertaining to the Tennessee State Standards. I created mine based on the 5th grade Science standard 0507.5.1- Classify animals according to their physical characteristics. Creating this diagram was actually pretty fun! I enjoyed it and definitely think creating similar diagrams in my future classroom will be extremely helpful. For the most part, everything went well since I enjoyed doing this assignment. The most difficult part was actually finding the standard and matching the information on my diagram with the information in the textbook. Inspiration was a really helpful tool, and I hope to use it more in the future.

Interactive Spreadsheet- parts of speech

Making this spreadsheet was quite time consuming! I am pleased with the finished product, but there were some stressful moments while creating it. For example, although the computer in our classroom is a Mac and my laptop is a Mac as well, the instructions did not match up with the version of Excel I used on my laptop. Some of the wording was different, making it difficult to find some of the specific tabs, etc. Overall, I thought this was a really neat activity. It is really interesting how much you can do with a spreadsheet- I never knew you could use logic statements the way we did! Although making assignments with this tool is time consuming, I think it is very useful. I plan on using this again in my classroom to create quizzes and practice that give immediate feedback.

Interactive Spreadsheet- compound words

Resource Wiki

This is a picture of the front page of the Elementary Ed Resource Wiki.

This wiki will be very helpful for the class. As future teachers, it will be extremely important to know of websites with useful tips, information, lesson plans, and games. I look forward to being able to use this resource wiki in the future when looking for ideas to use in my classroom.

Colors Scavenger Hunt

In class we were divided into groups to do a digital scavenger hunt where we went outside to take pictures of things that pertained to our topic. My groups topic was "colors" so we took pictures on a digital camera of items that were each of these colors: black, blue, brown, green, grey, orange, purple, red, white, and yellow. After we obtained the images on each of our computers, we worked on our own to make slideshows of the scavenger hunt pictures. First, I uploaded my pictures to Picasa Web Album, a picture sharing website, where I created the first slideshow seen below. I later uploaded these same pictures to Google Docs to make a Google Presentation. This is the second slideshow seen below.

Everything went well with this activity, except for the fact that we had a little difficulty transferring the pictures from the camera to the computer. Once we figured out that minor complication, the rest of the activity went smoothly. Both Picasa Web Album and Google Presentation were easy to use and pretty self-explanatory. I enjoyed learning how to use these sites because they will be helpful in the future for picture sharing. I will be able to use this in my classroom for assignments very similar to this one. I think having my students do their own digital scavenger hunts could be very useful in teaching them how to use technology, create slideshows, share pictures, and even teach their peers.

The scavenger hunt itself was a fun activity. I enjoyed going outside during class time to take pictures. I was in a group of three that got along great and enjoyed searching for certain things together! Since our category was "colors" we each looked for items in nature that were a specific color. On a few of the colors (ones that you wouldn't expect to be difficult!) we had to get creative by taking pictures of clothing articles, etc. All went well, and I think this would definitely be an activity that elementary age students would enjoy!

Smilebox

Halloween Invitation:

Free invite personalized with Smilebox

This is a site that I could use to create neat things for my future classroom. It was fun and easy to make this invitation. Older students would be able to help create invitations for a class party. Younger students could give input on what they wanted the invitation to look like. There are a lot of ways I could incorporate this tool into my classroom. Next time I would spend more time picking out what I wanted and would already know what picture(s) I wanted to use!

Google Earth

Yesterday in class we learned about Google Earth. A guest speaker, Don McMahon, came to teach us how to use this tool. It is very fascinating, and I enjoyed learning more about how to use it. He showed us many ways that this can be useful in our classrooms. There are so many different ways to use it- from science and social studies lessons to literature lessons. Before his demonstration I had no idea that Google Earth could be used for so many things!

Picnik

Inquiry-Based Activity

Chelcie and I did our inquiry-based activity on the planets in our solar system. This activity went really well because we had the Rockstar assignment as our guide and were able to easily find a website to use for the activity. This site is the one we used, and it was great for the questions we wanted to ask students.

This tool will be very useful in instruction with students because it was an easy way to have students do their own research on the web in a simple manner. I could definitely see myself using this in the way we used it for the planet assignment or for other topics the students could easily find interesting facts about on a particular website.

The only thing I would consider doing differently next time is having a little bit more time to research and browse the website before creating an assignment from it. We briefly examined the website though, and it seemed very practical.

Glogster Lesson

This is just a sample Glog that I made in class when showing the class how to make their own and embed it:

Delicious

This is a screenshot of some of my Delicious bookmarks:

Wordle

Glogster

Our class was split up into teams to work on a Web 2.0 tool that we were assigned. Chelcie and I were assigned to learn how to use Glogster, and will later present to the class what we learned and teach them how to use it.

Glogster is a site used for making virtual posters.
This is the poster Chelcie and I made:


I really enjoyed getting to experience the Glogster site and learning how to make my own "graphical blog." For the most part, it went very well because the site was easy to use and pretty self explanatory. The only difficulty I faced was that sometimes the specific buttons or graphics I was looking for were hard to find. For example, when we wanted to add an animated arrow to the poster, we had a lot of trouble finding one. I think that a search button would have made this a lot more manageable and saved time.

This tool is definitely practical for classroom use. As a teacher, I will be able to incorporate Glogster posters that I have previously made to my lessons. This could make certain subjects much more exciting. Also, I could give parents a link to these Glogs so that the students and parents could look at them together at home.

Next time I use Glogster I probably will do most things the same way. The only thing I can think of that would make it a more successful experience is looking at example Glogs before beginning my own. This time I did not think to look at previous examples, but I think now that I've seen some and used the site everything will go smoothly next time!

Website Evaluation

I evaluated the website Arcademic Skill Builders. It was a difficult process for me because I could not find information about the author(s) or publisher of the site. It was frustrating when I continued to try to use the "contact us" link on the site, but was unable to email them. The application on my computer would not open so I could not find an email address or anything. I did, however, enjoy looking deeper into the website to see what I could find and putting more thought into the site than I normally would.

Website evaluations will be helpful in my profession because I will be able to make sure that the sites I use or send students/parents to are practical, usable, and reliable. I think that this is very important, especially when working with children that are not old enough to figure out whether or not a website is reliable on their own.

Next time, I will try to use websites that make it easier to find out publishing and author information because that is important in deciding whether or not the site is reliable and up to date.

Wikis

This week in TPTE 486 we learned about Wikis and began creating our own. For the most part, this went very well. The only problem I ran into was when I was trying to edit the FrontPage and someone else was already editing it. Everything else was pretty self explanatory and easy to understand. I think this tool will be very useful for getting to know the students in my future classroom. If students are capable of making his/her own "About Me" page, this would be very helpful for them to get to know about each other. If students are too young to type up an "About Me" page by themselves, their parents could potentially help them make his/her page. If I decide that I don't want the parents to be involved in this process, I can help each child individually. The next time I use Wikis I think it will be even easier since I know how to work the site, but I can't think of anything that I would do differently.

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog. This is a blog about my learning experience as I am making my way through school to become an elementary school teacher. I am starting this blog in my TPTE 486 class to document my experience as I learn to integrate technology into teaching.