Wrapping Things Up

I have learned a great deal in 486 and feel much more technology savvy than I did before taking this class. I am now much more comfortable in excel, powerpoint, prezi, worldle, google, and editing pictures. Most importantly I have learned how to incorporate technology in to my classroom and I will be walking away from this class with a lot of fun ideas for using technology in school! I am also grateful that we were asked to blog about everything, because now I can always go back and look at my projects to be reminded how to do it.

Digital Story

This was my first experience for making movies. I used i movie and while it was a little confusing, it ended up being easier than I thought it would be. The hardest part for me was getting the music I wanted. I would have rather used a well known song with words, but had a hard time getting a song from Youtube on my movie. You can only use 30 seconds of a song in order to stay within copyright limits. I ended up using freeplaymusic.com which worked well (just was not a well known song). As a whole, I think i movies could be helpful to present a new idea to a classroom, but I would need to get more efficient at making them in order for it not to take up so much time.

It was a fun process and I 'm grateful I now know how to make a movie on i movie.

Interactive Spreadsheet

This was my first attempt at making an interactive spreadsheet on excel. While it was time consuming and a little confusing, it was not that hard. I will consider using them in the future. I think it would only be worth making if you could not find one already made online that went with your standard. They are helpful because they are good means of quizzing your students. Interactive spreadsheets also works as another way to enforce material.

Inspiration Project

Animoto Videos

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

This was my first video on animoto and I found it very easy to make. They have a good selection of stock photos, music, and videos. I think that making animoto videos could be helpful when introducing new concepts into the classroom. The nice thing about making your own video is that you can decide specifically what goes in it and can have it tailored to your lesson plan. I also think animoto could be very useful for student reports. I could have each student make a video to supplement their  oral presentation. All in all, I think animoto is a great tool to know about and should be considered for classroom use.

Sacavenger Hunts

 Scavenger hunts can be an exciting way to introduce students to a new topic. They can also be used to engage your students in their learning and provide a context for them to show the public what they are learning. For example, if you want students to get to know their science lab you could give them a worksheet with all of the components of the lab and the tools they will be using. Then you can give them a sheet with clues to what the tools do. The students must research what the different tools do in order to find them. However, researching will be more engaging than having students just do written work. I think scavenger hunts are great, because they are appropriate for all ages and can be tweaked to work for both primary and secondary grades. I plan on implementing them in my lesson plans when I teach!

Images in the classroom

 

(Screen shot from google images) 

Using images in the classroom can help enhance your lessons. Digital images can be a great asset to teaching because they can so easily be found. For example, going to google and searching under "images" is an easy way to find pictures. Pictures help students who are visual learners visualize what they are learning about. There are several ways to find digital images for the classroom such as: Picassa, google images, scanning images, taking pictures, and CD collections.Pictures can help support notes, labels, power points and lessons. Pictures can enhance lessons and make them more interesting.

Digital Image Collection

This is a digital image collection I made on Picasa.

It was very easy to make and I encorporated several ways of obtaining my images.

I used a scanner to get scan a picture of a magazine, I used my digital camera to import a picture I had taken from a football game, I also used google images to get a free picture of street from the web, finally I took a screenshot of images on the web.

I think the use of digital pictures in the classroom will prove to be very useful since they can aid in giving students a visual of what you are teaching. They can also liven up a lesson and provide a context for discussion

Lesson Plan Project

Our lesson plan project in google docs is my first time actually planning a lesson that includes state standards. I’ve found it to be a very helpful project, because it is exposing me to all of the different things that are involved in planning a lesson. There are a lot of things to have to think about such as: Tennessee standards, NET standards, my objectives, and all things I need to do to prepare for the lesson plan. We have to include the use of technology in our lesson plan and that has also helped me see all of the different ways I can use technology in the classroom. It got me thinking and I can see how computers can be a real asset to the learning process and help supplement my lessons.

WebQuests

I remember in elementary school going on a webquest with my class. I thought it was a lot of fun, but did not learn a whole lot from it. After going over webquests in our class, I saw the value of a good webquest. I realize that you can not decide on the merit of a webquests by just looking at one quest. It all comes down to a well wrought quest. It is necessary to have a quest that involves group work, researching, critical thinking, collaborating, and enhances the learning process. I think I would like to utilize web quests in my classroom, but only after I have researched the best kinds.

Wikis

Until this class I had never even heard of wikis before; however I am finding them to be very helpful and efficient. In another class I have a project and it has been very difficult to all get together. We discussed possibly using a wiki to help us collaborate on our different ideas. I think that wikis allow for people to work together efficiently and because it is also so user friendly it makes for a quick and easy way to work together.
I also think as far as Educational uses go, it could be very helpful. Specifically, I think it would work well with studyguides. When I teach I could assign groups a different chapter in a unit and then allow them all to work on their chapters using wiki. At the end they could all view the study guide for the unit and add and correct where needed.

Web 2.0 Tools

Our project on Web 2.0 tools was very informative. My partner and I had wordle, which makes creative word clouds.www.wordle.net
Here is an example where I allowed worldle to pull words from my blog and create a word cloud out of it:

 

While, I really enjoyed using wordle and plan on using it more when I teach, there were other Web 2.0 tools that I found even more helpful. I think my favorite tool was prezi. Prezi is a tool that allows you to make something similar to a powerpoint except that it is much more interactive and zooms in.

http://prezi.com/

I think prezi could be very helpful for presenting new information in a different fashion. I also think it would be a good tool for students to use themselves. Prezi has some that already done and are available for students to use. Here is a screenshot of one:

 

 

From here you can click on the different games  and zoom in. It is almost like playing an educational board game online! I think this a very innovative, interactive, and creative new tool! 

Great Teaching Resource

http://www.readwritethink.org/
For our "Evaluating Websites for Reliability and Usability" I picked Read Write Think and found it incredibly helpful and easy to use. It is a resource for mainly teachers but also caters to both students and parents. It offers sample lesson plans with supplement material and worksheets, along with printable graphic designers to enhance the note taking process, and it also provides creative ways to present different subjects to children. I will definitely use this website when I teach and see how it will be helpful in any grade I could teach.

After evaluating this website I was even more impressed with it. I discovered that its' information was both cited and reputable along with being grammatically correct. Read Write Think is also very easy to navigate and has graphics that enhance its' material. As a whole, I was very satisfied with the website and felt that it was trustworthy and user friendly. Also, this project taught me a great deal about website evaluation and made realize the importance of it. After researching if the website was reliable or not it made me think about important it is for it to be reliable if i was going to use it to teach. This project also taught me how to guide my own students through this process one day. It think this project is very applicable to everyday life, because as a student I am looking at website on a daily basis and need to decide if they are credited websites.

Website Evaluation Tool

http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/index.html

This website is a helpful tool for understanding how to decide if a website is reputable. The site provides a tutorial on how to judge a website accurately. Not only does this website teach how to evaluate other sites but it explains the importance of evaluating websites and what can happen if you do not. There is also a section of the tutorial that explains how website can be good, bad, and ugly. Here it covers academic uses,personal, and hoaxes. After this explanation the website provides a helpful quiz to help you test your understanding. Altogether this website is a good asset to learning about the internet and is set up as though you are an internet detective making it a more interesting way to learn about the internet.

Using Technology in my classroom:

While I’ve grown up using technology and it has been integrated into my own education, I still feel uncomfortable using it at times. Throughout the span of my college career, I have been asked to blog on books I’ve read, do workbook exercises online, take quizzes online, record a reading online, make presentations via PowerPoint, and many other projects using the computer. I do think that technology has enhanced my learning process, but at times I feel as though it has been pushed too much to my detriment. For example, I have had to take tests online and there were glitches in the system that made it impossible to change your answer. If I took a written test I would be allowed to second guess myself. All of this to say, I would like to use technology with my students, but also offer other mediums of learning. I think the Internet offers students a quick option for researching and can quickly transport them to other cultures and places. As a whole, I plan on using technology to supplement and support my teaching, but will not rely on it solely.

All about me:

My name is Sophie Walter and I am a Senior at UT. I will graduate this May with my major in English with an emphasis in Literature and a minor in Elementary Education. The following year I will be working on my masters in Elementary Education and will intern in Alcoa and Lenoir city schools. I am looking forward to my internship and becoming a teacher. This next year comes with a lot of changes for me as I will begin my teaching career and am getting married this January to my fiancé Bill Piper!