Blog 5

So here we are at the end! Wow, I cannot believe how fast time has flown by! It just hit me that this is my last class of my undergrad career!! I will be taking my final- final ever tonight! This class was so much fun. I never dreading coming and always knew that we would be working on something that would be helpful in some kind of way.

I ended up learning so much more than I expected!! I now know tons of nifty tricks and shortcuts to make using the computer even easier than I ever imagined. I am now a HUGE fan of Google Drive, Blogger, and Google Sites. I can see myself using these tools in my future classroom. I think the most fun I had in this classroom was making the video on iMovie. It inspired me to create mini videos of everyday life happenings. I think it would be awesome to create a video of each child in my class as they progressed and to give it to their parents at the end as a surprise. Children develop sooo quickly and I think parents would really appreciate seeing clips of their child on the first day and some shots of their work as the school year goes on.

Reflecting back on my first blog post (Course Expectations), I see that I learned a lot more than what I originally expected. I was most excited about using the Promethean board and ActiveInspire. I did end up learning a lot about ActiveInspire and was pretty proud of the IWB that I created. I did become much quicker at Powerpoints than I expected.

Blog 4: Wikis in the Classroom

Prior to TPTE I had loosely heard of wikis. Of course I knew about Wikipedia, and while watching different shows (Lost stands out to me the most since it was so confusing) I would stumble across different sites that would have –pedia at the end of it. I came to generalize a wiki as a site that had a theme or searchable option. After being introduced to Wikis in this class, they made a whole lot more sense and I began to see how useful they could be in a classroom.

This website was extremely useful and friendly to use. I really enjoyed the scroll over feature on the  main page. Although I felt familiar with all the topics, it was really quick and easy to simply scroll over the tabs and be able to refresh my memory on some topics, and get new ideas for others.

In some ways, I’m not sure if would be able to really use Wikis in my classroom, as I plan to teacher Pre-School. I do tend to use Wikipedia occasionally when the children are unfamiliar with a term or object and I want to give them a clear definition (before rewording it in developmentally appropriate terms of course), and also for when I want to show them pictures of things they likely haven’t seen before, or just to provide a quick reference.

I believe a wiki in my class would be really helpful to keep in communication with parents. Uploading the class schedule, future projects or fieldtrips, along with a page for ideas from parents could be useful. Giving each child a page and uploading photos of them during play time and art projects would be a neat way to keep parents up to date in what’s going on in the classroom. Of course I would do something like this only if the parent’s were okay with photos of their child being online and I would be sure to look into privacy settings.

Blog Post 3

At first glance, the digital storytelling website was a little bit overwhelming. Once I browsed around for a little I felt much more comfortable with the layout and was able to navigate with ease. This website is an amazing resource for those teachers who are interested in getting digital storytelling in their classroom. the stories that I previewed were so interesting that I could see this interesting people as a hobby. I was impressed with the amount of resources on this website. Not only does it give a history of digital storytelling, the website also has numerous examples available for streaming and download. The example stories are organized in an extremely useful way. Not only can you sort them through genre, you can also sort through title, and upload date. I loved that the website even provided links for the different types of software that can be used to create a video. I appreciated the fact that they had a nice array of choices, I know that some people may be more comfortable with a Mac rather than a PC or vice versa. The tutorial was extremely useful and organized as well. I feel that this website would be an amazing tool for students and teachers alike. The directions on the site are clear and organized in a purposeful way along with diagrams and links to other resources. The most impressive thing about this site is the lesson plan that is available for use in the classroom. This website has definitely sold me on the use of digital storytelling. I was really entertained with the videos on the site and was pretty surprised that I could be so engrossed in a story that only had one image. I could see myself using digital storytelling in my Pre-K classroom as a way to retell the story. I think it would be an amazing tool for my students to try something new while practicing important skills. I would likely do this as a whole class unit lesson, I am sure that my students would absolutely love it. 

Blog Post #2

This article was informative for me. In my previous placement the children were extremely intrigued by everything that came up on the Promethean board. I used ActiveInspire and was really fascinated by everything it had to offer. I would mainly use ActiveInspire for math lessons, which kept the children extremely engaged and excited to try it out themselves. I would create simple flipcharts to use but was really impressed by the ones available for download. I am really excited to learn new tricks for the whiteboard since I know how much the children love them.

The article provided really great information that brought up issues that I wouldn’t have even considered before. The note about teacher confidence decreasing due to technical issues was interesting because I did go through that once and had to come up with a solution on the fly. Although I was flustered I was able to ask the children related questions while I set up a new page. I believe that I have an advantage with Promethean boards due to being comfortable with computers. I can understand how it would be difficult for teachers who may be unsure about new technology, but I do believe that it is straight forward enough to do the basics.

The real perk about the Promethean board is its interactive ability on almost all websites. This feature was really helpful when I would have 15 minutes of time to fill up but still wanted the time to be meaningful for children. During these times I was able to google math or literacy lessons and use the Promethean board to my advantage. 

Midpoint Check In

I feel like I am doing well so far in this class. We haven't gotten into Promethean board activities just yet so I can't really comment on that just yet. I have learned a few other new things about using a Mac though (You can change the size and resolution for multiple pictures at once! Super helpful!!). As i stated before I am really excited to get into ActivInspire and Promethean based things!

Blog Review

The hardest balance in my class is keeping my lessons engaging while meeting all the standards required. I am extremely lucky to have children who are excited about learning and truly enjoy school and I try hard to keep this joy of school going. Ms. Cassidy’s class is a blog by a teacher in Canada. Within minutes of scrolling the blog I found so many great ideas that would be so useful in a kindergarten classroom. One of the most amazing things about Ms. Cassidy’s website are the submissions from various teachers from all over. Not only do you get great ideas from Ms. Cassidy herself, but also ideas from teachers from all over! Ms. Cassidy really uses technology to her advantage and as an amazing tool for her students. One post featured her children reading to someone over Skype (I would have NEVER thought of this!! But how cool is this?! A way to integrate technology and getting the children so excited to read!). Her class interacts with classes all over the world and it is so inspiring to see the connections made and the lessons that the children really learn since they truly enjoy them.

Aside from the material on the blog, I really enjoy the layout of Ms. Cassidy’s blog. It’s really clean and simple. I enjoy browsing teacher blogs in my spare time and I have noticed that many tend to have really ‘busy’ patterned backgrounds with a bunch of sponsor links and pinterest widgets, it can sometimes be overwhelming. She tags many of her posts so it’s easy to find posts related to certain subjects, which is always a plus!

Website Evaluation

• The first part (no longer than 25 words) of the post is a description of the site (insert a screenshot of the site)
• The second part of the post is a reflection about the process of evaluating websites and how the assignment met the objective.

The website that I chose was The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.It is a website for the Museum that is located in Washington, D.C. 

I believe this assignment met the objective of evaluating a website. I usually don't go to a website looking for it's author and publication date ( I tend to stick to journal articles when doing things that require citation), so it was interesting to have to go looking for an author or publication company around the website. This assignment helped me view the website in a professional and useful manner. Since I am in Pre K-K I have never had the need for my children to have to look up something online so I don't usually go on to websites wondering if it would be appropriate for my children. 

Course Expectations.

Although I feel pretty comfortable with using a Mac, I hope to learn a few new tips and tricks. Learning about 'command+ shift+ 4' today was really neat and I know there is a whole bunch of other things I would be really interested to learn about. I also hope to become faster at working with Powerpoints. I do know the basics, but can take quite a while to get everything looking the way that I want. One thing that I am really excited to learn about is the Promethean board and Active Inspire. Both of these things are being used in my current classroom and while I know the bare basics, I have seen a few things that make me so excited to learn about. The children in my classroom REALLY love the promethean board and I feel like it is one of the best learning tools in the classroom and I cannot wait to learn all that I can about it.