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.