Wiki

As I was creating my Wiki I actually had more trouble then I would have thought. I have used Wikis before but it was a whole new experience when I was the one actually making the Wiki. I think Wikis are a very good tool to use in the classroom. I had a professor who used a Wiki for our class last year and I thought it was very helpful. I really enjoyed being able to go on the Wiki and see everything that we were doing that week as well as the upcoming weeks. I can sometimes be very unorganized so it was nice to have everything in one place. I am not sure which I like better, a Wiki or a web page like Weebly. They both have good and bad points about them. I think for a classroom web page I would like to use a Wiki. I think it looks more simple and would be easier for students and parents to figure out. For my students in the future I would like to do something very similar to the practice Wiki I made. You can see this Wiki by clicking here. For this Wiki I decided to do a web page that would basically be just a big information page for my students and their parents. I think this would be very helpful and a great way to keep everyone updated and working together. I really enjoy Wikis and I definitely see myself using one in the future!

Prezi!

I decided to do some research on Prezi because up until this class I have never been taught to create presentations on anything else besides PowerPoint. I thought the idea of Prezi was very interesting. I like how they give you a completely open canvas and you are able to do whatever you want with it. Many times when I am making presentations on PowerPoint I get frustrated because I do not feel like I can get very creative. The only issue I have with Prezi is at first it is very confusing. I played around with making a presentation and I found myself getting lost with my own work. The complexity of this website is something I could see being an issue when using it in the classroom. In order to have the class use Prezi I definitely feel like there would have to be a day when the teacher would go over how to use the site and all of the different features it has. Whether or not there would be time for the students to learn about Prezi, I feel would determine if the site could be used in the classroom or not. Even though I could see this being a problem, I still feel like Prezi could be a very useful website that could be introduced in the classroom

Digital Story Telling

For my digital story I decided to do an example of a lesson I could use in a lower elementary classroom. For the lesson I would have my students use Picasa to make a web album of things they saw while at the zoo on a field trip. The students would then have to add captions to describe what they seen and why they liked it or not. This would be good for the students because not only would it be teaching them how to integrate and use different technologies, but also because it would get them thinking about their feelings and understanding how to put them into words. I liked Picasa because it was very easy to use, I had no problem uploading my photos and adding captions.

Jing!

When I first looked at the assignments for this week I got pretty intimidated when I seen we had to make a vlog using Jing. I thought it was going to be really confusing and I pretty much put this part of the weeks assignment off until the very end. After completing my vlog I think it is pretty safe to say I was completely wrong about Jing. It was actually very easy for me to use, I would actually say it was one of the easiest programs we have to use in this course. I decided to play around with Jing a little bit before I made my actually vlog and I found it quite amusing. Usually I do not like hearing my voice when it is recorded but after I made my vlog and I was watching it, I was very satisfied with how it turned out. Click here to view my vlog, hope you enjoy!

Technology Integration

So I just finished up my technology integration section of the midterm. It was a little harder then I had expected it to be. I had some trouble at first trying to decide what technology to use, what grade to pick, what subject I wanted to do, and how to work all of these things into one lesson. I decided to do a lesson involving group work in Google Docs. I knew I would have to do a higher grade level, so I first started off by just looking at the Language Arts GLCEs for grades four and up. I found a fifth grade standard that involved developing a research paper and another that involved editing and revising work. I decided to use these two and then a Social Studies GLCE that would give my students something to actually research. Once I was able to choose these standards developing the lesson became much easier. Now that it is all said and done I can honestly say that I am very pleased with how my lesson turned out. You can click here to look at my lesson!

Lesson with Audio

This is my finished version of my punctuation lesson after adding audio in Voice Thread. You can click here to veiw the actual version on Voice Thread

Google Docs Mini Lesson