iMovie

So this project was a pain in the booty. I don't think I spent enough time with the program, though. I think if I was going to use this in my classroom I would be more comfortable with it. I wanted to add a theme and I couldn't figure out how. I also wanted to do more with the music (like add more than one song, do clips, etc). Hopefully I can continue practicing with iMovie and be able to incorporate it in to my classroom! It could be very useful someday.

Inspiration

I found this Inspiration project to be pretty easy to use. I can see myself using a project like this in the classroom; I think students could use it too. I love the rapid fire feature, so you can just rattle off whatever comes to you and then rearrange it later. The possibilities are endless with the way you can change up the look of your presentation. I can think of a million ways to use this program! I really think it could be a very useful tool in the classroom. This may be my second favorite project, after the wikis :)

Digital Scavenger Hunt!

For this assignment, we went on a search for verbs. To make my presentation slightly more interesting (I didn't want it to just be a list of verbs and photos illustrating them), I decided to explain how a verb can change the entire sentence. I found google presentation very easy to use. I feel it will be very useful in the classroom; teachers can use it to create presentations, but it is easy enough for student use as well. I think this assignment as a whole will be something I may use in my lesson planning in the future. Scavenger hunts can be fun for students, especially if they can share it with their classmates via a presentation.

Picasa Album "Collection"

PB Works

I am so excited about the wiki!!! I love the way it looks, I like the way we can all access it and edit it, and I just think it's cool! I had never heard of a wiki (besides wikipedia, which I just figured was an encyclopedia invented by Mr. Wiki) before this assignment. I think it is really an excellent resource. I can definitely see myself using these in the future. Wikis seem to be a really good way to collaborate with fellow teachers as well as good for group work among students. I have always been really wary of group work because in my own experience, I am the kid that gets stuck holding the bag. Everyone sends their "work" (or lack thereof) to me and I have to put it together and fill in the holes. Not so with the wiki. You can easily see who posted what and when. I think my students would enjoy this contemporary way of dealing with group work. It is still a collaborative effort to complete the assignment, but with personal responsibility. I also really like that students are able to edit one anothers' work. This may cut down on careless errors like spelling, grammar, or typos.

Website Evaluation

The website evaluation assignment was a new experience for me. I knew that websites had authors, etc., and could be credible or not, but I had no idea how to determine a website's credibility. I will be much more careful with the websites that I look at and get resources from. I don't want to refer anyone to a "bad" website. I feel that this exercise would be very useful for my students in the future as well. They need to know how to navigate the web and find websites that will help them, rather than hinder them. Information is easy to post on the internet and it is a little harder to negotiate the reliability of this information.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! This is my journey in TPTE 486. I'm a casual technology user; I check my e-mail and facebook and I can manage iTunes, but my technological advancement stops there. I hope to learn how to use many other tools and applications. In my blog, I will document my advancements and reflections as I continue through this course. I am very excited about learning how to incorporate technology in to my classroom.