Making a Movie

This week in class we began working on digital movies. We are using the application iMovie to do
this. Presently though, many of us, myself included have not began actually using iMovie yet. The reason is we were still drafting our movie.
I have used iMovie prior to this project and drafted a story board for a movie. So, I feel pretty prepared for this project. What I have used iMovie in the past for was actually another class. In this course I had to make two movies using the application. Additionally, the first movie we made was much like the movie I have drafted. Yay!
Despite my past with iMovie I did learn something new about it from my teacher, how to use titles. I had alway seen the T symbol and been kinda confused by what it did. However, now I know that it is for titles!
As someone who is planning to work somewhere between k-2nd grade, this project will be very helpful to me in the classroom. For many things children are suppose to know through rote memorization I  could record songs and add pictures to make learning it fun for them. As well, I am sure I will happily use videos other people having made to encourage learning.

Digital Diagrams Continued

This week we finished making our digital diagrams. As I stated last week using Inspiration was something new for me. I was so glad that our teacher showed us how to make these images for that reason.

I did my digital diagram on the topic of states of matter. This was a great topic to make a digital diagram on in my opinion. This site was very easy to use, which was great! I think that anyone could use this site, and would advise it for anyone to use.

I can see myself using this application in the classroom. It would be great for explaining things such as this topic, or the different kinds of weather. However, I do think that this application is more geared for teachers of older children. I definitely could not see myself using this application as much in a Kindergarten classroom as I could in per say a 3rd grade classroom.

Digital Diagrams

We transition from IWB's to a different topic this week. The topic for  this week the is digital diagram. I have seen digital diagrams online before, and actually made a diagram that was very similar in style using tools on Microsoft Word. This was my first introduction to the application Inspiration that is used to create digital diagrams, as well as its counterpart that is aimed at young children, Kidspiration.


When my professor began showing us how to use Inspiration I was surprised by how it looked. This application was not nearly as complex, in my opinion, as say Active Inspire.  A definite perk of this simple style was that it was easy to navigate. Even easier to navigate was its version for children, Kidspiration. This application had just the the very basic tools and a couple images.

Having knowledge of how to create digital diagrams is something that will be helpful for me in the future as a teachers. There are some many different that I could see it being used in a classroom! (However, I do not see myself using Kidspiration.)

Interactive Boards In the Classroom

As discussed last week Interactive boards are commonly used in classrooms today, and unfortunately many teachers do not use them properly.  By not using these boards properly students are getting the full benefits that these boards have. For this reason it is extremely important to our teacher that her students in TPTE 486 are knowledgable about how to use these boards, which has caused her to extend the time spent learning about Interactive boards to two weeks. I am very pleased that she does this, since I do not have much prior experience using them. The only experience that I do have outside of TPTE is in the first grade class that I student teach at. However, this teacher (like many) does know utilize the board
and it's tools in the way that she should.

During the past two weeks one of the main things I have learned about the Interactive boards is that they have so many different tools teachers can use! Additionally, there are tons of tools on the active board maker's site, PrometheanPlanet.com. All of the tools I have used that are found on the application or that you can download from the website mentioned above are  easy to use. They are simple enough that I was even able to teach my teacher about using a few of them during her planning period including how to lock items in place, group items, change profiles, use Prometheanplanet.com to find ideas, lessons, plus tools, and how to download things from this site to your desktop as well as how to use them on Active Inspire. She was especially interested in learning about how to use containers, and saw so much potential in the classroom for them.

To me what I am learning right now about Interactive boards is probably one of the most important and relevant things I have learned this semester for my teaching career. The reason I believe this is that Interactive boards are now being used in most schools; more than likely I will have to use one everyday to teach children. The knowledge I now have about these boards will allow me to make lessons and activities to use in my classroom that will be enjoyable and engaging for my students. Also, what I have learned gives me teaching tools/strategies that will save me time creating lessons when I am a teacher...and we all know that as a teacher you can always use more time!!!

Active Boards

During class this past week we learned about how to use an Active Board. We also learned about how to use the application Active Inspire, along with the related site by Promethean Planet. In the classroom that I student teach in I have used an Activeboard, as well as in my TPTE 486 class. So, this was not my first experience with that. However, this was my first experience using the application Active Inspire and getting on Promethean Planet's site  .

On opening the Active Inspire application we learned how to do numerous things, similarly to how I learned many new things from the article my teacher had us read. In this article the author mentioned the amount of teachers that do not use the Active Board correctly, and it was really high. That shocked and saddened me, because if these teachers do not use it in the correct manner then the children are not benefiting from it as much as they could be.

Overall the article made me realize how important it is to use these piece of technology correctly in the classroom. I will definitely be very intentional when I am creating things for the classroom using active inspire. For this reason I am really glad that my teacher showed me how to use all the different tools. If you have an Active Board and do not know how to utilize the tools on Active Inspire I would advise that you reach out to another teacher, do a tutorial or take a class to help you. There is so much you can do with these boards, and this application. It is both very exciting and a little overwhelming in my opinion.

Classroom Website

 I created a classroom website in my TPTE class at the beginning of the school year. We had not really done much with the sites in class since first making them. That is until this week. This week on Tuesday the assignment was to work on fixing our websites at home (my class was canceled).

 Prior to the class I was not even aware that Google sites existance, so believe it or not the only experience I have had with creating a website has been in this class. For this reason I was very nervous about doing construction on my website without my teacher near by to help me. So, I went to the library to work on my project, since I figured someone there would be able to help me if I needed assistance.

As I was working on my website I was pleasantly surprised; I though everything was simple to do. The experience I had gotten in class using the site had completely prepared me for this assignment. Though, the simple layout of this site by Google may have helped some, too. For me to do this assignment by my myself, and with such ease (with my technological skills) means that anyone can create their own site!

When I have my own class I definitely want to create a site similar to this one for the children and their families to use. I think it would make them feel like they knew me better. Also, if I put up my contact information here this would allow them to easily access it even when they were not home, and nix any chances of them losing my information.This site would provide the families with learning resources, materials and information that would they could find whenever as well. A classroom website will be such an asset for communicating with parents, and with how easy it is to create there is no excuse for me to not have one.

Digital Images

This week in TPTE 486 we learned about digital images. We did this by creating our own scavenger hunts, and then going on one that had been previously created by our teacher. While doing this we had to add pictures on to a photo sharing site called Picsa. I had never used a picture sharing website, so this was something new for me. Also, I did not know all the rules involved with digital pictures. This activity was a really fun way to learn about this topic.

The scavenger hunt that I created was titled Things You Can Find at the Zoo. In this I added a variety of pictures of things I found on the picture sharing site called Pics4Learning where people put up pictures for others to use. I found these pictures by putting in words that described the picture I wanted. These pictures have been tagged by users with these words, so that people could find them. Then, once I had all the pictures I wanted I named them using simple descriptions and put them in a folder on my desktop, so that they would be easy to find later.

The scavenger hunt that I went on this past week was an ABC scavenger hunt. I and three others had to take pictures of things that started with each letter A-L. We used another member of the groups camera when we did this, because hers was the most up-to-date. This was important to do, because we wanted the pictures to be high quality. Once we had all the pictures we then uploaded them to Picsa album, and tagged them with descriptive names. This was kinda of difficult, because there were so many different words I could use. Lastly, I made this album public, so that the world could see my pictures.

Evaluation of an Educational Website

Last week in class one of the assignments that I had to complete was an evaluation of a website's appropriateness for my  future classroom. Judging a website for its potential to be used by students as a learning tool was not something that I have done before. Although, I have judged sites in my mind based on the appearance of a page, and thought about ways to improve them prior to this. I tend to prefer that pages are set up in an orderly manner, spaced well and that the colors compliment each other. Also, it is essential to me that the site was crafted thoughtfully, so to give a pattern to it. It is surprising how many sites for teachers I saw that did not looked very professional.

A perfect example of a site that is visually pleasing, as well as easy to navigate is the site I did my evaluation on, ABCya.com. This site attracted me from the moment that it loaded on to my computer. I was enticed by it from vibrant colors, fun shapes, and easy to recognize navigation. Additionally, I really liked how the creators separated the games by grade level, and gave each grade their own ballon link prominently placed on the home page. I felt that these aspects would make this site less problematic for children of a young age to navigate on their own once shown how to by an adult.


Finding the information the questionnaire asked about was a breeze up until the very last section. Filling out the "Accessibility" part of the website evaluation was something that I did not have the resources to do. Luckily, my professor talked about what to do if we did not. So,  I put a question mark into the answer blank to make it clear that I cannot find the answer.

After completing this activity I feel that my ability to evaluate websites for my future classroom's use  has slightly improved. The reason that I feel that I did not grow more was that before doing this evaluation I was already aware of most of the qualities that websites used in a classroom should have. As I was working on the evaluation I kept thinking that the criteria for sites was obvious. However, one part of the evaluation that I had not thought about prior to this lesson was to check the date the site was last revised to make sure it is current. Additionally, I had not considered how websites' navigation could cause issues for students if inconsistent from page to page. A question on this evaluation opened my eyes to this, though. As a future educator of young children it is especially important to remember this, since children of this age often will lack the necessary experience with computers to be proficient on them.

Wikis on Wikis

Before entering this class I had used a Wiki before though, I did not realize it. The type of Wiki that I had used is one that most people have, and most without realizing it like me. This Wiki is known as Wikipedia. Sound familiar? However, despite having used this Wiki before I have never personally edited any of the content on one of these Wikis. 

Now though, after a couple weeks of being in my TPTE class I have edited a Wiki.  On this Wiki I, with the rest of my class, put information about myself and a picture. Doing this was pretty easy. The set up of the site was very simple; getting the picture on there was the most difficult part for me. However, after a couple tries and a little help from my teacher I figured it out. How I did this was by placing the picture on my desk top, and then just dragging over to where I was typing. Additionally, following this class I have now looked at a variety of Wikis made by teachers, and read tips for creating them. I particularly enjoyed the tips that were provided by The Edublogger in the article "Create the Perfect Class Website in 30 Minutes or Less." I particularly loved how at the end of this as step 6 she reminded readers to turn in their subscriptions, because that would be something I would totally forget to do!

As someone who hopes to be a Kindergarten teacher I do not see myself using Wiki in the classroom very much. The reason for this is due to the children's typing abilities, which would make the use of these for this age kind of impractical. Though, I do think that a Wiki would be a great way to promote communication between the parents and myself. Creating a Wiki that parents could use to talk to one another and me about things like their children's reading practice, math, etc. would be a great way to promote communication in the classroom.

For anyone that would like to read this article you can at: The Edublogger

Introduction

Hello,

I am Megan, and I am a senior at the University of Tennessee. I am going to school to be a teacher. Recently, I was accepted into the Pre-K-3 teaching licensure program, which was very exciting. Ideally, after I graduate with my masters I would like to teach Kindergarten, but I love all the other lower elementary grades, too. The reason I am creating this blog is for one of my major's required classes, TPTE 486. In it I will write about what happens as I try to conquer the tech world with the help of my professor Dr. O'Bannon. Some of the topics that I expect to learn about this semester is how to create wikis, make flip-books, create charts and other information that will help me use technology appropriately in my own classroom.

Enjoy!