Blog Post #10

I came into this class expecting to learn very little. I went to a Technology Magnet high school for four years so I already knew how to use Microsoft products and some of the other things we used in class. However, I did learn a lot of ways to incorporate them into a classroom more effectively than most of my teachers in high school did. I kind of wish they had to take this course. I learned to make a grade book in Excel using If statements which I'd never tried before. I learned how to make an attractive newsletter using Word and how to send letters to parents more effectively using Word's Mail Merge tool, and some other useful ideas.

I felt the project was way more work than I originally thought. I was literally working for 19 hours on it the Sunday before it was due because miscommunication throughout our group caused a lot or rewriting and extra work for myself when putting the actual storybook together. I feel a bit embarrassed about the aesthetic of the book because I was unable to complete a really good slide design for it after going through all of the story, making all the pictures, and animating. It would have been much better had we had more opportunities to work together which would aide in making the work load distributed more evenly but because of the holiday that was not possible.

I plan to use things like Mail Merge extensively. I believe that to really teach effectively there has to be some involvement from the parents. While I can not force them to care, I can at least try to make knowledge about the proceedings of the class readily available. I will also use Inspiration, though I doubt I'll make the kids do anything with the program itself. I plan to make my grade book on excel and to use that to send out progress reports to the parents on a regular basis.

It seems a lot of us have common views when it comes to technology in the classroom. Many of us believe that it is important but should not be the only resource. I didn't encounter anyone who believed it should be left out entirely. I liked the blogs that we had to find something interesting on the internet to share because it was a good way to get ideas of what will work and what won't. Also it spreads the lesser known tools on the internet.

Blog Post #9

At first I felt the project would be fairly easy. There would be a lot of work involved but so long as everyone pulled their own weight we'd get through it with little stress. Then we had issues contacting the teacher and were unable to meet all together before Thanksgiving week. So my worry increased a bit as the entire project had to pretty much be done apart. The project itself sounded like a fun idea, and was for the most part. I enjoy the story we did and have read it countless times so I didn't have to do all that much research to be honest.

I spent the week writing the narrative for the Introduction and Marley. I was under the impression that Essence was working on the Future and the Ending and that Lindsey was doing the Present. The Past was up in the air this week.

During the previous week I was not in class so I'm not sure what I was supposed to learn. However, I did learn how to make Pie Crust, which is difficult in humid Florida weather. Not that it has anything to do with this course. I didn't really learn much of anything relating to the course as I was just writing most of the week for the project and that required skills in Microsoft Word which I've been using effectively for years and writing skills which I've also been using effectively for years.

Blog Post #8

Given the fact that our final project was not meant to be educational and really more of a break from the work they had been doing it is difficult to use WebQuest. However, if our project were to be used in a more educational manner, I would have the students use WebQuest to research Charles Dickens or the Setting (i.e. the Time period) of the novella. In a middle school classroom I can see WebQuest being very useful as the students would rather do research online than in libraries. However, personally, I find the search tool rather frustrating.

One interesting WebQuest I found was based on the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos. Unfortunately the site itself was poorly made. It had an unfortunate choice of colors and some of the pictures didn't work. This WebQuest was designed for high school students and requires them to imagine themselves adapting to a new culture. It challenges them to find out how they would celebrate Dia de los Muertos and how they would prepare for the celebration as well. I think it would be an excellent activity for a Spanish language class or any class studying Mexican history and culture.

I don't think I will be using WebQuest much personally. I don't really like the search tools, and while some of the lessons are interesting, I just don't think it is practical in an elementary setting. While the elementary students need to learn to use the internet, most of the WebQuests I've found are too advanced for young kids and many of the lessons will go right over their heads. Also, it is difficult to do a WebQuest if there is only one computer in the classroom as we can not assume that everyone has a computer at home.

Blog Post #7

In a similar question I have talked about BrainPop, which I loved in middle school. However, I think tonight I'll focus on The Stock Market Game. It is a web-based simulation of the stock market. Students begin by investing "$100,000" in a company or companies of their choice, then monitor the stock market and continue to buy and sell shares for about 10 days. This teaches students valuable skills in math and finance as well as instills a healthy competitive spirit. We played a similar game when I was in middle school and it was quite enjoyable. You can visit the website and learn more by clicking Here.

The most obvious answer to how I will use Excel as a teacher is as a grade book. I love the idea of excel because it will make organizing the students assignments and grades very easy. The only problem is the possibility of losing all of it, but that is simply avoided by backing up the file and making sure to take proper precautions against viruses as well as not mistreating the computer itself.

In a classroom setting itself, I'd probably use it to aid science projects. For example, a study on plant growth. Each student plants a seed in a Dixie cup and puts them on the windowsills. Every day the student is responsible for watering the plant and measuring its growth. The students record the data on their own data sheet. Each day they take turns adding it to the class Excel file. At the end of the project the students will hand draw line graphs, and compare them to the graph they made in Excel.

Blog Post #6

For my PowerPoint 1 project I chose to do a lesson on the Solar System. I made slides for each planet outlining some basic facts about the planet. The background for each slide was a picture, or an approximation, of the surface of the planet. I also included an image of the planet taken from orbit. All planet slides were in the same format so it was easy to follow. All of the text was well organized and easy to follow, but would not be what the lesson relied on.

Other than the obvious peripherals (keyboard, mouse, printer) I would try to use a scanner. I would use it to upload class artwork or writing assignments to the class webpage. This will allow each student to be honored in one way or another. I would like to make short video updates regarding the classroom activities that were written, directed, and performed by the students to also upload to the website. I feel it will be easier to get the parents involved if the students are working toward it as well as myself.

I think the most useful thing I learned in the last week (well, before this blog post was supposed to go up. My bad. -.-;) was how to make my own layouts for PowerPoint. Now that I know, it seems so obvious. I was glad to experiment with the shapes tool, which I had done very little with in the past, and thrilled to use transparency to make it easy to read.

Blog Post #5

I will be analyzing the popular website Neopets. As most popular websites it follows the guidelines outlined in Chapter Six. The first rule is obvious given the images and videos all over the site as well as the promise of games and other interactive activities. It follows the second rule by having links to virtually all of the important pages of the site along the top boarder, as well as the side where the user can see his/her pet. The text is left justified for the most part, with a few exceptions. The website typically uses a header and a main text typeface, with the exception of text on pictures or banners. The color issue is interesting. Each user can choose a particular "theme" of the website. The one pictured is green so most of the site elements appear in green, but the ads and some of the banners are in other colors sometimes clashing with the user's theme. This is one of the sites' visual downfalls. Rules 7-11 are followed as well as the fourth. The 13th rule is followed on most pages, but not the main page as it shows most of the features of the site. Rule 18 is one of my personal favorite rules, Neopets follows it quite well. Overall, Neopets follows all 23 rules quite well.

Presentation software, when used correctly, can be a great aid to any oral presentation. Unfortunately very few people use such software to its greatest potential and will frequently fill slide after slide with words. I find such presentations to be frightfully dull and makes listening to the presenter much harder than it would have been. The greatest disadvantage to using presentation software, is the ability to lose respect. A teacher can gain a little respect by doing something new or impressive through powerpoint, but can lose a lot more by screwing something up or not really understanding the technology. Especially right now when many of the teachers know much less than the students about computers in general. Hopefully this will change as generations move on.

I honestly feel that I will not use PowerPoint very often. I would use it for social studies, maybe science, but I doubt I'll use them in many other subjects with the exception perhaps as an introduction to a new unit. I'm not fond of PowerPoint and don't think it really does all that much to enhance a lesson.

Blog Post #4

I already use a lot of organization tools when working on projects and even smaller assignments. I have a feeling that I will continue to do so for the rest of my life. In the classroom I would like to teach the students step by step processes on how to create concept maps and I believe I would turn the story board exercise into something like making a story book. I might use inspiration to create handouts, but I wouldn't require my students to use that tool, as for younger children it might be a little too difficult. However, those handout would be useful guides to drawing their own.

Being as my students will have only recently started their school career it is even more important that they learn now the use concept maps and other organizational tools. If we introduce these concepts to them early, by the time they get to high school they will be well prepared for any number of assignments. I also think that using a story board exercise after reading a more complicated story or book will help the students understand what happened and why. I definitely plan on using that method.

I still believe that mail merge is the most useful thing I've learned in this class so far. I had no idea how quickly printing letters home could go. I believed that there must have been an easier way than copy/pasting everything over and over again, but I didn't know what it would be or that it would be that easy.