Voicethread

Voicethread is such a fabulous tool. It is very user friendly. Someone who has little technological experience could create a voicethread with very little instruction. I didn't have any trouble navigating my way through the process of creating by uploading photos, commenting by typing or recording my voice and finally embedding it in my blog. I like the fact that it is quite easy to organize your photos however you want. I can see this becoming one of my favorite tools on the internet.
Here is another excellent example of a tool with useful applications for school teachers. Voicethread could be used throughout K-12 classrooms. I think someone in class may have mentioned this could be a great tool for using with another class in a different location to communicate. One of my friends is a 5th grade teacher in Massachusettes and her class did an ongoing project where her students look at the moon every night and record what they see. They shared this project with a class in Japan. How awesome would it be if they used voicethread to upload their pictures of the moon and students from both classes could comment on the pictures.
In the introduction to voicethread I saw a picture of a dinosaur that a boy had drawn and colored. It was uploaded and others commented on the drawing giving feedback. Voicethread is a place where students and teachers could share all kinds of work samples like; art, stories, science projects or anything created in the classroom. Once uploaded on voicethread they can ask for feedback or give out information. The applications are endless.

Online Storybook

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

Creating a digital online storybook on Mixbook was such an enjoyable experience. Kelly and I had such a great time collaborating on the storybook. I learned so much from working with Kelly. We were able to compare and contrast our individual experiences with the Awana Grand Prix. This was a fantastic example of how collaboration may take place in a classroom setting. I found Mixbook fairly easy to navigate and create. The layouts and stickers were fun to play with and add to our theme pages. It was unfortunate that Kelly and I could not both be logged onto Mixbook at the same time. We loved the final product online and even ordered one for each of us. I can't wait to receive it and see how it compares to the online book. Now that I have used the site I would feel comfortable introducing students to it and creating projects in the classroom.

Mixbook is another fabulous and useful application for students in the classroom. This would be a great way to teach students to work together on a project. Comparing and contrasting experiences that students may have had on a field trip would be a great teaching tool and the class would have a memory book of the field trip from each students perspective. Involving the students in creating a memory book of the years highlights could be another application where the students could collaborate. To focus on a science unit, students could research different body systems and input pictures to Picasa in order to create a book highlighting each system with 5 interesting facts on each page. Younger students might work together with their teacher and their families in creating a book about families. Older students might create a class book about biographies where they create their own page writing about their interests, strengths, goals and dreams. There are so many ways Mixbook could be utilized. Thanks for introducing me to another wonderful teaching tool. One of my hobbies is scrap booking memories through creating books at home. Mixbook is a great fast, easy alternative to creating homemade scrapbooks. They would also make fantastic gifts.

Picasa Slide Show

Picasa is another fantastic tool for storing, editing and creating with photos. I love that it pulls photos into one area to place in albums for later use. This is a fantastic organizational tool. I was disappointed that there wasn't atomic learning tutorials on blackboard for Picasa. Unfortunately I was not able to be at the Wednesday work session and when I finally got around to loading my pictures and creating a slide show on Picasa, I had some difficulty. Apparently I didn't take very good notes in class. I thought I was creating my slide show with the pictures I had uploaded to Picasa on the web, but the captions I added were not saved because I did not realize you had to save each one individually. Learning for me is always an adventure and I often seem to take the long road. When my slide show was completed, I viewed it and it looked good, but I couldn't find the embed button on the Picasa web page. I thought that was how Skip embedded his slide show, but maybe I have to use the embed button on my blog. I will try that as soon as I finish typing. As you can tell I have had technical difficulties or difficulty remembering how to embed the slide show. Well I tried a number of different ways to embed and finally realized I had to click on "link" on the Picasa web albums site and that showed the embed button which allowed me to embed it in my blog. Enjoy a taste of Thailand!

All in all I think it is a great application and I look forward to playing around with it more in the future. As with all the software we have been introduced to I think this will be a great tool in the classroom. Last week I talked about creating posters of the classroom activities throughout the year in comic life. In Picasa you could store all the pictures taken throughout the year and organize them into albums. The students could be responsible for placing captions on the pictures as they are downloaded and stored. At the end of the year a slide show could be organized and presented to the class and the parents to recap the school year. This application could also be used for reports as a visual arts presentation. School trips or field trips could be captured and made into an album and slide show as well. The students could have their individual pictures taken and stored for that particular school year. I imagine many other uses for Picasa in the classroom. I just need a tutorial to go along with it for my comfort level in using it and teaching others to use it.

Comic Life Poster

I love comic life.  It was so easy to learn how to use.  I actually completed the poster at home without having to ask my husband for assistance.  This is a great accomplishment for me!  I was very confident using this program.  In my future classroom I feel like I could lead the students on how to use this for projects.  My whole family enjoyed playing around with comic life.  I now want to make more posters of vacations and my kids have all kinds of ideas of posters to make.

There are an abundant amount of applications that comic life could be used for in a classroom.  I still love the idea of using a digital camera and capturing events and activities of the class by the day, week, quarter and year.  The students could be involved in using comic life to create posters of each week of the school year and post them as a banner around the classroom and in the hallway.  Parents, other students and teachers could view them and see what the class has been up to for that week.  This gives the students in the class a great involvement and a visual reminder of what they have done throughout the school year.  I loved the applications on Atomic Learning, especially the matching game where pictures had English and Spanish words on them and the students played a game to match up the words.  They are having fun playing a game and learning a foreign language at the same time.  My son's English teacher uses PowerPoint presentations as a tool to tie into projects, especially for those students who struggle with writing.  I am going to ask him if he knows about comic life, because I think this would be a great tool for him to incorporate for the students to use in upcoming projects.  I love comic life and intend to purchase and use it in the future at home and in my future classroom.

Digital Video

Taking digital photos is one of my passions in life. I was excited to learn I could turn them into a digital video right on my laptop with imovie. I was even more excited to learn I could have the video turned into a dvd as a gift for family members and/or friends. The learning process for imovie has been fairly simple. Atomic learning tutorials are especially helpful and I intend to utilize these tutorials in the future. I have decided that I overanalyze steps and this causes me to invest so much time doing a project.

Imovie is a fantastic tool for the classroom. I intend to utilize it in any way I can as a future teacher. Once I practice working with it and feel more confident I can see myself teaching others to use it. This is a great tool for creating class memories throughout the year, documenting field trips or special events. Students could create their own projects and present in class. The possibilities are endless. This is a great way to implement differentiated instruction.

I look forward to creating more movies and learning how to implement video footage along side still photos. Enjoy watching our family trip to China below.

Powerpoint as an instructional tool

In class this week we have been working on our PowerPoint presentations. I learned a lot about how to get on google docs, edit my presentation live once it is uploaded, publish my presentation, share with other collaborators, and attempt to publish/embed my presentation in my blog. Everything worked like a charm until I got to my blog and pasted the Html into the edit section and returned to the compose section to see the fruits of my labor by watching my presentation. Unfortunately all I saw was a box with the words; Not Found and Error 404. I almost made it to the end of a computer task successfully, but as usual something went wrong. I am not giving up until I find what went wrong. To be continued... I returned to google docs and went through the process of attempting to publish/embed the presentation into my blog again. This time I found success. This task as most computer tasks do took me a long time to accomplish, but it was worth it because I learned many new lessons through the process.

I chose to work with the Corel Painter Tablet as my peripheral. I enjoyed playing around and experimenting with all the different tools and colors. I chose this tool because of my daughter who loves art and creativity. She would love to own the Corel Painter Tablet. In the classroom this would be a great tool to incorporate as a drawing element for writing stories and expressing meaning. It would be so neat to use this on smartboard in the classroom for all the students to see. On the smartboard students could take turns adding something new to create a collage as a class collaborative art piece to incorporate with a book that was read during language arts. This tool could be used by a teacher in an art class as well as for the students to experiment and create projects. In Corel Painter you can choose from a large variety of painting and drawing tools to use with oils, paints, crayons, chalk amongst others. Choices can also be made from a wide variety of colors, textures, shades, and designs. In a classroom of younger students you could teach a lesson on primary colors and what happens when colors are mixed.

I practiced using the Corel Painter Tablet twice in the computer lab. The first time I tried it, I struggled with getting it to work properly like Skip did during the presentation. He always makes things appear to be so easy, and they probably are, but I often struggle. Once Skip offered to help me the tablet worked like a charm. I had fun experimenting with different drawing and painting tools. I of course went through the steps of instruction for my PowerPoint presentation to make sure they worked. The whole time I was experimenting I was thinking how much fun my daughter would have with this tool and how much more creative she would be with it than me. It is a fairly easy peripheral to use and I would recommend it for people who love creativity and it would be fantastic as a tool for a classroom.

Education fieldwork has begun!

Hello everyone! I hope everyone had a fantastic four day weekend! I thoroughly enjoyed the warmer weather and the longer amount of sunlight we have gained each day!

This semester I have two education classes that require fieldwork components. Inclusive classrooms for all children is a special education class which requires 15 hours of fieldwork in a special education classroom. My literature for children class requires 15 hours in a classroom where I can gain experience watching and working with the reading and writing groups. I began my fieldwork last week. Fortunately I was placed at the same school for both my fieldwork components. I was also able to work my schedule so I can do my fieldwork on the same day back to back. This allows for more homework, study and family time when not doing my fieldwork.

My literature component takes place in a first grade classroom. It was an awesome experience my first visit. I am always amazed at how much the kids can read and write at that age. The groups were very organized and the kids stayed on task the majority of the time. I look forward to being able to do my read aloud assignment with this group in the future.

My special education component takes place in a room with third through sixth grade students. This classroom was very structured and organized. The students work independently of each other, but are assisted by the teacher and two aides at different times. This was a brand new experience for me. The kids were very accepting of having me in the classroom right from the beginning. I was able to help several students with their particular tasks and this was very rewarding. The teacher says in the future she may pair me up with one student to work with each week. I look forward to learning something new each time I go.

Fieldwork is so fantastic because it allows me to experience firsthand in a classroom of elementary students what I am learning in my college classes. I love interacting with the elementary students and watching them learn. I look forward to the day when I can have my own classroom of students.