A Reflection

What a busy summer! This class feels like it has flown by. I am happy to report that I have learned far more than I expected when I first started this course. I've been exposed to so many helpful resources that will help me feel better prepared once I begin my internship. I know that I will be referencing my website, wiki, and this very blog in the future when I'm building course content and lesson plans. Furthermore, I actually know how to use these tools now. They are no longer just great ideas -- I can put them in action. There have certainly been some challenges in learning some of the programs. Active inspire and imovie were among the most challenging yet rewarding projects I've learned this summer.

Google Sites

I am so thankful to have learned about google sites this year! I have used websites before, but had no idea that google sites was available and free to use. This is a very practical and economic tool to use in the classroom. Over all it is very easy to use, although there are a few quirks here and there that you have to figure out. Practice is key. The more you use it, the more comfortable you get with it.

Blogging...

Blogging is such a useful and fun tool. I am really looking forward to keeping it up and developing a blog of my own for my future classroom. I will use it to share with parents what we are learning and celebrate successes. It will also be a fun tool to use to share ideas with other teachers. I have ran across several really helpful blogs that other classrooms have. What I love about blogging is that they allow you to be creative and share with others.

Here are some blogs I like:

http://talesofathirdgrade.blogspot.com/

http://learningismessy.com/blog/

http://www.schoolgirlstyle.com/

Resource Wiki

This is a project I will be bookmarking and will be certainly coming back to one day! It was great to collaborate with others in different classes and share helpful websites and web quests. There were some terrific ideas and sites that I have never heard of before that are incredible resources. Here is a link to the resource wiki I was able to be a part of.

http://486sum12ele2.pbworks.com/w/page/54593953/FrontPage

Digital Storytelling!

Digital Storytelling is the art of telling a story through digital media. I have created a "how to" video on teaching children how to grow their own food.  School gardens are a great way to teach children about where their food comes from while promoting healthy food choices. Most school gardens are created in raised beds, since soil quality may be an issue on your school grounds. This video shows you how to construct a raised bed for use in a school garden. 


Working with iMovie was a lot of fun! It was a bit frustrating at times however - as it can be a bit quirky. I am unhappy with the quality of the video however,  once I uploaded it to youtube. I followed the directions on the rubric but converting it to VGA made it difficult to view the text I included to help tell the story. This was a little disappointing because it looks so crisp and clear with high resolution on my computer. :(  Hopefully, this video sill conveys my digital story and gives you an idea of how to create a classroom garden! 

ActivInspire Project

What a fun project! This was by far my favorite project we've worked on in this class.  That said, it was also the most challenging! Figuring out how to navigate the program took some time -- and patience! I chose to do this assignment on exploring animal habitats.  I was able to utilize the resource library to check out a 2nd grade science textbook to reference. I had a great time putting this project together. I can really see this being useful in a classroom because it allows the kids to interact with the material.

Inspiration Project

For this project, we used the program Inspiration to help create a diagram to be used in the classroom.  There are multiple different ways that you could use this program to enhance a classroom lesson.  Because the resolution on this program is so large, you could even print out your diagram and hang it on the wall. For this example, I chose the topic "animal populations". The program allows you to connect your topic with multiple different subtopics, and so on. I will certainly want to utilize this program in the future. It would be a great way to make worksheets, leaving them blank for the students to fill in, as well. 

TimeToast

Timetoast is a great program that allows you to build your very own timelines! This is a wonderful tool that would get a lot of use in a classroom. This tool would be appropriate for younger grades through college. It would even be fun to use for personal use, sharing your family history, genealogy, or even celebrating a wedding anniversary. For my purposes in the elementary classroom I would choose to use this tool to time map a story, allowing the kids to understand parts of a story or help them put events in order. Here is an example of timetoast: