Amazing Activinspire

This past week in TPTE 486 we learned how to make flipcharts using the Activinspire software. In all honesty, I found the software a little frustrating. At first when we were doing the tutorial, I thought the basic components of Activinspire were very similar to the Paint software on Windows computers. Once I started using the software on my own, I found myself hitting the “EditàUndo” buttons quite a bit. I think my biggest problem with the software was that I kept forgetting that I had to click on the arrow symbol in order to pick objects up and move them. I frequently would click on the text tool, click on the screen, type the text, try to move it, and find that I had accidently created another text box. Luckily, I stated getting more comfortable with this as I worked on my project, and by the end I mostly remembered to click on the arrow symbol when I was trying to move things on my pages.

Another problem I had with the Activinspire software was that I could not group together some of the objects on the screen. On one of the pages on my flipchart, I inserted a diagram of the solar system and drew arrows to each of the planets so my students could drag the name of the planet to the corresponding spot on the diagram. I used the arrow tool and drew lines on the diagram, but then when I tried to group the diagram and arrows and lock them down, the software would not allow me to do this. Once I asked Ginny for help, she explained I would have to use the line tool and create my own arrows in order to lock them down. I found this extremely frustrating because I had spent quite a bit of time on the diagram, and I had to delete all of my arrows and spend time creating more arrows using only lines. I was frustrated because I do not understand why the software would let me use arrows but not let me lock them down.

Even though I was frustrated at times with the Activinspire software, I really did enjoy learning about it and am glad I now have a little experience using it. I will be doing my internship at Mooreland Heights, Elementary School this fall, and when I met with my mentoring teacher, one of the first things she asked me was if I had any experience using a Smart Board. At the time, I did not have any experience but I told her I was taking TPTE 486 this summer and hoped to learn more about the software. Even though I am not completely comfortable with the Activinspire software, I am happy I was able to create my own flipchart and that I now have a basic understanding for when I walk into her elementary classroom this fall.   

This is a link to a youtube channel for Activinspire for beginners. The site contains about 30 videos that covers a variety of topics. I think this will be a great tool for me to use in the future if I ever forget how to do something in Activinspire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXVK3M-XFkY&list=PLA12ABED3C52B346A

The photograph at the top of this blog was retrieved from http://ldtstudio.coe.uga.edu/course/view.php?id=95

Good Google Presentations

As I mentioned in my last post, this week in TPTE 486 we went on scavenger hunts where we used a digital camera to take photographs of academic subjects in the real world. Once we completed this scavenger hunt, we did another one where we searched free online photo collections and created a digital scavenger hunt presentation using Google Presentation. Overall, I like Google Presentation fairly well. One of my favorite things about this tool is how easy it is to use. I like that you simply pick a template, click on a textbox, and begin working. I feel like the layout of the slides were great for our project because the textboxes were already in the appropriate locations and it was fairly easy to insert images and change the size, color, and type of the font. Even though I personally have always used PowerPoint to create presentations, I think Google Presentations will be a better tool to use in my future classroom because it seems like there are so many options in PowerPoint that students would spend a lot of their time designing their backgrounds instead of actually completeing their projects. Google Presentations, on the other hand, gives students fewer design options, which will help them focus on completing their assignment. Although I really like how simple Presentations is, I do wish it gave you more options to chose from for your background template. I think if I had all of my students in my future classroom present a Google Presentation a lot of them would want to choose a bright template, and, since Presentation only has two or three bright options, all of the presentaitons would look very similar.

Despite this minor drawback, I really did enjoy learning about Google Presentations this week, and I can think of numerous ways I would like to use them in my future classroom. For example, I think having students create a Presentation that tells who they are, where they are from, and what types of things they like would be a great way for all of my students to introduce themselves at the beginning of the school year. As I mentioned in my last post, I would also like for my future students to use digital cameras to document their experiences while on field trips and then create Presentations to share what they learned with the class. I also think Presentations would be a great way for my students to present specific projects that they work on for our class. For example, students may create a Presentation about a particular book they read, scientific concept they researched, or particular moment in history they learned about in our class. Although I have only listed a few key examples here, there are many ways to incorporate presentations into the classroom, and I think Google Presentations is a great tool for doing so.

The image at the top of this post is from http://www.webconferenceclassroom.com/blog/google-docs-presentation-review/

Shape Scavenger Hunt

This week in TPTE 486, our class was broken up into groups and we went on a scavenger hunt. My group was given the task of using a digital camera to document real-world examples of shapes. My partner and I went to McClung Museum and discovered that our world is full of wonderful examples of two and three-dimensional shapes. Personally, I really enjoyed this activity, and I would love to do something like this in my future classroom! One of my favorite aspects about this assignment is that it shows students the practical aspects of what they are learning about in school. I remember when I was in high school learning about geometry I would always say, "Why are we learning this? Are we ever going to use this in the real world?" This activity is great because it shows the practical applications of concepts and how they show up in the real world. The second aspect I really like about this activity is that it can be used with practically any subject. For example, for math you could take pictures of numbers or mathematical symbols, for science you could document different kinds of plants or animals, for literature you could take photos of vocabulary words you see in newspapers or magazine, and for social studies you could take pictures of one museum artifact from each decade in American history. I also think digital scavenger hunts would be a great way for students to document their learning while on a field trip! I would love to give each group of students a camera and let them create a PowerPoint presentation about their experiences. The final aspect I really like about this activity is that it incorporated technology into the curriculum in a fairly simple way. As I have said throughout my blog posts, I am a little nervous about incorporating technology into the classroom. Fortunately, this activity seems like it would take basic technological skills that I believe I possess. All I would really have to do is transfer the images from the cameras to the computers and show my students how to embed them in a Picasa Web Album or PowerPoint presentation, which I now feel comfortable doing.

I know many people will be worried about giving digital cameras to elementary students, and will see this as a major drawback of this activity. I, on the other hand, understand that for many of our students, technology is simply a part of their daily lives. I think students of all ages will be able to learn how to carefully handle technological equipment, so I am not as worried about this as some other people may be. Mooreland Heights, the school that I am interning at this fall, recently received a grant that may give each student in the school an iPad. I think if we are willing to give every student an iPad, we should feel comfortable letting them use an inexpensive digital camera for scavenger hunt activities. In all honesty, I am a little clumsy and am more worried about breaking the cameras myself than I am about a group of two or three third grade students breaking them :)

The image at the top of this post is from http://marketingpad.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/spring-scavenger-hunt-for-business/

Incredible Inquiry Based Learning

This week we learned all about inquiry based learning in TPTE 486. Overall, I really enjoyed creating the inquiry based activity, and I would definitely use assignments like this in my future classroom. As I mentioned previously in other posts, I usually have a difficult time with technology, and I am very nervous about incorporating it into my future classroom. I think two things helped me a lot with this assignment. First, we already have a lot of experience using wikis, so I am beginning to feel more comfortable using PBworks. Second, the map example from the previous year's class was a great tool for me because I could see exactly what the finished product should look like, which helped me better understand what an inquiry based activity is all about. Although I have enjoyed our projects up to this point, I think the inquiry based activity may be my favorite and is the project I feel the most comfortable creating. I think this activity is great both for teachers and students.

From a teacher's point of view, inquiry based activities are great because they are fairly easy to create and take relatively little time. I think one worrry all teachers have is that they are talking too much and not letting the students do enough thinking. I like inquiry based activities because they transform the lesson into a student-centered activity as opposed to a teacher-centered lecture. Inquiry based activities are also great because they allow teachers to teach the content as well as research skills, which the children will need throughout their academic careers. Teachers give students the freedom to do their own research in a controlled manner by giving them only a few websites to search through. While the students are looking for the answers on the worksheet, they are learning many research skills, including how to skim for information and how to synthesize information from two or more sources.

The inquiry based activity also has many benefits from a student's point of view. First, the inquiry based activity gives students the chance to use the computers in the classroom. Even though many students probably have daily access to computers at home, they always seem to enjoy being able to work on the computers at school and this helps make the assignment even more engaging for them. Second, inquiry based activities give students more freedom and responsibility, which I believe they will enjoy. While doing an inquiry based assignment, students know that if they want to learn the material, they must research the websites and complete the worksheet on their own, which is kind of empowering for them. Students also know they can complete the assignment at their own pace and are free to do the activity however they choose, which helps them feel more in control of their own learning.

Below is a link to a website I found that includes two videos that discuss how to incorporate inquiry based activities and technology into your classroom. I thought this was interesting because it showed how you can have your students use video conferencing to speak with a professsional to complete a worksheet instead of having them search through websites. I think this is another great way to bring technology into the classroom, and I thought you might enjoy seeing it.

http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/inquiry/explor_sub4.html

The photo at the top of this post is from  http://www.mothermiser.com/8-must-have-features-for-parental-control-software/

Availability of Computers in Schools

 

So far in my experiences at The University of Tennessee, I have been in urban and rural schools in Knox County and have noticed there is a very big difference in the availability of computers in these schools. This past spring for Elementary Education 351, I was placed at Farragut Intermediate School in West Knoxville for the first part of the semester and Spring Hill Elementary in East Knoxville for the second part of the semester. These schools were very different both in size and socioeconomic status, and this impacted the availability of computers in the school. Farragut is one of the largest and wealthiest schools in Knox County. When I was working in a fourth grade classroom there, I noticed that the school had a large computer lab for their student body. Even though this is not typical for every classroom, the class that I worked with also had three computers, two Kindles, two iPads, and fifteen iPods that the students used on a daily basis. In the middle of the semester, I began working at Spring Hill Elementary, which happens to be located in one of Knox County's lowest socioeconomic communitites. Unlike Farragut, this school did not have a computer lab and the classroom I worked with had three older computers for the students to use. In my experiences at other schools in Knox County, this seems to be a trend: lower socioeconomic schools have less technology. Fortunately, I believe this trend may be changing. This fall I will be completing my internship at Mooreland Heights Elementary School, a small Title One school in South Knoxville. This past year, Mooreland Heights was given a technology grant that will supply them with one iPad for all of their students. Hopefully, this trend will continue and technology will be incorporated into other lower socioeconomic schools across Knox County.

While I am excited to experience the 1:1 ratio of technology to students this upcoming school year, I do have mixed feelings about this program. On the one hand, technology is an important part of our daily lives and every student needs to be given the same chance to interact with it no matter what their socioeconomic status may be. On the other hand, I do not think students should rely on technology so much that they need their own personal iPad for every second of the school day. I think there are some hands-on activities that also need to be incorporated in the classroom, such as science experiments, art projects, and creative writing, that cannot be captured with technology. Furthermore, I think it would be very shocking for a child to go through their entire elementary school career working on an iPad then have to go back to using paper and pencil in middle school and high school.  So, while I like that lower socioeconomic students are being introduced to new forms of technology, I do not want them to become dependent on them. In the future, I hope our schools can find a healthy mix between incorporating technology into the classroom and allowing children to do hands-on activities, because I think both are important to their overall success.

The photo at the top of this post is from http://www.ehow.com/info_7987351_should-students-use-computers-classroom.html

Website Evaluation

This week in TPTE 486, we learned how to evaluate websites. Our professor stressed that we need to be able to look at resources critically so we can determine whether they are appropriate for our students to use as sources in our classrooms. According to our rubric, this assignment was designed to help us meet the learning objective: the ability to evaluate websites for use in your future classroom. Overall, I feel like this activity helped me meet the learning objective. I think the worksheet we filled out helped me better understand the things I need to be looking for when I am evaluating a website. I now understand that when I find a website that I want to use in my class or suggest as a resource for one of my students, there are a few key questions I need to ask to make sure the source is both accessible and credible.

Before doing this assignment, I did not realize that I need to evaluate how accessible websites are before giving them to my students to use as resources. The worksheet helped me understand that I need to think about whether a site is specific to one browser, needs plug-ins, or is difficult to navigate so I can determine whether or not my students will be able to use it. I am glad the website evaluation addressed accessibility because, even though I have never realized it before, issues such as these may keep my students from being able to access a website at home or on certain computers in our school. I think not being able to access a website would be very frustrating for elementary aged students and would waste classroom time, so I am glad this assignment had me focus on accessibility so I will be able to better evaluate websites for my future students .

Even though I have evaluated the credibility of websites for some of my classes in high school and college, I did not realize how in-depth my analyses should be. This assignment taught me that instead of just seeing if the website has an author and has been recently updated, I need to think critically about whether the author or publishing body is credible, whether the website is biased in any way, how up to date the information is despite what the copyright date says, and how accurate the information they are presenting really is. I really liked using the worksheet as I was evaluating the website because it helped me focus in on the important things I needed to evaluate and helped me see whether or not the source was reliable.

Because I now better understand what I am suppose to be looking for when I evaluate a website, I believe this assignment has helped me meet the learning objective and has prepared me for evaluating websites in my future classroom.

This image is from a blog found at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/torre107/si/2008/07/paper_week_website_credibility.html

A Wonderful Wiki

This week in TPTE 486, we learned what wikis are and how we can use them in our future classrooms. When our professor told us we could create a wiki for our class and have each of our students write entries on their own individual pages, I thought this would be a great way for me to incorporate technology into my classroom. Although I really liked the idea of a class wiki, I was curious how many real elementary teachers actually created their own and used them regularly. After a quick search on the internet, I found a wonderful wiki created by Mrs. Ibrahim for her second grade class in Southern California. Although this wiki was created in the 2009-2010 school year, I chose to discuss this particular wiki because it shows you can use wikis with students of all ages.

When you first go on Mrs. Ibrahim's wiki, the opening page welcomes you to the site, includes links to each of the student's individual pages, and has a tag cloud at the bottom that lists major topics that are discussed on different pages of the wiki. Mrs. Ibrahim has also included a navigation bar on the left side of the site that includes the different content areas that students have written about, including Art and Music, ELD, Health and PE, Inquiry, Math, Our Learning Log, Reading, Social Studies, Science, Technology, Thinking Maps, Word Study, and Writing. Although it may seem like I am listing insignificant details, I think these are important for two reasons. First, I think the layout is an important part of any wiki. I like that Mrs. Ibrahim's opening page is very informative yet also very easy to use. I think she has done a great job formatting the layout so her second graders, their family members, and anyone else who visits the site will be able to easily find what they are looking for. The second reason why I think these details are important is because they show how intricate Mrs. Ibrahim's wiki actually is. Instead of creating a simple wiki that has one page for each student to introduce themselves, she has created a wiki that mirrors her actual class. The wiki includes an "All About Me" section for each student to write about their personal lives, student written entries about what they are doing and learning about on a daily basis in their different content areas, and even includes images of the students' work and posters that Mrs. Ibrahim creates to display in her classroom to help her students learn. This wiki is a great resource both for Mrs. Ibrahim's students and for other elementary school teachers who can look at the posters and writing prompts that Mrs. Ibrahim includes on her wiki and get ideas they can use in their own classrooms or on their own wikis.

Mrs. Ibrahim's wiki has helped me see how I can use a wiki in my future classroom. Seeing an example has also helped me see the good and the bad things about a wiki. For example, I think a class wiki is a great way to get students to write and work on their language arts skills, including spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I think most elementary teachers, including Mrs. Ibrahim, have their students write weekly journal entries in science or social studies, and I think allowing them to write their entries in the form of a wiki is a great way to engage students and motivate them to work on their writing skills. Also, I think wikis are a great way for students to interact with technology and learn about computers. Although I really liked Mrs. Ibrahim's wiki, I also saw one drawback of creating a classroom wiki. Many of the wiki pages were practically bare and only had one or two sentences written on them. I think this is probably because maintaining such an intricate wiki is time-consuming. Although Mrs. Ibrahim did a great job creating the wiki, you could tell from her site that the wiki became less of a priority as the school year progressed. Despite this drawback, I really did enjoy seeing Mrs. Ibrahim's wiki and would definitely consider creating one for my future classroom.