Reflection

TPTE 486 taught me a tremendous amount of information. At the beginning, I was very nervous about using so much technology. However, I ended up making iMovies, websites, and many cool things I never would have thought I could do! I gained alot of inspiration with technology in here, especially regarding education. I feel that I am competent in technology enough that I can use many of the things I learned in my classroom. After all, education is for the students, and especially in the new era, this is how to grab their attention. TPTE has opened new doors to me as a future teacher. I feel that I am able to go to a computer a quickly navigate my way around and also have new ideas to incorporate into my teaching. I will be a better and more knowledgeable teacher now. This was a fantastic class that got me thinking and learning about technology in the 21st century and how it will affect our future learners.

Google Sites: My class website

This is a link to my Googel Sites Classroom Website. You can see all of my projects from TPTE 486 into one completed website.
https://sites.google.com/site/brittanywilliamsonsclassroom/

Tennessee iMovie

 

This is an iMovie I made on Tennessee. This was a very frustrating project because I did not have much experience making movies. However, I enjoyed it once I got the hang of how it worked. Although it's not the greatest, I am proud of this movie! I think it is decent for a first time. The iMovies, although complicated and tedious at first, are a great idea to offer to students as project alternatives. More and more kids these days are introduced to technology, and some might be better at some things than the teachers! They are also a fun way to incorporate visuals into a lesson.  feel that this movie I made would be useful to show before I begin a unit on Tennessee history and geography.

Storybird and Spreadsheet

The above is a screenshot of a quiz I made using Excel. This was a tedious exercise, but I feel that it will be a useful way to test students' knowledge on any subject and also get them introduced to technology that they will use in the classroom. This quiz is based upon the different parts of speech, and is a third grade level activity. 

 Storybird is what was presented last week, and I loved it. Storybird is a website that I will definitely use in my classroom to help students' writing skills, and to also foster creativity. The illustrations are beautiful, and there are archives filled with stories that other people have written. This was a fun site to browse and get inspiration. For special education classes, this is a great site to use for kids who may have trouble using writing utensils, and it can be great for aiding students in reading and language, because it is a fun site.

Excel Spreadsheets/ Animoto

In high school I took a class that worked with Excel Spreadsheets. I thought I would be well prepared for this class project, but I was not! I forgot everything I ever learned about Excel. Thankfully, the directions were very clear on this and I had a knowlegeable neighbor. The finished project actually ended up being really cool. I will most likely use the method we did on Spreadsheets if I have time. It was very time consuming and tedious and took me a while to complete.
Animoto seems to be very cool. It is a site that allows you to make short 30 seconds movies for free, and full length movies at an upgrade fee. I think that Animoto would be fun to do in the classroom after a field trip or project in the class. Some of the issues that stood out to me were the lack of variety for songs or backgrounds. I would rather have something a bit less generic. However, being that this is not something that I would use too often in the classroom, that is not a huge problem.

Gogle Forms

Gogle Forms is very cool and useful! It is a quick way to make questionnaires, and those can be used for almost anything! I made a sample questionnaire that I titled "Getting to know my class on the first day". I was able to use text boxes, check boxes, multiple choices, etc. Teachers can use these to make tests for students, surveys, and anything they want to ask students. I will use Google Forms especially on the first day to get to know information about my students. I will also use Google Forms to make exams or quizzes for students.

Finished Digital Collection

https://picasaweb.google.com/104767195422297248769/Counting#5672376580568018786

This is a slideshow of different kinds of media depicting a theme of counting.

Inspiration Project

Inspiration and Scavenger Hunt

I enjoyed working with Inspiration. My mother taught many teachers how to use it when I was younger, so I actually had a pretty decent background with using it. She taught fourth grade when she was the technology coordinator for her school in Memphis, so I was always playing around with the different software on her computer. I think that Inspiration is a great way to simplify concepts or things that can me made into a visual chart. It is also fun, and easy to use. One thing that I really enjoy about Inspiration is the pictures that it offers. ClipArt , for example, never has good pictures for when you want to add something visual to a slideshow presentation, but Inspiration had many choices for every topic I typed in.

This is a little bit late, but this is my Scavenger Hunt Slideshow that I made for our theme, textures. I used Picassa to upload the pictures and then used Google to make the slideshow.
https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AYewxDId4ImJZGdocWZkMmJfMWRrbTI5Ymc0&hl=en_US

Scavenger Hunt

This is the link to my Scavenger Hunt on Textures!

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AYewxDId4ImJZGdocWZkMmJfMWRrbTI5Ymc0&hl=en_US

PodBean

Today we had a presentation on classroom podcasts. I personally have never been a fan of podcasts because I am not an auditory learner! For me, I cannot keep focus when somebody is speaking. However, that does not mean that I will not use these in the classroom. My problems with listening are very different from students who are auditory learners, and every student is different with the ways they learn. Podbean seemed to be very easy to use, and I will definitely use this to increase differentiated learning. I think this is a good way to let students receive information in many different ways, or a way for students who struggle with visual learning.

Scavenger Hunt and Digital Collection

This was a fun project that the Special Education people in the class did. We decided that our collection would be about different textures. So we went outside and found different textures such as bumpy, smooth, fluffy, and gooey. It was a fun way to integrate technology into a real world lesson. However, I really do not feel that Picassa is necessary for classrooms all of the time. It seems like just a place to keep photos, and it could be a dangerous thing in a classroom. Although I did like this project, I will most likely not use things like this too often in my classroom. I feel like other educational tools that we have talked about would be a better use of time.

October 24th...Busy Week!

https://picasaweb.google.com/104767195422297248769/Counting#5664600410400159218
This is a link to an almost complete slideshow that I made for counting. It was a fun sort of project to find pictures that related to a topic and collaborate them. I have yet to find a picture and scan it since this and last week has been hectic, but I will post a link to the finished slideshow on here once I add that fifth picture! :-)

Smilebox and Picnik!

Tonight our presentations were on Smilebox and Picnik. I have used Picnik multiple times and I love it. I do tons of events where I take hundreds of pictures, and I always have fun editing pictures afterwards. Picnik always has the basic features that are needed, but they also have many effects that can be used for fun or just to add to create a specific effect on a picture. One thing I enjoy about Picnik is that you do not need an account, and you can log in from websites such as Facebook and import and export photos from online.The one drawback from Picnik is hat in order to get full access to every feature they offer, you must have an account and pay a monthly fee.
Tonight was the first time I heard about Smilebox. I really liked the concept of being able to make very cute and fun slideshows, announcements, or anything that you can do digitally. I wish that on Smilebox I was able to choose from more formats than they offer, and that was the only drawback I could see.

Wordle and Timetoast

Tonight's presentations on webstes were on Wordle and Timetoast. I'll begin with Wordle. Wordle is plain fun. During the presentation I couldn't think of anything interesting to type to make my word cloud, so I just used the example of a poll of a class's favorite colors. I had fun playing with the word clouds that came up from that. I could see this being a great site for classroom polls and specific vocabulary that is important in certain readings.The presenters mention a website called tagxedo, which I enjoy more than Wordle, and when in the classroom I will most likely use Tagxedo rather than Wordle.
Timetoast is a site that makes timelines. This site would be most useful for social studies, but it can be use for history of anything. There were a few drawbacks to timetoast, such as it makes every bubble pop up when you are just browsing, and it also has a limit to how far back in time you can go. One example that was on the site in the popular categories was a timeline of Disney movies. These included links to sites where the information was given. I feel that this Timetoast would be a good idea, as our presenter said, to use as an interactive way to build a timeline in a class that included a Smart Board. This way, the whole class would be engaged in a certain project and they would build it together.

Delicious

When the presenters were explaining Delicious, I wasn't really that interested in it! However, once I set up my own account with Delicious, I saw the potential in this site. Often, I will stumble upon a cool website that I really like or need, and then a week later I can't remember for the life of me what the name was. With Delicious.com, I can save a site's name and information, and pull it up no matter where I am. This makes for easy access of multiple saved sites that I need to use at any given time. Last week I presented Glogster to the class and I blogged about that site last. These sites are very useful to teachers, especially Glogster when it comes to presentations. Delicious is a site that I can easily see being beneficial to anybody who uses computers often.

Glogster

For our project on educational websites, Brittany and I decided to learn about Glogster.com. Glogster is similar to blogging, except they make everything you put down into a digital poster. It is very entertaining to choose the designs, layouts, pictures, and browse through the hundreds of videos that they have archived. Glogster can be used for classroom projects, lesson overviews, and can be adapted to fit into any curriculum. I made many cutesy and fun glogs when I was just playing around with the site, and I had a fun time doing so.
Glogster had a couple of setbacks. If you want the full and complete features that they offer, there is a $99 fee for the school year.  Another thing to keep in mind is that you need to keep the focus on the information being acquired when making glogs, not just making a cool layout and design plan.
For me, making learning fun is a challenge, but it is the most effective way to teach something.  If you can have kids research loads of information and construct what they found into something artistic and original, they will appreciate the knowledge more than if it was just a boring old lesson or project.

Web Quest Search

http://questgarden.com/116/35/3/101209170456/index.htm

This is a link for a web quest that I found when searching for a webquest that relates to special education. The grade level is for the fourth grade students who are in special education or behind in reading in general. This webquest provides links to the story "The Polar Express" and Power Point presentations that will help the students review what they learn from the reading comprehension in the text. They are required to write in full details what happens in the story, and the web quest provides a rubric for the students to use and know what is expected. In the conclusion, the teacher encourages the students to have fun with this activity because there will be a Polar Express party in the classroom after the activity is completed. This is an excellent way to have the students involved in what they are learning.

Web Quests

I enjoyed our Web Quest activity last week. I did a few of these in middle and high school, and now I understand what to look for when giving them to children as learning tools. Teachers have different mindsets and goals when making these, and each one of those dictates what kind of webquest will be used. A few of the ones I looked at were terrible for what I needed for my role, and some were great. I am interested in sites where I can make these for my future classes. I think that they are a great learning tool for discovery and also technology. Even if a child does not have alot of technological background, just using computers for classroom assignments will help them tremendously.

Web Evaluation Checklist

I was online looking for checklists that would help me to evaluate resources and websites to use for the classroom. I discovered Kathy Schrock and her many checklists that have standards for web resources for different age groups. I noticed a difference in the checklists for certain age groups. For example, the elementary age checklist was very simple, and as the students get older, the requirements change and the websites demand more careful attention to details. For elementary students, the questions are mainly dealing with the layout and making sure the layout is clean and reliable sources wrote the site. As children grow older the website has more importance for bias, how the information is presented, and how much information is given.

Dabbleboard!

When working on my web evaluation assignment, I used a tool I found on Blackboard that was a website that was dedicated to the top 100 websites for teachers. I was browsing throught the lists, and I stumbled upon Dabbleboard. Dabbleboard is a site that allows teachers and students to make visual flowcharts, mind maps, pictures, charts, etc. What made it even better was the fact that it was so simple to use!  As I was going through the evaluation form, there were many things I realized while rummaging through the site to check for reliability. This site has no known authors, publishers, or sources relating to anything proffesional. If I needed a site for anything besides making visual representations, this would not be reliable. Howver, since this a giant toolbox used for creating pictures, I feel that this is reliable!

Confused About Wikis!

When we started talking about wikis I thought that they were very simple and a good tool. At the moment, I am trying to completely understand the technicalities that go into making one. I am also trying to decide what I could use a wiki for in the Special Education classroom....?

What I Hope to Learn in TPTE

My expectations are high in this course! I know absolutely nothing about technology except Facebook, Twitter, and typing Word documents. Technology is so important in education, and I feel that in order to be an effective teacher, it must be incorporated into the classroom. It makes things more efficient, and it keeps the students interested rather than boring blackboard lectures. I also hope to get a grasp on wikis. These are useful especially since they can constantly be edited, which I feel is an excellent thing to use and they work in any classroom setting.

Introduction to the Class

Informal Intro
My name is Brittany Williamson and I am a junior at the University of Tennessee. I am studying Special Education and hoping to teach elementary or early childhood special ed. I am from Bartlett, TN, which is a small city in the outskirts of Memphis. I have always been interested in special ed because my younger sister, Taylor, has special needs. I have always enjoyed spending time with her and her classmates. For fun, I like to bake, and then I like to go work out and burn off the calories I just consumed from the baked goods. I have been swimming competitively since I was eight years old, and I like to hit up the TRECS on campus and have a nice swimming workout. My background with computers and technology is very limited, so I am very excited to be taking TPTE 486!