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