Web 2.0 Tool

It seems like a long time ago, but probably about a month ago we were divided into teams.  Each team received a Web 2.0 tool to explore, create an artifact, and then teach the class how to use it.  I've written previously that my team got Storybird which is a neat website where you can write stories by using artwork found on their website.  On Thursday, it was finally our turn to teach.  I think we did very well with our presentation!  Selden gave a great overview, Tyler walked them through making a Storybird with excellent instructions, and I discussed the strengths, witnesses, and uses in the classroom.

One of my favorite things about Storybird is that as a teacher you can create a story to share with your students, or they can help you with it (depending on age), and you can have the book published in a hard copy for your classroom!  It is also a great tool for independent reading for your students.  This is not something that I would sit down and do a lot, because there is just not time to create stories all the time for my students, but I would definitely introduce this tool to my students and maybe work on one together, and then allow them to read Storybirds in their own time.

Feel free to explore my Storybird to see an example of this great tool!

Interactive White Boards

This week in TPTE, we were introduced to interactive white boards.  We are using the ActivInspire software from Promethean Planet.  The flipchart that we did in class was a great example.  We got started on creating our flipchart yesterday in class.  I will be doing mine on the inner planets of the Solar System for a fifth grade classroom.  Right now, I am feeling a little overwhelmed.  It is such a big project, but I know it will be easier once I just start making it by using the software.  I can't wait to see my finished product!  I also can't wait to be able to use this tool, because it is such an important tool to know how to incorporate into my classroom in the future.

We also learned about animoto this week which is a website that lets you make 30 second videos.  It looks like a great tool as well, and I think I would use it for virtual field trips (although it can be used for other things in the classroom).  The other tool we learned about was Google forms, which is located in Google drive.  I think this will be a good tool for formative assessment but also can be useful for getting parents input.  Once again, it was a week filled with learning many great tools for my future classroom.

Picasa Web Albums and Google Presentations

This week, we finished up our Picasa Web Album and Google Presentation.  I had already posted my Picasa web album, but I included it in this post for you to access easily! We did a scavenger hunt around campus looking for objects for each color on our list.  We then resized these photos and uploaded, organized, captioned, and tagged them in Picasa.  We also learned how to embed them to our blogs and websites.  You can visit my site and look at the technology projects page if you'd like to.  This will be a great classroom tool because I can have my students also do scavenger hunts and create a Picasa web album to show it to their classmates or parents.  It would be great for teaching if I needed to show them several photos.

Instead of using these pictures for our Google presentations, we chose ten photos that were all in the same category.  I chose to do mine on fruits and vegetables, and you can also see this on my website.  I liked using different pictures because we learned about websites that we can use to download free pictures; this way we know with certainty that we aren't breaking copyright laws.  This is also a helpful tool for me as a teacher to create presentations (for students or fellow teachers), or have my students create presentations to present.

We are learning so many great tools in TPTE!  We began learning about Interactive White Boards as well, and I can't wait to tell you all about that tool!

Pixlr

 It was a busy week in TPTE! It definitely was a reminder that fall break is over and we are on the last half of the semester. We focused on digital images this week. We learned about pixlr which is a digital image editing site.  You can see an example of a picture I edited above.  This will be a great classroom tool for either me as a teacher to use or for my students to use.  We also did a digital scavenger hunt.  My partner Caroline and I had to find things on campus for 10 different colors.  We then put them in a picasa web album and you can see it in my post from Thursday below.  This would be a fun activity for my future students! I enjoyed it and it gets the students out of the classroom for a little bit which is different.  It has been a fun, eventful week in TPTE!

Picasa Web Albums

Fall Break!

This week, it is FALL BREAK! So we only had class on Tuesday.  We learned in class how to make a "word cloud" as seen above! I decided to make one that had to do with fall and fall break.  The girls that taught us how to use wordle did a good job of teaching it.  It is a very simple procedure to make a word cloud, so I will definitely be using this tool in my classroom! I will use it to make a name chart and also to let kids pick out the words that are nouns, adjectives, etc. I know that there will be many other uses for it as well.  It was a very enjoyable class and I am excited about having learned yet another useful tool!

Hope everyone has a great fall break!

Storybird

This week we were put into groups with other classmates in our content area and given our Web 2.0 tool.  We had to learn our Web 2.0 tool and create an artifact with it.  We also have to teach the tool to our classmates.  At first, this task seemed pretty overwhelming.  We had to make a story on Storybird and then write step-by-step directions and strengths and weaknesses.  It was a little hard to find enough artwork to write a story with that was consistent.  I decided on a basic theme of water because there was a lot of artwork for it, and I wrote about animals that live in water or get their food from water.  After I went through and made the story, it actually wasn't that difficult to write out the step-by-step directions.  It helped to have three people in our group also because we divided the work and actually got it done during class.  I am a little nervous about teaching the class, but my group has a lot of time to prepare.  It was a productive week (as always), and I can't wait to learn about all of the other Web 2.0 tools as well!  Here is my story if you would like to explore Storybird and see what it looks like: Water is Wonderful!