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!

Inquiry Project

This week, we worked on our inquiry projects.  We had to pick a topic and make a worksheet and then place the worksheet with answers on our wiki.  Since my field is elementary, I chose to do mine for a 4th grade social studies class and the topic was the Virgina Colony.  Our assignment had to align with the Tennessee Standards for fourth grade social studies and the Technology Standards.  This is really the first time that I have encountered the standards and had to look at them.  That was definitely helpful since I will deal with those throughout my career and they are very important.

I loved using the wiki again and I am definitely going to use this in my classroom when I become a teacher.  It is such a good resource for the students to learn a lot of information while only being responsible for one topic.  I think what I got from this the most though is that I have been underestimating elementary students.  I asked pretty basic questions on my worksheet, and at first didn't even require complete sentences.  After I thought about it though, I realized at fourth grade they should be practicing sentences and critical thinking, so I changed it to require complete sentences.  That is something that I will definitely remember when I begin teaching.

This was a really helpful activity and overall a fun project!

Webquest, Rock Stars, and Inquiry Projects, Oh my!

We had a lot going on in TPTE this week.  First, we learned about webquests.  I had absolutely no idea what a webquest was before this week.  Now I know about a great resource to use in my classroom! Not only am I aware of the tool now, but I know how to evaluate whether it is one that I want to use or not.  My job was to determine efficiency when we evaluated certain webquests, but the members of my group helped me learn how to evaluate in terms of technology, group work, and creative thinking as well.  I am now equipped to choose webquests that will be useful to my students.

The second thing on our agenda was a Rock Star Wiki.  We split into teams of two and researched gemstones, then compiled all of the information into one wiki.  This is yet another useful tool that I can use in my classroom one day.  Each team only researched one gemstone, but then as a class we could look at all the gemstones in the wiki to learn about them, so it was very time efficient.  This could be used with so many topics in an elementary classroom!

Which brings me to the inquiry project.  We now are preparing our own wiki for our subject area.  I am choosing to do something in social studies, but I haven't nailed down my exact topic.  This will be a useful project because it will teach us how to incorporate wikis into a lesson that meet the Tennessee standards.  I am excited to work on mine and create the assignment!  Overall, it was a very productive week of learning in TPTE!