One of my biggest take-aways from this course is that in this ever-changing world, students must learn to be creative, and teachers must prepare students for careers that require an immense amount of individuality and creativity. Through use of a lot of these internet tools, teachers can speed up the learning process through constant communication in and out of school. Many of the resources we learned about in this course leave lots of room for students to be creative. Like I said in my initial post, the internet provides countless opportunities for communication and collaboration. In my final project, I attempted to create a blog that fosters communication between students at different schools and education professionals throughout the state.
I feel that my initial opinions remain the same. I chose to take this course for the reason that I thought it would make me a better teacher by learning how to navigate educational web tools more smoothly as well as give me ideas for integrating them into the classroom. I think this course effectively accomplished this goal, and even if I feel I have not mastered all of the tools we learned how to use, I now have the resources to learn how to use them. I have a long list of ways I can use these resources in the classroom thanks to Prof. Brunsell and all of the other teachers in this course! I want my students to be problem solvers and independent thinkers and I plan to teach them this through science by using inquiry. The internet gives students access to information they never would have had twenty years ago, so they may ask more questions because a lot of knowledge is already out there for them!
Friday, July 29, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Final Project
Here is a screencast of my final project for this course. One thing I forgot to mention is that the age group of students is 6-8th grade. Also, I do not include the name of the school in my blog because I do not yet have permission to create an official site associated with the school. I look forward to the development of this blog over the course of the fall, and any comments are appreciated!
Link to blog: http://outdooredch.blogspot.com/
Link to blog: http://outdooredch.blogspot.com/
Saturday, July 23, 2011
D2L Discussion Reflection
I enjoyed the small group discussions on Desire2Learn. Since the discussion was concentrated in one place, we could have more of a conversation. I like commenting on people's blogs throughout the course, but half the time I ask a question and do not get a response (nor am I good at responding to comments on my own blog) so I feel like I got more out of the D2L discussion. I briefly looked at the other discussion groups as well and it seems that overall, everyone was really pleased with the course content and how it was run. I think that all of us will find a way to incorporate at least a few of the tools into our classroom, no matter what age group we work with.
The main points that were brought up in our discussion group were using the internet as differentiation for students who need more of a challenge, using the internet as a motivational tool and to get students excited about learning science, and to broaden their opportunities to learn science since you can access resources on most anything in science. The internet is an incredible communication tool that students should be learning how to take advantage of to enhance their learning!
The main points that were brought up in our discussion group were using the internet as differentiation for students who need more of a challenge, using the internet as a motivational tool and to get students excited about learning science, and to broaden their opportunities to learn science since you can access resources on most anything in science. The internet is an incredible communication tool that students should be learning how to take advantage of to enhance their learning!
Screencast-o-matic
I created this short clip using screencast-o-matic and would ask this question of middle school students while they are studying the seasons.
I think that it is good I finally tried to use a screencasting program because eventually I may get the hang of it, but was not initially easy to figure out! I tried at least four times to get text to show up with the question for the students, but I was unsuccessful until now. Next time I would turn the sound off because you can hear me breathing and since I am not talking at all, it is unnecessary.
I think that it is good I finally tried to use a screencasting program because eventually I may get the hang of it, but was not initially easy to figure out! I tried at least four times to get text to show up with the question for the students, but I was unsuccessful until now. Next time I would turn the sound off because you can hear me breathing and since I am not talking at all, it is unnecessary.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Old computer problems...
So I have tried to download Jing and Snagit (also available on the Jing website) and apparently my mac is too old to do this! I have tried searching other versions of Jing and have not had any luck Does anybody know how I can use this program or where I can find an older version that is compatible with my macbook from 2007?
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