Wrapping up the Course

What an exciting semester it has been in TPTE! I have learned so much about the internet and its tools that I would never have known had I not been enrolled in this course. The pace of the class was consistent and I had ample time to create the many projects that we were assigned. I found some very useful tools and websites that will aid me on my future endeavors as a teacher.

After looking back on my initial blog post, I am satisfied with what I expected to learn and what I actually learned through taking this course. I wanted to find out more about tools on the internet that could be used for educational purposes and to enhance technology in the school systems. I realized there is so much more to learn about the internet and there are so many new tools that are forever expanding. I have found some tools that I will not only use in my classroom, but that will also be fun just to use for recreational purposes.

This class has been very realistic and helpful. We had the opportunity to create projects that we can use in the future. I have always enjoyed classes where I feel like I am actually learning and gaining knowledge that I can use, and this has definitely been one of those courses. 

Website

Throughout the TPTE course, we have been compiling projects into our own website. Google sites was a website in which I had never heard of, but now I am glad that I learned about this webpage. The possibilities are nearly endless with all of the customization available to create a unique site. I enjoy the way that we worked on the website over the course of the semester as opposed to finishing it all in one sitting.

I liked having the option to choose many aspects of what I wanted on my website. I was able to choose which of the web 2.0 tools I wanted to create and add to my page. I also liked having the freedom to decide what I wanted to do with my extra pages. There were many choices that we could have used and I decided to make a recommended reading list. This project was very realistic and I would absolutely create a classroom website in my future classroom.

As we finished projects, we embedded them onto our website. This process was not as difficult as I imagined because many of the tools we used were already paired up with google which made the embedding process that much simpler. As aforementioned, it made the website creation so much less stressful by not having to have it complete all at one time. I enjoyed compiling the different artifacts over the course of the semester.

I will absolutely use a website in my future classroom. This is a great way for students to get to know their teacher, as well as for parents. I consider it to be a foyer to the classroom where everyone can meet up and see what to expect before even entering the classroom. On top of all of this, it was incredibly fun to create and customize.

Blogging in the Classroom

Through the entirety of this semester in TPTE, we have been blogging about our experiences. We are able to tell our likes and dislikes about a particular program, and also how we would use a program in our future classroom. This is a great way to remember each program and tool that we have used by reflecting back upon our prior blog posts. I believe this is an excellent way for teachers to see how their students are reacting to certain tools and lessons.

Blogging is practically an online journal with all of a bloggers thoughts compiled into one resource. It is a great way to communicate with others and read about how others are feeling about a topic. Blogs can be used in any classroom where children can read and write and have any basic knowledge about a computer. I sometimes worry about the privacy of blogs, but there are settings in which a user can disable viewing by others and make a blog completely private. I would ensure that this is done before I ever asked my students to blog.

I would use blogs as a communication tool either on a daily or weekly basis in my future classroom. I could establish a daily question or a weekly reflecting section for children to respond to through their blogs. This is a great alternative to notebooks and having to keep up with them in a classroom of more than 20 children!

I have enjoyed blogging in my TPTE course this semester. Sometimes I found it hard to keep up with the blog posts and when they should have been completed, but this is just a minor fault that I could have avoided by simply blogging as soon as I finished a project. I can look back on my blog to refresh my knowledge of what a certain tool was about and how I felt about the tool. It is also easier to type up thoughts and post them on an online journal as opposed to using paper and having to keep up with each piece of paper.

iMovie

Last week (November 19) we worked on a project called iMovie, or digital storytelling. In iMovie, users have the ability to create a movie using pictures, text, transitions, and sounds. I compared it to a PowerPoint show, but just in a different format. We had the opportunity to watch many videos that had been made to get a general idea of how to create our movie. I decided to do an instructional video for an imaginary drivers education course. In this video, I highlighted how to prepare to drive your vehicle outlining the important first steps in driving a car.

There are not many functions on the iMovie which make the preview and create page difficult. There are slots where users drag and drop pictures to begin the project. After doing this, users can add text, sounds, backgrounds and more to their pictures. I have found that there are not many choices in formatting of text, and it is also very complicated to place text in the right spots and ensuring that the text will last in the movie for the right amount of time. If I had problems with this I anticipate young children to have problems with this as well. The overall concept of creating an iMovie or a digital storytelling device is innovative and with some adjustments made it could be a great tool.

I would anticipate making iMovies for my children in my future classroom. I would not necessarily expect the children to make their own iMovie since I will be teaching in an early childhood classroom. Some of the features are hard to create and utilize and I believe there should be some updates to make the tool more user-friendly for children.

Inspiration

The tool Inspiration can be used to create digital diagrams. In class, we created a diagram to decide where we would fictionally eat lunch. We divided our diagram up according to location of the restaurants in Knoxville. We were able to add links to the restaurants to browse menus of the lunch choices. We also could add pictures to get a better view of what a restaurant looked like. After completing a class diagram, we created our own. I created a diagram of different genres of children's books, and then I added examples of books from each genre.

With the Inspiration tool we were able to create a diagram online and make it interactive. At first, I did not understand the concept of this tool because it is much easier to just make a diagram on paper rather than using this somewhat complicated tool. However, once I realized how interactive this tool could be by adding hyperlinks and extra text, I understood its relevance and how helpful it could be in the classroom.

I would use Inspiration again in my future classroom. If I had children who were older (3rd grade) this tool would be useful for them to make their own diagrams when brainstorming a topic. I do not find this tool absolutely necessary to use in the future, but I would try to incorporate it if I had the time and resources to be able to do so. 

The Use of Interactive White Boards

With technology expanding ever so vastly, teachers have seen a major transition from the traditional chalk board in a classroom to an interactive white board. This shift has been welcomed with open arms as the interactive white board makes learning and instruction more hands-on. With the proper training and knowledge of interactive white boards, teachers can enhance lessons and allow students to have a bigger role during lectures and discussions involving visual enhancements.

In TPTE 486, I was first introduced to an interactive white board. My peers and I were able to go up to the white board and interact with different subject matter ranging from social studies to science. We could be taught new information while being apart of the teaching. The integration of students being an active part of the teaching is the most successful aspect of the interactive white board.

I could visualize myself using an interactive white board in my future classrooms. Children enjoy having a role to do and they are able to do so with these white boards. These can be easily made to fit children in all grades, which is another strong suit. I envision interactive white boards to become the new visual teaching tool and eventually replace chalkboards.

Scavenger Hunt

The week of October 14, 2012, our class participated in a scavenger hunt. This scavenger hunt was designed to integrate many of the technology tools that we have learned thus far in the classroom. My group had the shapes scavenger hunt. We were to find and capture a picture of ten of the items listed on our scavenger hunt. After capturing the images using a digital camera, we had to upload the photos to our computers. We used a flash drive to transfer the images and then stored them in Dropbox. Our next task was to resize the files to a smaller image and change the resolution to 72. After doing this, we renamed our files and uploaded them to both Picassa and Google Presentation. The final step was posting these to our website.

This activity incorporated multiple ways to use technology. We used a digital camera, flash drive and web tools to complete this project. In writing it seems like we had a lot to do, but doing the actual activity was smooth and flowed well into the overall content of the course. Getting out of the classroom and being able to take pictures in a natural environment was interactive and exciting; an better alternative to simply finding pictures on the web. I had not previously used Picassa, so it was new and enlightening to use for the first time.

The scavenger hunt was fun to do in TPTE 486, however, I do not think I would be able to use it in my future classroom. This activity required us to go off in groups and take pictures - something I would not be able to let my young students do. I could find an alternative and limit the children to only taking pictures of items in the classroom, but that would also limit the amount of pictures and variety of pictures that the children would be able to take.

Midpoint Reflections

As we come to the midpoint in this class, I have undoubtedly been learning a lot about technology and the internet. We have learned many web 2.0 tools such as wordle, pixlr, glogster, google docs, picasa and google presentation. I know that I am enjoying this course because although we are learning so much information in such little time, I am still retaining the information. I can remember a tool that we learned towards the beginning of class just as well as I can remember one that we have just learned. The majority of the things that we have learned in class are resources that will aid me in my future classroom. I enjoy participating in classes in which I am assured that I can use my knowledge learned in the class in my future endeavors. Overall, I am very pleased with the content of the course, the pace, the instruction, and the hands-on environment.

Google Docs

Google documents are my favorite project thus far in this course. Google documents are similar to wikis in that multiple people can have access to the page and edit, add and delete content. With wikis, only one person can edit at a time and I found this feature to be rather prohibiting. With google documents, all the members can access the site simultaneously and edit all at once. You can actually see people as they are typing and see who it is that is typing!

We watched a few videos in class that showed how to use google documents and they were humorous. Google documents can be used in so many ways! I am planning a wedding and I can use google documents as a wedding guest list site and other planning details. It can be used when going on trips with other people or planning other events. Most importantly, it can be used interactively amongst students in a classroom. I am generating ideas on how to use it in classrooms in the future.

Glogster

Glogster is the web 2.0 tool that myself and two others in my group were assigned. Glogster is an online, interactive poster board that can be accessed through glogster.edu. I found the setup for Glogster rather long, which did not permit us to getting started right away because of the long creating an account process. Other than that, Glogster is a great website! I was usually the student in class who would opt to bringing in a poster board to present whatever project we had in class. On Glogster, poster boards have become even more appealing! Not only can you add pictures and text, you can also add videos! This is not something that you could do on your average poster board!

While my group explored Glogster, we created a "glog" about welcoming students to the first day of school. At times, the uploading part was long and it was easy to grow impatient while waiting. Also, it was hard to figure out how to upload certain content. However, this did not take away from the fact that glogs are so useful and entertaining to create! I will definitely use these in my classroom as an option for children presenting projects.

Inquiry Based Activity

An inquiry based activity is where a teacher guides students and engages them in investigating questions. I looked at it as basically an online worksheet that used resources and websites from the internet to help find out answers. In the inquiry based activity that we did in class, we went through a few steps to create our activity. We checked out a book from the materials lab that pertained to a subject in our grade level. We went and found the TN-ELDS standards for our grade level that we were doing the activity on and also the subject area. A new set of standards we also researched was the NET-S standards. I anticipate these standards becoming more and more prevalent as technology usage increases in classrooms.

After gathering all of our standards, we created the actual questions and answer sheets for the activity. I focused on third grade reading where the children read an online version of a short story and answered questions about the story. Reading online can be fresh and exciting for children because it is a new media for them to experience reading on. Books have been slowly diminishing due to new technology such as Nooks, Kindles and iPads. Therefore, I believe children should experience reading through a computer screen as opposed to only reading from an actual book.

Wikis

A wiki is a website that allows its users to collaboratively add, edit or delete content on a website. We will do three wikis in class this semester. The first wiki was among the entire class where we created our own "All About Me" page. We were able to add pictures and content onto our own page and we could access our pages through links on the homepage. I found it difficult to add and place pictures on the right spot where I wanted it on my page. Also, it was frustrating that only one person could be editing the page at a time. There was also the risk that someone could "steal" the lock and it would remove me from the page I was editing and maybe even wipe out my work (that didn't happen, thankfully). I liked how the entire class had a home page together and then we could branch out and access our own links from that home page.

The next wiki we did was the rock star trading card. In that assignment we worked with a partner and answered questions about a mineral. This assignment was fun and short. We had a partner where we found out some facts about the mineral we chose. My partner and I picked to do the ruby. I liked how we could look at other's work and found out information about other minerals.

The last wiki that we will do is still in the works. We will be doing a resource wiki where we will find useful websites within our teaching preferences (mine is early childhood education). I am looking forward to this because I know that my classmates will have some good websites that I can use in the future.

Web quests

On the week of September 17th, we did web quests. Web quests are online "quests" in which learners can do inquiry-based activities. After browsing multiple web quests from topics such as slavery, ice cream, gardens and many more, I started wishing my teachers did this when I was in school! Web quests are a fun way to explore the internet and to provide a more engaging and interactive way to find out information about a topic.

Web quests are definitely something that I would like to incorporate into my classroom. These would be great for group projects and teams to get together and perhaps lead discussions on a given topic. With the right resources provided for the children I am sure that they could gather a lot of information from the internet on a variety of topics.

Reflections of Website Evaluation

In class on September 12, 2012, we did an assignment which required evaluating a website. I have never evaluated a website before. In fact, the only evaluations I have ever done were professor evaluations. With this being my first time evaluating a website and going so in depth with it, it was very helpful to have a step-by-step guide of what to look for in my evaluation.

The website evaluation form required inputing a lot of detailed information about the website. This information included a lot of things that I would not normally look for when determining the effectiveness of a website. This was very important because as technology is rapidly growing, more and more forms of technology will be used in the classroom. The website I evaluated was both fun and eduactional. I would consider using a website quite like this to engage children in educational opportunities in other ways outside of the classroom. By evaluating this site, I was able to dig deeper and find out more about what makes a website not only beneficial, but also relevant to a learning goal or objective in the classroom.

Although this project was time consuming, I found it to be beneficial. I enjoyed exploring the website and looking at it from another lens. Typically when I browse the internet I am just doing it for entertainment and I am more of a customer of the website's entertainment. However, while evaluating I felt more like an inspector and I looked at the website more objectively and thoughtful. While I would not formally evaluate every website I use in my classroom, I will keep in mind some important things to look for when recommending sites to my children.

Introduction and Expectations for TPTE

Hello! Welcome to my first ever blog! My name is Porscha Jones and I am a senior at the University of Tennessee. I am finishing up my Bachelor's degree and then will go on to complete my Master's degree in Child and Family Studies PreK-3. I will be interning at a public school during the 2013-2014 school year. I have not yet received my placement, but I am hoping to teach in either first or second grade. I have always known that I wanted to be a teacher, and I feel as if it is my duty in life to make sure I accomplish this goal. The beginning stages of a child's education and learning is essential, so this is the reason I decided to teach younger children. I want to be able to welcome children into the early stages of learning, and make sure that they have a positive start to what is to come for the rest of their educational careers.

Before entering this TPTE 486 course, I thought that I had a pretty solid understanding of the internet and all of its functions. However, after reading the fifth chapter in the course textbook I realized that there is so much more to learn. I have never heard of the uses of many of the Web 2.0 tools. Therefore, I have high expectations to learn about ways in which I can incorporate these tools into my future classroom. I aspire to learn effective ways of teaching in a generation where technology is quickly advancing. I hope to use the tools that I discover and learn about in not only the classroom, but also in connecting to other aspects of the internet.