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.