A journey in less than 45

After looking at one of my classmates blogs I was once again reminded how important technology is in our wold. Last Thursday I received my placement and couldn't be more thrilled! I'm student teaching in a school in Southfield and immediately jumped one the internet to look up the school and the location (and she did the same).

First I started with location because isn't it all about location, location location? I am exactly 24 minutes away from the school and was able to see my direct route through mapquest. This is crucial! I was able to visualize where exactly I was going to drive, email my parents the map, and then discuss traffic times and other obstacles. After mapquesting I jumped on the district website and was excited to scope out my school. Within minutes there was so much information at my fingertips. I learned about the teachers, the community, the teacher involvement and so much more!

Last but not least I went onto facebook and immediately messaged the other girls that I am student teaching with. I received a message back within 20 minutes. I also posted my excitement on my facebook status and received comments and likes from so many people!

This whole technology journey took me less than 45 minutes. It's hard to believe you can do so much in such a short amount of time!

Diigolet

Today I added Diigolet to my computer and was actually really excited about it. I decided to do some research on South Africa since I'm leaving in 3 months! So i searched online and found a random website to look at. I was able to highlight and play around with the idea of annotating on the computer. I think my favorite part was adding sticky notes to the webpages. There are so many times I have had to read online and wish I could highlight like crazy. Now Diigolet makes that possible!

I also came up with a couple ideas to incorporate this into the classroom. I think this would be great for students who are beginning to do close reading and pick out important information. If students had hard copies of the reading and teachers could project the reading on a screen while using Diigolett the teacher could guide students in their close reading. This could begin as a class activity that would eventually get handed off to the students. As students become more comfortable with technology, they too could use this form of annotation. Its easy and quick to use.

I really liked this technology and can see myself using it a great deal. It can be used for school but also personal use. And now I don't have the urge to highlight my screen and sticky note all over the place, technology helps me do that!

The Pumpkin Patch and Animoto

This story that I told, through music and pictures, was a trip to the pumpkin patch. I went with my niece and two nephews, as well as my sisters and mom. Seeing experiences through the eyes of little ones is truly exciting. The day was filled with cider, a petting zoo, and finally picking out the perfect pumpkin. The kids had a great time playing and enjoying all that fall has to offer!

This example of a movie could be great for the classroom. It's important for children to understand that stories don't need words to make it a "story." We tell stories through our actions, our emotions, and finally through the pictures we capture. Students can even tell stories with drawings they create, but the main goal is creativity! It would be useful for my students to have this broad genera of what storytelling looks like. I would also have my students do what I did and create a story that was a trip with my family or a memory they shared. This gets them thinking about family structure and how all families look different which is included in the GLCEs.

As for the technology I loved animoto! It was incredibly easy to use. I started off playing around with joggle and was actually quite confused. I had noticed that many of my classmates used animoto so I figured I'd give it a try. It was easy to upload the pictures, include and song, and the program created the video on its own. This would be great to use with younger students because the technology does most of the work for you! The one thing I disliked about this technology was that the video could only used 8-10 pictures and take up 3o seconds. Past the 30 second time allotment the user had to pay to upgrade, but overall I think that to try out the software it was a great first impression!

Enjoy The Day at the Pumpkin Patch!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Comics are Cool!

So the new technology I decided to try out this week was a comic. I'm doing a new literacy project for Language Arts that has to incorporate some form of technology. The problem was that many of the technologies that she said we could try I have already played around with in this class... so... I broadened my horizons and tried something completely different!

I was really nervous about this whole comic thing until I downloaded the free 30 day trial of comic life. This program is AWESOME and I highly recommend it! It is so much fun to play around with. You use pictures that you already have and create a comic using bubbles and fun fonts. It is very guided and user friendly so I liked that a lot.

As for using this in the classroom I had so many ideas. Students could make comics in a Language Arts class to describe a part of the book they're reading. They could use it as a persuasive technique and try to "sell" an idea to someone. They could create a comic of their own life or event. THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!

So because my new literacy project isn't quite finished I created a comic to warm me up to my final graded project. I decided to do a comic about my life and spring break. My sisters and I ran the disney princess half marathon and it was absolutely incredible. Becky and I had been training and Heather... well lets just say she went on the elliptical a couple of times. Read the comic to see how Heather did!

Enjoy!

Half Marathon Comic