Inspiration Project

The Inspiration project was definietly one of the more challenging tasks I have faced this semester.  While I enjoyed using the program, this was one of my least favorite assignments.  I guess I didn't care for it as much because the program was so new to me and I had no clue how to use it. The TPTE packet did come in handy and provided a lot of helpful information, but I still had a lot to learn on my own.

Although I didn't enjoy this task as much as others, I can still see how this would be a helpful program to use in the classroom. I know from experience that graphic organizers help improve comprehension and help students make meaningful connections among different concepts.  For this reason, I think a program of this type could be an extremely effectice toool to use with children.

In the future, I hope to learn more about Inspiration and gain more experience using it. In fact, I have already thought of several ways I could use this in the classroom.  Perhaps someday soon I'll have the chance to work with this program again. 

Extra Credit Activity

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

This is a video I created on Animoto using pictures taken on my digital camera or saved to my computer.  I titled the video "The Gift of Friendship" as it contains pictures of me and my closest friends.  The video was really simple to create. First, I created an Animoto account. Next, I uploaded the pictures I wanted to use. I then formated the video by selecting a theme and adding music and text.  When I finished making changes, I saved my creation and waited until the computer finished putting it together.  It was so simple and easy to use. I will definitely use this website again.

Scavenger Hunt Scrapbook

Create a digital scrapbooking design

I used Smilebox to create a scrapbook of my scavenger hunt experience.  The scrapbook features pictures of all the colors listed on the activity sheet.

Scavenger Hunt

This digital collection was created from a group of photos taken during an in-class scavenger hunt. For this assignment, a group of my peers and I set out to look for items of various colors.  We were given around 30 minutes to look around the building for items fitting the criteria on our scavenger hunt worksheet. 

We began this task by selecting a photographer to take the pictures.  Then, as a group, we searched the halls and vacant classrooms for items of different colors.  After photographing all the items, we returned to the class and uploaded the photos onto the computer. We saved the pictures to a folder and then transfered this folder to each person's flash drive.  Next, we each returned to our desks and began to resize the photos on our own computers.  When we finished re-sizing the photos, we uploaded them to a web album of our choice.

The activity was a lot of fun!

WebQuest

I enjoyed the WebQuest activity we performed in class. I think WebQuests are great tools to use with students and I can definitely see myself using this type of resource with future students. What was neat about the questgarden site was that offered so many activites for different age groups and subject areas. I am sure this site will be a valuable tool when I begin my teaching career. I think teachers and students alike can benefit from using this type of resource as it is both engaging and educational. Having made one myself, I have also discovered that they super are easy to create. I also think they are really fun and students will enjoy doing them.

Lesson Plans

The lesson plan activity was a lot of fun! Carrie Sorensen and I worked on the lesson together, since we are both in the Early Childhood program. As we began to brainstorm ideas, we quickly decided that a social studies lesson would be easy to incorporate technology into. Having seen Google Maps presented a few weeks earlier during the Web 2.0 presentations, we thought it would be fun to do a lesson on maps and use the Google maps technology. We titled our lesson learning about maps and planned it specifically for kindergarteners. The lesson would take place over the course of 1 full week.

Our idea to use Google maps was short lived. Once we realized level of skill required to use the technology, we decided that kindergarten studnets might find the activity too difficult. Instead, we decided to create and use a WebQuest about maps. Still, we wanted to include Google maps so we planned for a group activity on the SmartBoard later in the week. This way, the students would have some experience with maps before being introduced to a mapping technolgy.

The webquest we created was very simple and age appropriate. It includes games and other interactive activities that will teach the children how to use simple directions read map symbols,and use a map. We made the WebQuest on zunal.com. As we constructed the site, we used resources we found on the web and in the textbook. It was a fairly easy process to design the WebQuest. Carrie and I were actually suprised by how simple and quick it was to create a site. This is definitely something I can see myself using again in the future.

All in all, I was very pleased with the way our lesson turned out. Carrie and I enjoyed working on the assignment together, and I definitely feel like this is a lesson we could use in our future classroom.

Digital Collection Activity

This activity was a blast! I had so much fun looking for digital images that pertained to my theme. I chose elementary are because I felt this theme might be helpful to me at some point and I wanted to have a collection of images ready to use.  As I began to look for pictures, I searched for "Elementary Art" in the Google image collection. Right away, I found several pictures that were perfect for the activity.  It was actually really hard to choose just one to upload.  Next, I remembered having taken some pictures of childrens artwork at my practicum placement last year.  I quickly found the pictures on my flash drive and uploaded them to picasa.  Then, I Google searched "Elementary Art" again, but this time I looked for websites featuring artwork. It wasn't long before I found a picture to take a screen shot of.  This was probably the hardest part of the whole activty since I was on a PC and not a Mac.  In my experience, it is much easier to take a screen shot on a Mac.  In any case, I managed to get the screen shot and upload it to by Picasa album.  My next step was finding an image on a cd/dvd collection. This was fairly easy since the entire class went together to find images on computers in the 4th floor lab.  When I found the picture I wanted, I saved it to my flash drive and then uploaded it to my Picasa album. Finally, I scanned an image from a book and loaded it onto Picasa. 

After all the pictures were loaded on my Picasa album, I resized them using picnik.  This was super easy! I then saved the changes and returened to my album to add captions to each of my photos.  Upon adding the captions, I was done with the assignment.

I really enjoyed this activity and feel this process was helpful to learn.