Blog Journal #9

I feel this project will be helpful for the teacher we are doing the lessons for. It's good for us as well because we are getting to put everything we've learned to use. If we hadn't had to do this project, we would have learned a lot of really helpful information from this class and not done anything with it.

I think I put in a lot of work, just as the rest of my group did. We created a slide show and I personally created a whole crossword puzzle on Excel using poetry terms.

I don't think I've learned much in the previous week. I guess I kind of learned that making a crossword puzzle on Excel is SO MUCH EASIER on Mac's than on a PC. Other than that, I was only using things I've learned before.

Blog Journal #8

WebQuest would be most beneficial if used with middle schoolers because they are more technology savvy than elementary leveled students. It allows them to look up words, for example we are teaching the students about poetry so maybe they could look up poetry terms, and add them to the Wikispace.

I could not find one particular lesson that I thought would be helpful from this website because I did not understand how to navigate the site. Everytime I searched for something, it would just give me books from Amazon.com with their prices and whatnot.

New things I've learned this week that will be useful in a classroom was MS excel's ability to create crossword puzzles and calculate grades. It's way easier than doing it by hand and not too confusing. I think teachers should use this in their classroom because it will save them so much time at the end of the year when they need a total calculation of their classes grades.

blog Journal #7

A good web based tool I could use is The Homework Site. It's a website that allows teachers to post homework or any other kind of information online and students are able to access it from a school or home computer. The students can post their homework on the site instead of printing out paper and bringing it in to class. It would also be easier to grade.

I think I would use Excel for the sole purpose of creating personal letters for the class without having to actually type up different letters on MS Word. I thought that was the most helpful way Excel can be used and I believe I would use it often. I find Excel otherwise to be extremely difficult and confusing.

Any time I would need to use a spreadsheet basically would be a good time to use Excel. I feel like I personally would use Excel only in extremely rare cases because it confuses me so much. There are many other programs that are simpler and less stressful, to me, than Excel.

blog Journal #6

In my PP1, I used colors and fonts that were easy to look at and would keep the childrens attention. For that same reason, I also added graphics, including clip art and word art.

To incorporate non computer visuals and peripherals in the classroom by having educational and informational posters around the room. When I was in grade school I always loved when my teachers would have colorful posters that would teach me something around. To incorporate computer based technologies with other methods of teaching by maybe using those posters to teach a lesson along side a powerpoint.

I learned A LOT about powerpoints in the last two classes. Before this, powerpoint was like a foreign language to me. I think powerpoint is important in teaching because its a fun way to teach and keep the kids attention at the same time, which can be hard to do!

Blog Journal #5

The website I chose is YouTube.com. YouTube has many headlines, video clips, and graphics. Advertisements are displayed on the main page. The text font is fairly consistent throughout the sites main page, other than when the sites name is presented or the font of advertisements. Each advertisement is a different color from the rest of the page, which is mostly white with blue font. Most text is next to a picture/clip that is linked to a video. The creator made this site very user friendly, with easy to find links and a big search bar at the top.

The biggest advantage of using presentation software is it's more interactive for the students and creates a fun atmosphere to learn in. I feel students are more likely to be interested in a lesson that is visually appealing rather than a lesson that involves nothing more than the teacher standing in front of the class and lecturing. A disadvantage of presentation software is it's less helpful to students who aren't visual learners. Not every student is advantaged by a fully visual presentation. Students who learn better through auditory lessons or more hands on lessons would not focus well in visual lessons.

Using MS Powerpoint, I could make a slide show with sounds, images and sections where the students must copy down parts into their notes. This will hopefully keep the students attention for the entire lesson since it would be interesting and more hands on.

Blog Journal #4

As a teacher, I would teach my students to use outlines and idea maps to help make their creativity/ideas more organized. MS word is a good program to help students create these outlines and idea maps. With bullets, paragraphs, graphics and tables it becomes easy to organize and combine ideas relating to the topic matter presented to the students.

I would definitely encourage the use of outlines and idea maps because they are so helpful in organizing lots of ideas and putting them all in one place. This will make students more aware of the importance of organizing thoughts and ideas, making the overall process less stressful and hectic.

Mail merge is a really great technique we learned that I didn't even know existed! It makes writing individual letters to students in the class so much easier! Had I never learned about this tool and had become a teacher, it would have taken SO MUCH time to individually write each letter.

Podcast!

:)