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.