Digital Photography

Today we were able to explore digital photography with comic life. We took pictures of different shapes then we added comic life to them and made a educational comic of each shape. This would be a resource to make fun lessons for students. Kids love seeing pictures of things. I believe it would help them learn it better if they saw pictures or even took the pictures then made a comic book of the shapes and share it with the class. It would be a very fun activity for students to create. If done just right, a lot of new subjects could be learned through this activity.

Computer Based Tutors

Today we were able to explore different computer based tutors. Here are the three things that i kept in mind while exploring a number of different tutor that taught spanish, math, language art and science.
a. Discuss the potential benefis of the computer tutors.
There is alot of potential in computer tutors. This can really help student better grasp concepts that they may be behind in or want to get ahead in. This can be a great asset to teachers that have computers in the classroom. Most of the tutors are very fun and will be able to motitivate students to learn. Very good resource.

b. Are there any concerns or weaknesses?
Some of the tutors are a little overwhelming in that some of the pages are way to full with options and information. On some of the tutors that ask for a response, you are able to type in anything you want even if it makes no sense and the computer tutor will tell you that it is right.

c. How would you better design those tutors?
I would make some of the tutors a little less overwhelming. Need to keep it simple to navigate. Also need to have some way of checking all answers to see if they are correct like have the teacher being able to go in and see what the student has done and has submitted.

Instructional Architect

today we had a guest presenter. It was a good presentation on Instructional Architect (http://ia.usu.edu). Very fun website where you can put together a class resource site and projects.
We also looked at the http://nsdl.org/ website. I liked this website. It helps teachers search for things without going through all of the junk. There is alot of fun web links that are for each subject in school. I was able to find some very fun ones for math. However, i found alot of links that would not download or would just did not exist anymore. I feel like it would be very useful in a teaching career. Very good resources and very easy to navigate.
Here is a few fun links.

http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/mb.cgi (math baseball)
resources
Projects

Web Quest.

Today we explored Web Quest and the features that it provides for educators. It is very useful for teachers. It is a very good website to find detailed lessons on most topics. I believe that these lessons are created by real people. The lessons have a very easy to read format and very easy to follow. I have found that most of the lessons are very fun and active which is real important in the classroom.

There is also a free 30 day trial subscription at http://questgarden.com/

Here is the web quest that my group and I reviewed today:

Title: Help Dirty Doug Learn Hygiene skills.
Subject: Hygiene
Website: www.kieferco.com/webquest/doug.html
Grade: 3rd-5th
Task: Your best friend, Dirty Doug, wants to be more like Dapper Dan. He asks you to look on the Internet for things he can do to keep himself neat and clean.
To help Doug, you need to find some good hygiene advice for him, and then make a daily schedule to help him remember what he needs to do.

Website evalution

Today we research several websites that relate to younger students. Most of the websites that i visited i found very useful. The first web site that i explored was nasa for kids club. This website looks very fun and very educational for children. Children will like this website because there are different skill levels and game to learn from. (http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forkids/kidsclub/flash/index.html)
The second website that i looked at was a website for Providence Elementary. It is a very good website to help keep the community informed on what is happening at the local elementary school. However, the one thing that i found that should be change is how often it is updated. It still has last years principal. (http://providencepandas.com/principalscorner.htm)
The second to last website that i explored was my most favorite. It was PE central website. This has a ton of links that are very helpful in finding different lesson ideas and information about health and PE. It is a website that people can be involved with by sending in lesson ideas. It is also a place where you can find state standards.(http://pecentral.org/)
The last website that i explored was the UEN website. It was very easy to navigate and find what i needed to find. It is a great place to find lesson ideas and find utah's state standards for elementary subjects. (http://www.uen.org/core/)
It was very helpful going to these different websites with a evaluation in hand. It helped me look for certain things that would make a website easy for parents and students to navigate. It was also good to look for the last time it was updated so i would know for sure whether or not the information is up to date. It is also good to see who the author is and if he or she is qualified to be sharing information relating to schools and students. It would be very important to use an evaluation when you are looking for info that could be used or needs to be presented. Just "websurfing" it is not as important to use a website evaluation form.

Spreadsheet Day

Today in class we did some activities with spreadsheets. Most of it was just a review but it was very helpful to go over how to create a formula on a spreadsheet.
We also made a google survey that was useful. I found it neat to be able to create a survey with the different question options. It could be helpful in a classroom where all of the parents and students have internet access. It would also be very informational after a activity that you had to get feed back from people. There is alot of neat things that gmail offers under the tab documents. It is good to learn about it because i am always using it but never knew about alot of these tools that are offered. https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cEJEWjdCel9BWGJGZk1HT1BpVEdVWmc6MA..

March 2, 2009

Today in class we were able to work with google doc. It is very interesting. It was fun to be able to write a document and save it and have another person read it. It was sort of like chatting. This would be very useful to have students share documents with the class or teacher and have them able to add to and respond. It would also be good for the teacher to see how the students are working. We also worked with MWord and some of the different features it offers. One of them was to review somebody's document and post reviews on the article. It is a new way to correct a paper without adding to the text. It just adds little side notes.

YETC Again!

Today in the yetc was very fun. We were able to explore and become familiar with the resources we discussed last week. I had alot of fun with the phun website creating different things and adjusting things like the gravity, density and so on. This web site can be very educational in school. This would be a great way to teach about gravity, density, and most things relating to physics. I believe the students would find this site very entertaining and is very educational. I have also listed other websites that we talked about. This website is a great place to find and download free books.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
This website is a good place to keep up to date on the latest technology websites for teachers.
http://www.ucet.org/inUCETnew/newsletter/
This is a great website to teach about stars and the conselations.
http://www.stellarium.org/
This is a very fun website to explore physics
http://www.phunland.com/wiki/Home
This is another good website for teacher resources
http://teacherlink.ed.usu.edu/yetc/yetc/Links.html

It will be exciting to be able to explore all of these websites and get great ideas how to use them in a classroom. Technology will be very important for my future students if they are to keep up and be competive with the rest of the world.

YETC

Today we were went to the yetc. It was a very awesome experience. Just listening and seeing what Nathan showed us today, it feels like a new door has been opened and my abilities and resources to teach have expanded greatly. The thing that i found the most interesting was the phun website that used the laws of physics. I know that i will use this website alot in my future. There are so many resources that are for free. Just all of the online books that i would be able to download or video clips that are on subjects that i may be teaching at the time. This is very good because of the limited funds that we have. Just becoming familiar with this technology will able me to teach bettter and reach more students. It will be very helpful to take the time and explore more of the resources that are out there that teachers can use to help teach. YES it would be a very good experience to come back to the yetc and explore the resorces here and become familiar with them.

Technology

The UEN website is very useful tool for teachers. Just the little time I had exploring the website I was very amazed what there is out there to help teachers. The lesson plans will be very helpful in in getting ideas and being able to provide a positive and effective experience for the students. It is amazing all of the things that can be retrieved from the internet. It will really help because alot of these websites for teachers are going to be free. This will be a very useful tool in my future as a teacher.


My lesson plan:

Science (Discovering Magnetic Fields)

"Magnetic Fun"

5th grade

websites:
http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=2702
http://www.sciencemaster.com/jump/physical/magnetic_fields.php

Class4010

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