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