Wednesday, October 29, 2008
audacity vs. garage band
Sean just showed us how to use garage band on mac. It is like the mac version of audacity and I think I like it better, too bad I don't have it! I was extremely frustrated before I got to class because whenever I tried to import a song in to audacity it would only play a second of the song and stop. The in class tonight I found out that other people were having the same problems and we figured out how to fix it. Even after fixing the problem I still wish I could get garage band on my computer because it seems A LOT easier.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Mini P's
In last weeks class Billy showed us a program that his district uses called castle learning, it is amazing! It is a program that allows you to create different class list and then either makes assignments or let you create assignments for each student. I think it is fabulous because it allows the teacher to build on each student’s level or skill instead of giving one blanket assignment or quiz. You can make deadlines for the assignments and then the program will let you see when the student completed the task and their grade. Along with grading the assignments the program will also let the teacher see what the student answered wrong and on what level the question was given.
I also watched Christine give a presentation on how her school is trying to go paperless, which I think is amazing, but unrealistic in my school. All of her students have laptops given to them by the school and most of the assignments are done on the computer and sent threw the computers to a drop box on the teachers computer. While she was showing us her daily routine she stopped and showed us a do now but it was in English and Chinese. Christine then went on to explain that she had a student who just moved here from china and he couldn’t understand anything. He seemed home sick and probably didn’t feel like a member of the class because of the language barrier. Then Christine went to google translator and tested a few translations out. The student took to the translations and was now participating in the class more because he knew what was going on. This story was so heart warming and it put a smile on my face.
It was very interesting to see how other schools do things as compared to the one I work for. The mini presentations really help spread the use of technology from teacher to teacher but then also school district to school district. It only takes one person to plant the seed in a district and many things may bloom from it.
I also watched Christine give a presentation on how her school is trying to go paperless, which I think is amazing, but unrealistic in my school. All of her students have laptops given to them by the school and most of the assignments are done on the computer and sent threw the computers to a drop box on the teachers computer. While she was showing us her daily routine she stopped and showed us a do now but it was in English and Chinese. Christine then went on to explain that she had a student who just moved here from china and he couldn’t understand anything. He seemed home sick and probably didn’t feel like a member of the class because of the language barrier. Then Christine went to google translator and tested a few translations out. The student took to the translations and was now participating in the class more because he knew what was going on. This story was so heart warming and it put a smile on my face.
It was very interesting to see how other schools do things as compared to the one I work for. The mini presentations really help spread the use of technology from teacher to teacher but then also school district to school district. It only takes one person to plant the seed in a district and many things may bloom from it.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
mini presentation
In the beginning of the past few grad classes we had different mini presentations about ways to that they incorporate technology into their classrooms.
One program that I loved was photo story. It is a free download so everyone can use it Teachers and students can both utilize this program. It is simple program that you can incorporate into almost any lesson in any subject. The program allows you to put pictures in any sequence that you wish and add audio to it. Erik used it as a teaching tool to introduce the different steps to the writing process. In each slide he used a picture depicting a step in the writing process along with audio explaining the step. It was a neat way to introduce a topic or to remind the students of the different steps that they must take when writing something.
The next presentation from Mei-Lynn was about photo story but how students can use it to display research instead of writing a paper. It was amazing what the students were able to do given the right guidance.
After seeing both presentations I started to think about different ways that I could incorporate this new use of technology into my classroom and right away I thought about math word problems. I find that students in general don’t like math word problems and tend to just give up before really trying doing it step by step. I thought it would be fun to depict each step of the word problem with a picture to go along with. We can even do thins with regular math problems as well. It will allow the visual learners to connect the math procedures with pictures so that eventually they will be able to create those pictures in there head.
The next two presentations were about this program called Inter Write. It is a program that allows the teacher or student to write onto a “notepad” and it will appear on the white or smart board. It allows students to answer problems and show their work with out having to use chalk and getting dirty. Jennifer said it helps with a lot with time management because she can prep the night before and not have to waste time putting up math problems on the board. She can easily hit the next button and the next problem will appear on the screen. The version that Jon has is mobile so it allows him to walk around the classroom as he is writing notes on the screen to make sure every one is on task.
One program that I loved was photo story. It is a free download so everyone can use it Teachers and students can both utilize this program. It is simple program that you can incorporate into almost any lesson in any subject. The program allows you to put pictures in any sequence that you wish and add audio to it. Erik used it as a teaching tool to introduce the different steps to the writing process. In each slide he used a picture depicting a step in the writing process along with audio explaining the step. It was a neat way to introduce a topic or to remind the students of the different steps that they must take when writing something.
The next presentation from Mei-Lynn was about photo story but how students can use it to display research instead of writing a paper. It was amazing what the students were able to do given the right guidance.
After seeing both presentations I started to think about different ways that I could incorporate this new use of technology into my classroom and right away I thought about math word problems. I find that students in general don’t like math word problems and tend to just give up before really trying doing it step by step. I thought it would be fun to depict each step of the word problem with a picture to go along with. We can even do thins with regular math problems as well. It will allow the visual learners to connect the math procedures with pictures so that eventually they will be able to create those pictures in there head.
The next two presentations were about this program called Inter Write. It is a program that allows the teacher or student to write onto a “notepad” and it will appear on the white or smart board. It allows students to answer problems and show their work with out having to use chalk and getting dirty. Jennifer said it helps with a lot with time management because she can prep the night before and not have to waste time putting up math problems on the board. She can easily hit the next button and the next problem will appear on the screen. The version that Jon has is mobile so it allows him to walk around the classroom as he is writing notes on the screen to make sure every one is on task.
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