Powerpoint

Check Out My PowerPoint

 I was excited when I read this assignment to try Power Point again. I really have not used it in a while. Due to the fact that we now have Promethean Boards in our rooms I spend a lot of time developing flip charts right in Active Inspire. We have our PALS reading test coming up for our students in the next few weeks so I decided to develop a presentation on rhyming. I broke it up into two sections. Part one teaches about rhyming words and in part two they get to practice rhyming. My kindergartners would not sit for a 50 page slide show so it made sense to me to break it into two sections that could be taught over two days. I know that my kids always need to release some energy before I have them sit for any extended period of time so I included two videos at the beginning that they can dance to. I then used Jing to import pages from one of my students favorite series "Llama Llama" these books have tons of rhymes. I have also included two kinds of practice one where they circle the pictures that rhyme and one where they make their own rhyming words based on particular endings. When I use this in my own classroom I plan on importing it into Active Inspire so the students would be able to circle and write in the presentation. I also read the blog and the article that was assigned for this assignment. They left me a little confused. However the think the overall message is keep things simple. You never want people to have to read too much. When you make a PowerPoint you have to do the talking. I really tried to do my best of this PowerPoint to make it usable in my own classroom. I would love to get better at creating lessons for my Promethean Board. I think this assignment encouraged us to "Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning" and "Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership." I can see these types of lessons as a way to introduce many interesting topics to my students.

Google Earth

First of all I think Google Earth is AMAZING and it should be used by all teachers. I can't wait to use it durring my Japan and Kenya units in the spring. I loved playing around with it and seeing my house. It was so easy to go into Google Maps and save my field trip as a KML or "Keyhole Markup Language" file. Then all I had to do was open it in Google Earth and there were all my places.

I think using Google Maps was an important step. It was very easy to create a list of places to visit and save them to Google Maps which made importing them into Google Earth a breeze. I went on to the Google Earth For Educators website and started looking around at all the lessons. When I searched for Google Earth lessons for ages 0-6 I was not able to find anything. However, I did find one lesson for a second grade scavenger hunt that with some tweaking I think would work really well for my class. I would have to make it places in Japan and Kenya and I would do it whole group.

Just like the Google Maps assignment I think this assignment is all about developing digital age learning experiences. The kids are able to see for themselves places that they may never get to see in person. I think it would be so cool to be able to transport my kids to Kenya or Japan. It really brings their learning to life.

Google Maps

I created a simple field trip for my young students. To do something like this with my kids would take a lot of preparation. I would spend the week working with them on how to use Google maps and what each part of the map is. I would also have them work with a partner. I created a map with ten sights of Washington D.C. We are heading there in the spring so it would be nice for them to have a little background before going. I would have created a little travel journal for each student to use during this assignment. I created the assignment right in "Google Drive" and published it right to the web so it could be accessed by all my students during the assignment.  I included a link to the map on my assgiment where I had already found all that I wanted them to look at. I think it would be way too hard to ask my students to search for specific sites on their own. Here is how my map turned out:

Please feel free to check out My Field Trip!!

I loved this assignment. It really got me thinking about how I could use this with Kindergartners. This assignment would allow me to use standard 2. My students are having a digital experience. They are seeing their Nations Capital from their own classroom.

Batchgeo

I thought this was a very cool activity. I also really think this would help my students visualize that they all live in the same area. It is so funny that they are all shocked to find out that they all live in Leesburg. For Kindergartners the concept of town, city, state, country, and so on is very hard for this. This program would help them visualize these concepts. I also think my kids would love seeing how far they live from me or how far we will have to travel to get to our field trip destination. It took me a while to figure out that I had to copy the information into the example spreadsheet that opened in excel. For a while I was trying to copy and paste right on to the web page. Once I figured that out I struggled with the last 5 names on our list not copying over no matter what I tried. I eventually ended up printing out our list and just typing them in. I was amazed at the map that appeared once I hit "map it". I never did figure out how to embed my image into the blog. I copied the link from my email, went to insert picture, and pasted it into the "from a url" spot but nothing happened. I ended up just using Jing to capture an image of my map. When working through this assignment I kept thinking about standard 2. This website just screams "design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments".  We are showing these kids things that can only be done using technology. This is using the technology to bring these concepts to life.

Jing Video

How to Create A Pivot Table In Excel

 Earlier in the week I found out that my blog was detected as a spam blog so I have been waiting to be allowed to blog this assignment. I received by email go ahead from Google this morning. This was by far the most frustrating assignment, for me, that we have done so far. I decided that I would learn something new for this assignment. My husband has been bugging me for about a year now to teach me how to do a pivot table in excel so I thought this would be a great time to learn. The actual learning of how to create a pivot table was not that hard. It was the actual making of the video that drove me crazy. The first time I recorded I discovered that I had not opened my viewing screen wide enough so that all the information I was recording was in view. The second time I recorded I remembered to enlarge the area of the screen capture. I really struggled with knowing how fast or how slow I should move my mouse. When I finally, after about 4 atemepts, got my video the way I wanted it I saved it to my desktop. I was suprised to see that it was saved as a "SWF" file. I have never seen that extension before. One of the prongs on the Jing Sun is the history. I was able to click on that to find my video. I was then able to upload it to the internet by clicking the "Share" icon.

I really think this assignment would really help in the classroom. Especially since I have students who have never seen a computer before. I might be able to create all types of videos to teach them how to log on and use different programs on our school computers. I think this assignment hits two main standards. One as the teacher I am able to "Model Digital Age Work and Learning." I am able to show them exactly what to do and each student can watch at their own pace. Also as like most of the other assignments I am engaging" In Professional Growth and Leadership" by learning something new and creative to help my students.

Jing Image

I was really excited to use the Jing tool after I really saw what it can do. I recently discovered a site called We Give Books. It is a wonderful site that allows to you to digitally read books. This is great for reading books on our Smart Board and also when you want to specifically point out certain things in a story. I used the We Give Books site and Jing to create a sample lesson I might do on rhyming words. I created 4 images with Jing do just give an idea of how I might start a lesson. After I created my first shot it was very easy to save the image as a jpeg to my desktop. I thought the desktop might be the easiest place to find the picture when I wanted to upload it to my blog. I always start every story reviewing fiction and non-fiction.

If we are reading stories in a series I always try to get them to think back a little and make some connections. I created the next shot in a effort to prevent all the hands going up and the students all trying to share with me the other books they remember from the Llama Llama series.

Finally, before we start any story we always review title, author, and illustrator.

Now we are ready to start reading and going over the concept I am trying to teach, or review, in the case of this lesson. Not only did I save my last image to the desktop I also did a screencast of my image. All I had to do was then go the the screencast website, log in, and my image was right there waiting for me.

I think Jing is an awesome thing that I am really going to start using more in my classroom. It hits many of the standards. I am going to be able to "Design and Develop Digital Age Learning Experience" that my students will be able to get so much out of. I love being able to add arrows to draw focus and text boxes not only to prompt my students but, also myself. These skills are going to help me "Model Digital Age Work and Learning." Finally, as with all of the assignments so far I am finding myself engaged in "Professional Growth and Leadership" because I am learning so many new things and I am constantly thinking about what other areas of my teaching I can use Jing with.

Diigo

I wanted to get on and blog about this assignment last night but, I was at Back to School night until 8pm and had to attend a school spirit night tonight so, I am finally able to get on and blog about what I have done tonight. After reading this assinment the wheels in my head started turning and I relised that I have been social bookmarking for over a year now on Pinterest. In fact I am sure my husband would say that I am addicted. When I first heard about Pinterest I was only pinning on my Mac at home and I was using mostly Google Chrome. For those who do not know what Pinterest is it is basicly a virtual bulliten board. You are able to bookmark and organize pictures to help you remember why you bookmarked a site in the first place. I started off slow at first only repinning ideas that other people had already had on the site. I started off with only a few boards. At the time I was planning my wedding so I had a boards for wedding ideas, recipies, and one for ideas for my classroom. Eventually I felt like breaking out a little and I wanted to start pinning my own ideas to get out there. I was really easy to create a browser add on so I could pin what I was finding. Since I have already done that on my Mac in Chrome (a long time ago) I decided that for this assignment I was going to install the add on in Firefox on my PC desktop. I found that it was so much easier to do it in Firefox. All you had to do was make sure that your bookmark tool bar was displayed and you just had to drag the "pin it" button to the tool bar and you could get started pinning. As of right now I have 9 boards, 1,071 pins, 83 people following me, and I am following 52 people. I am always on Pinterest. I have it on my IPhone, my Mac, my IPad, and on our desktop.  I think it is pretty clear that Pinterest had helped me "Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership". I have tried so many new ideas because I discovered them through Pinterest. Feel free to check out my Pinterest page or follow me if you are already on.

Self Portrait

 

I really liked this assignment. It was a lot of fun to create a funky self portrait. I never even knew that the Picassao Head site even existed. I really think this might be a cool site to use with my students as a fun center. For this activity I went to the site and just started playing around with it. I think if I introduced this site to my students I would have them play with it on our smart board. I also think it would be interesting to have them make a couple of faces during the week. I know that if I made my face on a Saturday it might look much different than the face I made tonight. I made a very tired face. I also tried to perk myself up a little by using my favorite colors to brighten it up a little. I also thought it was pretty cool that we got to add a signature. My students would love to sign their art. When I was all finished with my self portrait I uploaded it to the Gallery. I think my students would get a kick out of being able to go home and show their parents that their art was on an on line gallery. The snipping tool really came in handy with this assignment. I could also see myself taking a quick snip of each of their faces to print later to display. While working on this assignment I kept thinking of standard 1. This website screams "Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity." I think too often as teachers we get consumed with shoving the content down our kids throats. It is important for us to shake things up and get creative.

Resume Revisit

I was excited and curious to do this assignment. I feel so lucky that I have the job that I have but I have always wondered if I one day decide to change schools how will my resume stand up? I was very pleasantly surprised. After uploading my resume I saw this screen:

I was very proud of myself. Before I graduated from Longwood in 2003 I took a class to help me build a teaching resume. Ever since then I have just taken the time every once in a while to update it. I guess Longwood was on to something :). I think this assignment in general is helping us address the standard of "Engaging in Professional Growth and Leadership". It is clear that it is always important improve and grow. Whether you are improving on a resume that you just wrote for this assignment or just adding to the one you already had we always need ways as teachers to gain that professional growth.

Snipping Tool

When I first started reading about the snipping tool I was excited to learn how to create a screen shot of a small area. I knew how do it on my Mac but it is always good to learn how to do it on the PC as well. I have used this tool on my Mac for unit plans I have written for other classes. When I have to turn in a paper electronically that includes worksheets being able to just snip the area I needed made life much easier.

 I really can't see a time when I would ask my Kindergartners to use this tool. However, I have a reason to use it for school right around the corner. As I mentioned in my last entry back to school night is right around the corner and I am working on my grade levels packet. I am also in charge of my grades flip chart for that night. Our school is going to be opening up the county's grading system to parents to see in January so it is our job to discuss it at back to school night. It will be nice to include a snip of the report card and parent guide in the presentation. It would look like this:

I also love how there is a highlighting tool that I can use to make sure that I bring certain areas of the report card to their attention. I am also using a cool new thing in my classroom this year called reminder 101. I think this site is pretty awesome. The parents are able to text into the website to sign up and I am able to later go in the website and send out  reminders that the parents receive as a text. I wanted to have a way for the parents to actually see how to sign up. It would look like this in my presentation:

For this lesson I can really see it applying to two of the standards. I think this tool will really be useful for teachers in terms of standard number 2 "Design and Develop Digital Age Learning Experiences and Assessments". I think the snipping tool will help teachers enhance what they are trying to show their students. If their students looked at a particular flip chart of website to learn about a topic the snipping tool would allow teachers to create their assessments around what the students used to learn. Also I feel like this is another tool that allows me to "Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership". I will be using the snipping tool much more in the things I am creating for parents and my students.