Content Curation

During this week in class we discussed content curation. We were split into groups and then gave presentations on websites that help teachers incorporate the web into their teaching activities and the organization of their classroom and paperwork. My group presented on the website Symbaloo. Symbaloo is a website simple enough for elementary students to utilize, it uses a series of tiles that provide students with links to websties that teachers think are useful. The links can be organized according to color, subject manner, or all focus on one specific topic such as Black History Month. Out of all the websites we learned about during this class period I feel as though I could most likely see myself using Symbaloo in my future classroom. Because I would like to teach third grade I think this website is simple enough for my students to use, understand, and will help provide them with practice on using the internet. For example, I would be able to save any education games I think my students would enjoy and create a "web mix" on Symbaloo where my students could go online and play any of the games I have saved for them to practice whatever we learned in class. 

We also learned a little bit about the ins and outs of Google Plus. Google Plus allows you to share information, talk to, and connect with people you may know or are similar to you all across Google. You can create circles with your friends, family, or classmates and interact with them through this accessory. During class we added all of our classmates into an INTC2610 circle and will now be able to interact with one another through our circles. I think it is neat that Google has it's own little form of a social media site.

Flipped Learning

Tonight in class we got a little preview into Prezi presentations. Professor Ross created a Prezi that took us throughout different parts of an animated classroom and taught us all about blended or flipped learning. I can honestly say that I had never heard of flipped learning until tonight. It is interesting to think that teaching styles are changing so dramatically to adapt to society's new dependencies on technology. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about flipped learning but I also feel as though it is something a teacher should try out for themselves to see if it works for them and their students. For example, I do not really think that I would base all of my lesson plans around flipped learning however, I do feel as though it would be helpful when teaching or learning math. I say this from experience because I remember when I took pre calculus in high school I constantly felt lost in class. My teacher went through all the different equations and processes much faster than I could keep up with and spent very little time reviewing the homework the next day in class. If she had created videos in which she was teaching the same lesson I would have been able to pause the video and watch her go through the math problem as many times as I needed and gone into class the next day with specific questions on the topic being taught. I am curious about one thing however...I would be interested to see how parents felt about flipped learning. I feel as though a decent amount of parents would not be able to accept the new teaching style and criticize teachers that they are requiring students to teach themselves the material!
Looking a little further into flipped learning, we also learned how to create detailed tuturials for our students to follow using Sophia. Along with flipped learning, I had never heard of Sophia before tonight in class and I feel as though it is interesting that there are websites made specifically for teachers and flipped learning. I'm excited to work on my tutorial this week because I feel as though it is a more extensive lesson plan that incorporate technology.

Google Docs Class

Last week in class we worked with Google Docs...a lot! We were all moving really fast and were able to retain a lot of information throughout the class period. I was briefly taught Google Docs in high school but not to the extent we went over it in class. Before last week I was under the impression that Google Docs was simply used as an online flash drive that could be accessed anywhere but it is so much more than that. As a class, we went through all kinds of different activities using Google Docs. We created a journal that we continued to write in throughout class, learned how to write collaboratively together on a document, and even how to create our own surveys and quizzes. With all this new knowledge I can think of so many new ways to incorporate technology into my future classroom with the help of Google Docs.
Along with Google Docs, we also continued to work on our personal portfolios every step of the way. After completing each of the Google Docs activities we linked our work to our portfolios. Doing this repetitively allowed me to become somewhat of an expert at linking other projects to my portfolio. After three class periods together I can safely say that there is never a dull moment in class and that if I had to sit through any four hour class I am happy to be a part of this one. We are constantly moving and actively working on something that will definitely benefit us all later on in our career paths whether we all wish to become teachers or not!

I thought this video was interesting! Here is a link to a video in which a couple uses Google to plan their wedding!
Wedding via Google Docs

February 5th Class

I really enjoyed last week's class! Although there were times where it was difficult to keep up, making my own personal website was something fun that I have never gotten to do before. Because the class was so fast paced, having questions at times also allowed me to become more comfortable with my peers around me because I was forced to ask them for assistance at times. Before last week I never would have thought I would have been capable of making a website; however, with a little bit of instruction I saw that Google actually makes creating your website easy enough for anyone to do. We also explored ways in which we all could "pimp our website". Although there are many ways you can spice up the appearance of your website my personal style is more simplistic and I do not know how often I will actually use all the fancy tools we were shown in class! Here is a link to a sneak peak of my personal website so far...

Brittany's Personal Website!

Towards the end of class we were given time to work on our QR Codes projects! After graduating I am interested in teaching students grades kindergarten to third grade. Because of this, I created a matching worksheet to help kindergarten students learn animal sounds. On one side of the page I placed a pictures of ten different animals. On the other side of the page I placed links to ten different QR codes that each played a different animal sound for the children to listen to. In the directions I asked them to listen to the sounds and then draw and line matching the picture of the animal to its sound. Both making my own website and worksheet for students to work on were really interesting and have gotten me even more excited for my future career path!

Reaction to first class meeting

I am sure this will not come as much of a surprise to many of you but I was not exactly looking forward to this class simply because of the time length! However, I was pleasantly surprised when I felt as though time flew by. Getting up and doing several different fun and interesting activities definitely helped to make our four hours together more enjoyable while learning valuable information at the same time. Although working with the ipad came easily to me because of my smart phone, I was not that familiar with the technology and enjoyed being able to work on it during the class period. I also really enjoyed learning all the fun apps that are available on the device for teachers! Overall, I can easily say I enjoyed last weeks class and am looking forward to the rest of the semester.