Conclusion of the Class

Tomorrow is the last day of my TPTE 486 class. Over the past five weeks I have learned an abundant amount of information I never even knew existed on the internet. I learned information that will be beneficial in my future career as an educator, as well as in general in my future. I enjoyed the majority of the activities we learned in this class. My favorite, although it was very stressful, was the calendar. I will definitely use this in my future. I also enjoyed writing the blogs, and will more then likely use this in my future. I also loved learning about wordle, smilebox, glogster, and animoto. I did not enjoy making the interactive spreadsheet. It was frustrating for me because I had a hard time understanding how to create it exactly as it needed to be. I also really enjoyed making the video. I did not like adding music because I wanted to pick a song that I enjoyed from itunes, rather than one off of a free music website. Overall, I really enjoyed this class, even though it was a lot of work and stressful at times. In the end, I learned a great amount of information that I will take with me and use in my future as an educator of children!

Laura's Adventurous Summer Travel (Digital Story)

Today in class I learned how to create a digital story using movie maker. I learned how to add music, pictures, tranistions between slides, captions, credits, a title page and when to add the text to a slide. At times I became frustrated because the captions I was writing for a particular picture would end up on another slide or picture. With the help of Amy I was able to figure out how to fix this problem. Adding the pictures to the digitial story was the easiest part. I also enjoyed writing the story board. If I were to do this another time, I would take it one step at a time and not become frustrated. Since I know how everything, well most everything, works, I believe I would be much more successful in future uses. I can use this tool in my classroom by telling a story of what the children have learned over a period of time, as well as documenting a class field trip. I can use the students to help create the story board. I look forward to creating another digital story with movie maker in the near future!

Interactive Spreadsheet Kindergarten

I learned how to create an interactive spreadsheet. For me, this has been the most difficult assignment yet. I struggled with understanding how to do everything. Although the directions were detailed and thorough, I had a difficult time locating specific tasks and tools. I did not understand that with each row and column, you had to retype to code that was provided. I figured this out after about an hour of playing around on the spreadsheet. Fortunteatly, once I realized how to do this, it was easy to finish the rest. If I were to do this another time, I would make sure to write down every detail when going over it in class and to ask questions when something goes wrong. I was very satisfied with my final product and happy with the way it looked once the assignment was complete. This could be used in my classroom to ask simple questions or practice subjects we have learned in the classroom. I like how it gives the students immediate feedback by stating whether or not the answer was correct.  

Interactive Spreadsheet Excel Example In Class

Google Forms

Today I learned how to create a google form. I had a difficult time understanding this specific tool. However, with the help of the individuals teaching it, I was able to understand it better. I think it is a great tool to use with older children to answer daily questions. Next time, I would create a different question that my children could answer at home with the help of their parents. If I wanted to learn how many individuals enjoy a certain activity, I could ask the question, and ask individuals to answer the question. I could then view the results and see what people enjoyed and how many individuals answered the questions.

Kidspiration!

Today we learned about inspiration/kidspiration. Inside these tools you can create diagrams for your students, or allow them to create one on their own. I chose to do my diagram on the five senses. I thought this was appropriate because I will be teaching and talking about the five senses in the future. I learned how to add clip art pictures so the children have a visual picture that went along with the words. I also added a hyperlink under the main title for the kids to click on and learn more information about the five senses. I used arrows in my diagram for the children to be able to see what connects to what. (You see with your eyes, and not your ears.) I also included two informative boxes that contained more information on two of the senses. In the top corner I added which NETS-S and Tennessee State Curriculum the five senses best fit with. Overall, I loved using kidspiration. I thought it was simple to create, however, I think it may be a little too advanced for the kids I will be teaching to use. If I were to do this another time, I would chose another area/subject to teach, such as the four seasons or animal habitats. I think it is a great tool that I will use in my future classes to teach different subjects to the children. Below you will see the diagram I made today!

Smilebox

Today we learned how to create a smile box. Like many of the activities we do in TPTE, smile box is free. You can create a scrapbook, invitations, greetings, and slideshows. Today in class we made a single page of a scrapbook. We were allowed to pick our own design. I chose to do a scrapbook page that allowed me to upload seven photos. I uploaded photos of my family and friends and labeled it “People I love.” Smile box will be very beneficial in my classroom in the future. I can use the scrapbook and slideshow part to add pictures for the parents to view of what we are learning in class, or a field trip we took. The invitations can be used to invite the parents to an open house or meet and greet. The greetings can be useful when welcoming parents and students to my classroom. I believe everything went well with this activity. If I were to do this activity again, I would chose a different design and different pictures. I really enjoyed creating the smilebox and can't wait to use it in my future practice. Below you will see the scrapbook page I created.

This free collage personalized with Smilebox