Progresso!

How far have I come since my first technology class in January? By no means will I ever be able to call myself a computer whiz, but now I actually know how to use technology in the classroom in a way that will benefit my students. I know teachers have been using videos and presentations for a long time now, but these are in no way interactive. It's teacher-centered, and I have always wanted a student-centered classroom. I want my students to learn and teach themselves and be able to help their friends from time to time. Movies and presentations cannot offer this types of assistance.

Everything I have learned in this class-- wikis, interactive spreadsheets, blogs, classroom websites, videos, diagramming-- it will all be implemented in my classroom, someway, somehow. I want my students to be active in the learning process, so when it comes to presentations, etc, I want them to have an important part in what we learned and what we spend the most time on (within reason, of course). I also want my students to find that one part of a topic that interests them and RUN WITH IT. I want them to explore ideas beyond that classroom. THIS IS REAL LEARNING.

So as the year draws to an end, I want to say "Thank You" to Dr. O'Bannon, my course instructor, for introducing these resources to me. I am sure I will not always be successful in my classroom attempts to incorporate technology, but thanks to you, I will at least be able to try. And when at first I don't succeed, I will try, try again. And then I'll be a rockin teacher. ROCKIN.

A Jen Bradford Production

Above is my super fantastic book trailer for a memoir I just finished reading, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. It is a touching recollection of a young girl's life that was unlike any other. The things that Jeannette grew up among... is is truly inspirational to see how far she has come.

About this process... I learned to make a movie! Ah! It was fun! I just images that I got from morguefile.com (for freeeee!)(and this works with your own personal pictures, as well!) The soundtrack music is "Some Humans Ain't Human" by John Prine. Using Windows Movie Maker, I just downloaded the pictures I wanted to use in the movie, arranged them, and added music. I could simply click and drag to make pictures longer or shorter, and the same applied to clipping the music, the drag of a mouse is all it took.

I will definitely use this in my classroom every year. I feel that it is a wonderful way to introduce a book that we will read and spark student interest fom the beginning. I also think I could use it in place of some lectures? Perhaps I could turn particularly relevant lessons into "video lectures," or someting like that. It is just an excellent way to spice up my classroom routine and grab the attention of my students.

This also satisfies any teacher or students' creative need... the types of transitions and special effects that are available are amazing. That's how I got my movie to look like it's being shown on an old projector-- I felt like that effect was relevent to the message I am trying to portray... It's just another way to draw out the mood of the novel...

EXCELlent Resource!

I learned how to make interactive quizzes with Microsoft Excel on the Mac! It has the potential to make grading so much easier! You can click on my quiz on the parts of speech above and see it up close and in person! You use a code in the "Right?" and "Points" columns; this allows the spreadsheet to calculate rights and wrongs and the corresponding point total for each answer. If I could get all my students to take quizzes online... this would DEFINITELY be my answer!

Another great feature: these apply to any grade level! Mine above is for an 11th grade English class, but the one we did in class was around a 3rd grade level- it covered simple compound words!

Inspiration Inspires

There is this neat little tool called Inspiration that makes dreating diagrams and flow charts pretty fun! I did a diagram on the 4 most common forms of literature, you can see it above! I think this would be a great brainstorming activity to do with my class as a whole, perhaps as I model brainstorming and metacognition. I also believe that my students could do this on their own-- it is very user friendly! What I found was easier for me is to write out what I want to diagram first, my topics and subtopics, and then go in to create a diagram. This is mainly due to the fact that once I started playing with Inspiration, I got way off track from what I was supposed to be doing. Check it out!

Elevators are Magic Doors

Scavenger hunts- who doesn't love a good one every now and then?

In class we were presented a list of concepts (a verb, an abbreviation) to find out on the UT campus. It was like a breath of fresh air, getting out of that classroom and actually moving. ACTIVE LEARNING-- I am such a believer in it. I cannot wait to do something like this with my class! I just hope that my school will have the technology needed to pull this off; if not, I guess I could always let the students use my personal camera and do one group a day, or something like that.

Here is my Literacy Scavenger Hunt presentation:


We also had a way of organizing these photos as well! Here is how my file for the scavenger hunt photos was managed-- see how I get into my Tech 486 folder, then Chapter 7 images, then the Hunt subfolder, and there are all my JPG files:

like Picasso in Picasa

This is my image collection that was gathered 5 different ways: the web (a free image), scanner, digital camera, CD collection, and a screenshot. After gathering these images, I then had to resize them and organize them into my file. Here is a slideshow of my images! (Check out my cat-- adorable!)




So there you have it. The resizing part is a bit tedious, but not too hard. Once I got the steps down, it was super easy. We also used Picasa, a great photosharing site provided by Google.

Here is my organization for the image collection:

Teacherpedia

So we finished creating our wikis. The English wiki looked amazing! We used an awesome image from Wordle to lure weary students and teachers in to browse our collection of sites we believe are useful. I really think the shared wiki is a great way to collaborate when time and location pose problems.

In regards to using a wiki with my classroom, I would definitely do this if the resources were available! I think it would take a lot of pressure off my students if they were able to contribute to classroom discussion and participation through the internet, a place where most feel comfortable. If I were to do this in my classroom, I would probably take away some of the... housekeeping necessities that were of importance in my experience with creating a wiki. I would most definitely keep the requirement that everything be in ABC order; however, font face and a lot of other finicky cosmetic issues would not concern me. Of course, I would want to be able to understand my students' contributions, but I think that 2-3 varying fonts would surely not keep me from doing so.

I may even consider creating a wiki during class with my students. This could be useful if computers were limited, because all students would be there actually participating in deciding what to put on the wiki and so on, the only difference being that they would not be the ones actually on the computer themselves adding to it. Perhaps I could do this, and then if computers were available we could THEN create wikis with each person individually contributing.

I love where technology is taking my future classroom!

RockStar

Sharing is easy when it comes to Google Documents! As long as you have a Google account, you can share documents with anyone-- if you don't have a Google account, they are free to sign up for at Google's website. I partnered with a classmate and we did a scavenger hunt on Pyrite- aka Fool's Gold. Given specific websites, we found basic information about pyrite and a few things that surprised us! It's a great way to send students on an independent information hunt.

The websites I used were a little out of date. Of course, I was able to work around that, but students in my classroom could begin to panic if something went wrong-- or they could do the opposite and just research it on different websites and end up playing on the internet for an hour instead of completing their scavenger hunt. Basically, I learned to plan ahead and check the sites provided on a regular basis, even if I only check them the day before I hand out the assignment. This way, potential disasters are avoided! In my English class, I could use this type of project on authors or genres or literary periods; all of these are useful in fully understanding a text. I would probably go a step further as well, maybe having my students present this information to the class and creating some sort of visual aid as well. As a teacher, I should just do as much as possible to keep my students on target in the classroom and in life.

Image: Jasper Johns' "Target, 1974"

.PngPong!

I found a super cool way to take a picture of something on the internet-- it's called a .png (ping) file. In creating a .png file, what I am basically doing is taking a picture of my computer screen. On an Apple computer, what you do is hit shift+apple+4. This should make a cursor/crosshare that you use to crop the image you want 'photographed.' The image then automatically saves to your desktop. Piece of cake!
As an example, I pinged a picture of my amazing organizational skills! Here it is:

The twelve main folders are the chapters of my textbook. I even found a way to color code them (it really helps me out so much). I can even go into the files, like I did with the portfolio file, and color code everything within the portfolio folder green as well. Green sub-files go in the green folder, and so on. Another piece of cake!

WebQuests

WebQuests are great projects for students! I especially like the ones that involve much teamwork; students teaching other students is a great way to master information. A lot of the projects are like extensions of my students' learning; an extra piece to the puzzle. As a teacher, I should always be looking for creative ways to involve my students with the learning process. The internet is so attractive to students of this generation; aligning the learning process with a student's familiarity and comfort of a computer, along with group work and not so common projects, can serve to motivate the student to a level previously unbeknownst. I will try anytihng it takes to motivate my students, and I think learning through WebQuests is a great starting point!

Make a Word Cloud!

While looking for an image to use on the wiki's main page, I came across this awesome website/tool called Wordle. It is basically like a word cluster that all correspond to a common theme. I think it could be a great way to decorate a classroom as a great way to have students be creative. You can enter as many words that you want and choose the font, alignment, and colors. It's fun!

Wiki Quickie

Wiki wiki means 'quick' in Hawaiian. I use Wikipedia like crazy, and quick is definitely what it is-- information and a list of sources at my fingertips. I believe that finding information on a topic or looking for further assistance on an assignment should be quick for students. No one should have to search across thirty different websites for help with plot elements or poetry terms. This is why I think creating an English wiki as a student resource is a brilliant idea!

Yesterday I began creating a wiki with fellow English majors. At this point, however, it is a bit overwhelming. I have not actually met with the other English majors in my technology class yet to create any coherence in format or style of our postings yet, so I am hesitant about exactly what to do initially. I created my first annotation for the website listing; I did readwritethink.org-- the amazing website I reviewed below. I just really cannot wait to see how this will look a couple weeks from now! It will be great! It looks like it will be a great way to get students and parents alike to access information that will supplement the learning process! One major aspect of the wiki is privacy. From a teacher's position, I am able to set up a wiki for my classroom and protect it from the rest of the world. My students and ONLY my students will be able to view and add to the information. So basically, what I need to do now is just dive in! One, two, three.....!

Evaluating Readwritethink.org

Readwritethink.org is an amazing new website I found that is sure to help ANY teacher! It is sponsored by the National Council for Teachers of English and the International Reading Association, so materials submitted are evaluated by members of these professional groups. This means they're all approved and great!! I especially enjoyed the poetry tools because they aid students in creating poetry and also in learning poetry terms. They are mostly student interactive, so this site is a wonderful resource for students, teachers, and parents alike!
Evaluating this website taught me a lot. I learned to look for site credentials first before accepting the given materials as proper and accurate. Also, it is important to look for a site with working, active links. If the site is amazing but a lot of the links that could be useful are broken, it automatically becomes ineffective and disappointing.

Welcome to My Blog!

Hi! I'm Jen Bradford. I am in the Teacher Education program at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I want to teach English at the secondary level. I cannot wait to get started on this blog! Blogging has become such a large part of today's society and I am somewhat intimidated by it! Here's to learning!

Go to Preparing to Use Technology.