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!