Kteacher

Final Project

2009-04-28T18:26:00.000-07:00

I couldn't get google to work, so I ended up finding Microsoft office very easy to use. However, I can't wait to create my own classroom website now that I know how to do it. This was so much fun. I will google or something less "business" like for my next one.

Yeah!!!!! I can't beleive I created a website. I'm SO EXCITED!!!! This is the most fun course I have ever taken. And as for my post graduate courses, I found this to be the most useful for me as a teacher

YIPPEE!!!!!

http://ArgilliteElementarySchool.Web.officelive.com

Ideas for Capstone

2009-04-11T06:55:00.001-07:00

I don't really know, but for myself I would like to do something that I could use in my kindergarten classroom. Like maybe it could include a phonics video. Maybe I could insert pictures to demonstrate letter sounds, etc. I am not sure about the web page part of it or HTML or anything. That's about the only input I have, but I am sure any idea Dr. Lowell has will be good because everything we have done in this class has helped me so much in technology.....stuff I will definitely use in my teaching career. This is my last technology class for my masters........and I actually wish I could take some more. Maybe I will go further someday.

Educational Video Reviews

2009-04-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

When reviewing educational videos, I decided to look at kindergarten videos. Since this was my first year teaching videos, I could still use lots and lots of ideas. I looked at several mostly good ones before I came across one that blew my mind. It was called Kindergarten Power Teaching Expanded! and the URL is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yygIwC3PSvk

It was awesome. In the video, a teacher by the name of Andrea Shcindler uses her students to demonstrate amazing techniques called power teaching. She first demonstrates their "rules" routine by asking a student to come up and lead the class in their rules. They all recite the classroom rules together. As they recite the 5 classroom rules together, the rules are also placed in text at the bottom of the screen. The class then counts together how many stars, smilies and saddies they have. At the bottom of the screen it is explained that these are for the class to work together for end of week awards. The teacher then discusses how everyone must participate to get this award, and then she has them to tell them selves to participate and then tell their neighbor to participate. I loved this part where they told their neighbor to participate and am definitely going to use this technique. I do something similar, but not as often as in power teaching.

Throughout the video you can see that the students have practice the recitations so many times that it is second nature to them. The teacher uses phrases constantly to guide the students. She says things like this as the class repeats her: bodies up, a bubble in your mouth (meaning quiet), walk walk walk, hands and eyes, etc. The children loved it. I also noticed some variations she used to the same houghton-mifflin reading series we use at our school that I would like to use, but the purpose of the video was to demonstrate classroom management techniques, and that was what impressed me most.

I thought the video was very well created, and the text at the bottom of the screen was a good way for Andrea to let you know what was going on...things that you might not understand like what she means when she says "a bubble in your mouth" etc.

I am definately going to look more into this classroom management program, and try to incorporate it into my classroom at least to some degree. I do think I have heard of power teaching before, but was not familiar with it at all.........so I was truely amazed and anxious to learn more.

For my bad educational video, the worse one I watched was just a simple kindergarten sight word video. The person who created the video did not use any sound other than her reading the words as they appeared. She did not use any graphics. She could have possibly added some graphics to the slides, and used different colors for each word or something since it was geared toward little children. But I thought the worse thing was that she really didn't leave time for the child to try to figure out the word before she said it, and it moved too quickly through the words to be a useful tool to use in kindergarten. I did stumble on another sight word video that was a little better. The guy who did it used bubble words with what looked like florescent blue around the outside of the letters, and he gave plenty of time before each word so that the child could say the word before he said it out loud. But his actually did not end up being sight words........it was just three letter words like fat, fig, and bat which was good too, but I wouldn't have called that a sight words video....... that would be a beginning words video, or phonics word building etc.

All in all this was a great assignment because in looking for a good kindergarten video I found lots of them. I found videos with songs I could use in my class, although I have lots of them I really like some of the ones I found and want to try using them. I also found lots of new activities to use..........and I am just starting. I'm going to go back and keep searching for ideas in the future. I didn't realize YouTube would be such a great resource for teaching kindergarten. Yeah!!!!

My Video

2009-04-05T18:39:00.001-07:00

I finally got my video made. Sorry guys, I have been in Florida this week, so I was a little late getting it up.

I used PowerPoint to make my slides, and I found a website where there are free pics with no copyright. They are free to use on web pages, PowerPoint etc. The website is www.sxc.hu/

I had a hard time finding music that seemed melancholy, but I finally found some on www.templateswise.com

I have always wanted to learn how to do this type of thing so that I can make videos of my kids sports with music in the background. That will be priceless........so I am very grateful that I finally learned how. It will also be a priceless tool to use in the classroom.

This assignment was VERY FUN!!!

My video begins with a personal experience, including my own personal thoughts. I included some educational aspects to the video using statistics about world poverty as it pertains to children.

I noticed after moving my slides to make my movie, some of the words were a bit blurry. I figured out that I would have been better not to copy and paste anything into power point, I should have just retyped everything, because for some reason it later blurred. But it was still readable, so I left it for now. It would be very difficult to change at this point, but I am glad I figured it out for later.
Hope you enjoy.

Here is the link to my video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGp6PHzwQ1Q

Please let me know if you have any problems viewing. The first time I uploaded, the movie played half-way through and then said it was unavailable, so I uploaded again and it was fine.

Alphabet Song

2009-03-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

In kindergarten, children learn their letters and their corresponding sounds. Some have difficulty learning and/or retaining the letter sounds. Lately I have been reviewing letter sounds more for a couple of my students who seem to have been forgetting their letters sounds, and need more practice. We have been learning a new alphabet song in class. The problem is, not all of my students need as much review as others.

For my project, I thought it would be a good idea to record myself singing the song. This way I could use it in a listening center created just for the students who need extra practice on alphabet sounds. The students could look at the alphabet and point to the letters as they listen or sing along.

I decided to ask my son to play guitar for me as I recorded myself singing. Hope you enjoy.

click here:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?fiyoywz2zzm

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

2009-03-01T16:29:00.000-08:00

Click on link below to hear The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, as read by Debbie Peterman:

http://www.mediafire.com/?wq2yyqyzolm

I thought it would be fun to read with the dialect.

Picture Story

2009-02-20T12:19:00.001-08:00

Fireside Video

2009-02-20T11:56:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed the video about how so many of our teachers began teaching before they learned technology. I help a teacher next door to me on a daily basis. She has been teaching since 1982. I show her the same things over and over, she doesn't catch on very quickly. She wasn't taught in the world of technology, and after years of helping her, she is still overwhelmed by it. I have been teaching for 7 years, and these types of courses I am taking make me realize how much technology has progressed even since I graduated from college. Someday, perhaps I will need my nextdoor teacher to help me. It seems to be like a snowball, progressing faster, and faster, and faster..........

Twitter

2009-02-18T16:32:00.001-08:00

I just wanted to say that I had no idea what Twitter was all about......but after reading the article on Twitter........I have heard the term all over the place. Funny how things like that go right by you unless someone brings it to your attention.

UK vs. Florida

2009-02-15T13:23:00.001-08:00

This picture was taken at Rupp Arena. I chose this picture because the it was taken from the top row, which made the court look far away. I thought it would be good to make it stand out better by making it in color and the rest black and white. I really would like to try some more pictures because I think it would be pretty to find a picture of a lone flower and make it black and white and make the flower stand out with color. A more close up picture might be a better choice for this type of photographic effect. The way I did this was I used the picture as my background layer, then added another layer by selecting copy visible. This way the top picture was the same as the bottom picture. Then I used desaturate to turn it black and white. Then I used the scissors to create a border around the basketball court. When I cut it out, it showed the original picture behind it, which was in color........but only the part that I cut out.

GIMP

2009-02-07T08:46:00.001-08:00

Boy this was fun! It took me hours........and I mean hours totaling into days. But at least it was fun and I really learned alot. If it weren't for Dr. Lowell's help, I don't know if I ever would have figured it out. But once I did, I made several of these types of pictures, so that I wouldn't forget how to do it because I would really like to use this in the classroom. This would be a wonderful way to teach children new words.

To create this image, I opened up my original picture, then I typed my font. I then went up into image and clicked on "select by color" and when I clicked on the word it made a border for me. Over in the layers box, I clicked on my original quilt picture (layer) again and pressed control-c for copy, then control-v for past. Then I created a new layer. Last, I clicked on the eyes to hide all the layers except the last one. To get the background color, I had to go over and click on the left box where it has two boxes with a switch arrow between them. I found out that I had to make sure the color was already on there because I couldn't figure out how to do it once I did all the other steps. That part is tricky, I think I just got lucky on that. When I was done, I just went up and saved my picture on "save as."

As I said, this assignment for me was very long and time consuming. I have sat on the couch with my laptop for the past two days plus this morning trying to figure it out. But I really think figured out what Dr. Lowell was trying to do, because what seemed to be a simple assignment took a lot of digging to figure out, and in the process I learned alot of other things you can do with the program. So for me, it was worth it. I don't mind spending time on things I enjoy, and this was like a puzzle for me I could not put down. So it kept me interested (obsessed more the word) and it is something I feel will definitely be of use to me as a teacher.

I chose the font because it was big of course, but discovered other interesting fonts I would like to try......some kid friendly fonts. I love quilts, and I felt like this picture, like some on other blogs I have seen, definitely goes with the theme of the cold weather lately. Hope you enjoyed my picture as much as I enjoyed some of yours. :)

What I think about this class:

2009-02-05T16:30:00.000-08:00

I feel like I am going to learn a lot in this class. It has taken me a while, but everything is starting to make more and more sense to me now. I think some of the things that we are going to learn will be useful to me and my family in my home (non-teaching) life, and much of it will be very useful for me as an educator. I am just getting the concept down pretty well of what a podcast is, and after listening to a few I am anxious to get going on searching for podcasts that are more specific to my interests. I am also anxious to see if I can find some for my husband. He is always listening and learning about the problems we are having with our economy, politics, and our relationship with other countries just to name a few. What he learns he shares with me, and makes it even more comprehensible. So it would also be beneficial to me if I get him involved in what I am learning.

For me, I'm anxious to try out some entertainment podcasts and maybe see if there are any specific to teaching issues. I'm getting ready to delve into the GIMP assignment, but for some reason I can't get the GTK to download. It's coming up as a zip file which I know nothing about. I've been trying to guess, and hoping I don't mess my computer up doing so, but nothing has happened yet, the GIMP won't download. I may have to get with Dr. Lowell. But I am really anxious to get the GIMP downloaded and start the picture assignment. I love playing around with pics. I have also enjoyed taking pictures for this course. It's kind of made me feel like a photographer, kind of giving me a certain sense of freedom to take pictures that might sharpen my armature photographer skills, so to speak. I mean......before now, taking lots of pictures of objects would seem nonsensical. But it's actually been very fun and has made me realize that this is a good way to get better at taking pictures. I hope we get to take more throughout the semester.

Audio File

2009-02-05T15:07:00.000-08:00

I loved the audio file, "multimedia shmultimedia". This would be wonderful to use in elementary school. You could create read alouds for children to read along with books. Like this audio file, the reader would provide the inflection that makes the reading passage more interesting. It would help students with comprehension, reading inflection, concepts such as elements of a story, Etc. I was excited to think about, perhaps in the future, reading books aloud for my kindergarteners and having them available for them to listen to on the computer or on an mp3 player with headphones. I do have some CDs available for children to listen to, but I think they would much rather hear my voice. In addition, I would not be limited to just a few book choices, but I could create audio files to go with any book I wanted.

Flickr

2009-02-05T12:55:00.001-08:00

Flicker is a place where you can upload lots of photos and organize them in various ways. It kind of reminds me of more like a myspace......but I am someone who doesn't even know much about myspace, so I guess what I mean is it is sort of like a personal space, only more specialized for photos. You can invite people, and you can join groups that you are interested in.

While visiting the website, I felt like flickr would be very user friendly. You can easily drag pictures and videos into "batches", sets or groups. Just by looking at it with only one uploaded photo, I thought it would be really fun to create with.

Comparing Podcast Directories

2009-02-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

I compared the podcast websites PodcastAlley, and Podcast Pickle. Both websites seemed to be organized well as far as I could tell, although I am just learning about podcasts. Both had top 10 podcasts which I think is good for the newcomer who wants to get a feel of podcasting. Both had lists of newest podcasts. PodcastAlley however, had a list called featured podcasts which I noticed were mostly offensive subjects. Both also offered the option to find podcasts by genre. Although I really liked the design of pickle better, they were similar in many ways. They both featured a large forum area on their homepage. But I just felt that pickle's list on the left made it a little easier to navigate. I also was a little put off by PodcastAlley's featured list, which as I mentioned were mostly offensive topics. I wouldn't want that page on my computer for anyone in my home or workplace to see.

More "podgress"

2009-02-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

I've been learning more about podcasting. I read some external links on blackboard that Dr. Lowell placed on there, and I read some FAQ links for juice and others that helped me get a better understanding of what podcasting is. I finally figured out how to download juice, and then had some trouble getting any podcasts to download. Finally I got it to work through trial and error, and have been listening to some podcasts such as talk live, on which they were talking about how cell phones are advancing quickly and becoming capable of streaming information. I also listened to a podcast about marriage which I found very interesting. The idea was about how we are taught to blame our spouse for any baggage they carry into a marriage when in actuality, we all bring in baggage and the purpose of marriage is for each to help the other heal from the experiences that caused the baggage. That is how we have a healed and wholesome marital relationship. It was an interesting podcast. The thing I keep thinking is that my husband is going to love podcasting when I introduce it to him. He is really into politics and current issues, and listens to the radio a lot while he is working. This way he can find the topics he wants and listen to them when he wants. I am anxious to explore more this week, and start downloading them onto my mp3 player. So far I have just been listening on my computer while cleaning house. That's not bad either.

My Podcast Progress (and other)

2009-01-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

I am certainly still learning about podcasts. I have subscribed to pickle....and have created part of my profile. I have an image I'd like to add so it directed me to join flickr and I've done that, but still working on how to add the image to my profile. I plan on going to information websites such as Wikipedia to see if I can get a better concept of what podcasts are for. I also found that I subscribed to google reader last semester so I went to my google reader page and am still trying to figure out how to add everyone. My class from last year is still on there right now, but I am working on it. I learned also that since this is all kind of meshing together in my mind........I really need to take notes on all of this as I am doing it. I have made a list of all of my new endeavors, and my user names and passwords for each. I think I'm getting off to a pretty good start. I plan to explore more as the week goes on, since I'm stuck at home in this ice storm. Dr. Lowell sure picked a good week to go south. :)

Anti-Vandals

2009-01-27T12:54:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of something good that my 16 year old son and his friend did. There is a sewer passage over the hill from our house that I was never made aware of, but apparently my kids had seen while exploring. There is lots of offensive graffiti painted all over it. My son and his friend decided one day to go over and paint over the offensive words with good words. I was very proud of what they did when I seen it.

MULTIMEDIA

2009-01-13T19:57:00.000-08:00

To me, it's lots (multi) of different ways to use media. In the classroom for example, we can use technology in the form of websites, pictures, music, videos, games, educational software, Etc.