Semana Cinco

Today we worked on our story boards for our digital stories. I really like the idea of story boarding because it involves so many or Gardener's multiple intelligences. You have the visual learner (or the artist) who can draw the pictures, the intrapersonal learner who can write the story, the musical learner who can choreograph the mood of the music and those who love to play with computers can think of good ways to pan and fade on the pictures.
Story boarding would be a key part of the design process if you were to have students make digital stories in the classroom. But I also like the idea of having student make story boards for reports or papers. It gets students thinking, "where do I start and where do I end? How do I get there?" It would be a good break from the normal outlines and all the roman numerals involved:) Even though many papers do not involve pictures, some people need that pectoral representation to imagine what the heck they are writing about.

Week 4 reflection

This week we learned about digital stories (they are stories that are digital:). It is using a computer as a media to tell a story or present information to a group of students in a new and fun way. I like how you can show so many images at once and give the information at the same time. I think that because it is using technology that it will really engage the students as well.
As I was exploring the digital stories website, I discovered that you can use this idea for many different things. There was a digital story about how a student's parents met! I thought that was great. Not only could we use this tool to teach children, but it would be a great way for students to do an autobiography or talk about their family history. You could use this for anything!! It would definitely have to be geared towards older students and would be a project that would span over several weeks, but it would still be a great project to do at the beginning of the year so that students can get to know each other.

Week Three!!!

Today we created websites!! It actually was quite fun, I remember in my freshman inquiry class at college (Portland State) we also created websites and it was something that I really did enjoy doing, however it is very time consuming:( This time it was hard for me to get the pictures aligned how I wanted them and to get the text to wrap correctly and I didn't understand why for some reason when I viewed the page it looked differently from the view I had on the editing page. All in all it was a good experience. I don't know how much I would use this for my classroom though. Like I said, it is very time consuming and I think I would prefer to use a blog for classroom stuff because then parents can make comments and it is easier to put on postings and videos etc. But it is good tool to have in case the students one day need to be able to create websites or there are parents that would prefer to navigate through a website instead of a blog.

Week 2 Blog

Today was a very interesting day. We were able to google chat! and of course create wiki's (not to be confused with whizy-wigs :) but we also explored new technology that we can apply to the classroom. Our group looked up SMART BOARDS which are so fun! At my previous school, Portland State, in the Library they had SMART BOARDS they would use to help classes with research. Our group here came to the conclusion that these boards are really great for high school and college, but with small children you are going to have a very expensive piece of equipment that is going to receive a lot of abuse.
I'm glad we had the chance to explore more the features of gmail, I was very impressed with how interactive it is and how we as students especially can use it to help us with our many group projects. I guess in my opinion I am more of a fan chats, but I think I just need more practice with the wiki in order to truly appreciate it and know how I can apply it in the classroom. With the group chat, you could help your kids practice their typing skills and have small groups go to the computers and chat together. With the teacher in the group you can monitor who is saying what and if anything is inappropriate. The rest of the class could be reading or working on another project, but I know for me personally, I got the best practice typing when I started chatting with friends online.

week one post

We learned quite a bit about blogging this week. It was something that I was never really into but after seeing how easy it is to use and to access, the idea occurred to me that this would be a great way to keep parents updated about what was going on in the classroom. You could upload pictures of students doing different projects or doing different activities and then explain to parents what you did in class that week. This would also allow parents to make comments and give feedback about the activities you are doing in class. You could also post announcements and upcoming events.
Of course there will always be the challenge of those families that don't have computer or Internet access in the home but for those families you can send important information through the students or through the mail. This however would be easy to update and would give the students a chance to get class information through technological means.