ninth blog

Today we mostly discussed the assignments that we need to do for the rest of the semester and what will be expected of us in these assignments. It was very informational and helped us understand what is expected of us over the next few weeks.
We also worked on our websites which will be due after field. So now the big question, how do I apply what we did today to what I will do as a teacher? Well I think it is important to lay out for students what the expectations are and what you want them to do. You want them to be creative but if you are not specific enough with your outlines, then the student may go off into a never-neverland tangent and will think they are doing the work correctly.

Oito

Today we worked on making web pages for our classrooms. These I thought were extremely helpful because it covered a multitude of things that a parent would want to know. It has a calendar, announcements, contact information for the teacher etc. These are all things that parents should know, and it is all right there whenever they want it.
One thing that I might do in my classroom is periodically take a survey to see how much parents are utilizing the website. It is a lot of work for the teacher to create and to keep updated, but I think it is worth it if the parents are using it frequently.
Also, I think it is good to continue to send some things home with the kids because they need that sense of responsibility. Sheets like spelling lists, permission slips etc. could be signed by parents so kids learn how to bring things to home from school and then bring it back. The website would also be good because it would cut down on costs to the school.

The Seventh Week in the Semester

Today we mostly just worked on our digital stories. It is neat to see how it is all working together, to see all the different parts work together to give one amazing product. I think that is something to point out to kids. Let them see how we cannot ignore the importance of working together. Maybe make a story where the music is messed up, or the images are not clear and have them reflect on what happens when something is off balance. Then relate this to real life. What happens when we do not hold our weight or when we don't do our part? Also it would help them to understand how something that is happening in another country is affecting us in the USA. To see how everything really is interconnected and many times our actions extend past our own vision.

Week Six

Today we had a review of our story boards and started to look for pictures online and some music to go with our digital stories. To be honest it was more of a work day than a "learn something new" day. But it was productive and I did learn about how to get music from youtube through zamzar, which I don't know is necessarily a good thing, but it is nice to know that if we do need something like that in the classroom, there is that option. We also learned about a program called Audacity and how that can be a tool for recording. It's nice that it is a free download. I think students will have a lot of fun with that because who doesn't like to record their voice and then listen to it? We could use it with all kinds of narration projects but also for interviews in the classroom.