Wow, welcome to my last blog entry of the term! My first year of education has been a great experience! I have learned a lot from both my professors and wonderful classmates that I consider myself very fortunate to have met. In one week, my classmates and I will embark on our second pre-service teaching placements and for those classmates reading this I wish you the best of luck!
Education has been such a different experience than my undergrad degree. In education, as students we received the opportunity to actually practice what we learned which has been truly incredible. In ICT we used an eBook for a class text, that not only explained how to do certain things, but provided examples in the form of video, pictures and memos. It was also really cool to interact with the author of the "text" book herself, Kathy Cassidy. I have no doubt that the information I have learned from this book will be put to great use in my future classroom!
I learned how to create a website; creating a classroom and a professional online portfolio. I definitely plan to use a classroom website in the future, it is a great platform to organize information and connect and involve parents with what their child is learning about in the classroom. In ICT, we edited photos, created videos, and Powerpoint presentations. I was exposed to some great tools, some of which include: Wallwisher, Wordle, Symbaloo, Animoto, Prezi and Evernote.
My favourite thing we did in class would have to be creating videos on iMovie and Movie Maker. They were as fun to watch as they were to make. I think it would be really engaging for students if I incorporated video in the classroom. This term I really learned a lot about the concept of digital storytelling, in both my ICT and ELA Across the Curriculum classes. In my upcoming placement, I really hope I get the opportunity to help students create a digital story in my 4/5 multilevel classroom!
I guess what I am trying to say is I will definitely use and incorporate technology in my classroom - no matter what the grade level. I can't think of any reason not to, not only is technology easy to use, but with technology students can have a global perspective of the world. At the beginning of the semester, I was very uneasy with the term "technology" and "blog", but now I think it will be weird going without blogging for awhile. I really enjoyed blogging, for both my own personal reflection and to share my learning with others. As a teacher, it is great to work together to share resources to maximize student learning! Thank you to my ICT professor Mike Nantais, for teaching so many great ways I can use technology in the classroom!
Farewell for now!
Sunday, 2 March 2014
Week 8
Hello! Time is of the essence, as this is my second last blog in ICT (However, I do plan to blog when I have a classroom of my own!). In just over a week I will embark on my second pre-service teaching placement, which will be in a middle years, multilevel classroom. I'm super excited to meet my students and get out there teaching! Unfortunately, for me, I am just getting over being sick. I was really sick this week with a terrible head cold, so, I'm going to do my best to summarize what I learned (when I wasn't sneezing or reaching for kleenex!).
This week felt short (probably because I was sick), but we did do a lot! We shared and watched our videos and had our own mini film festival. I was at the doctor for most of the festival, but some of the other groups showed me their videos on their computers afterwards! Even though I am just a beginner at making videos, I find it to be a really fun process and look forward to making more in the future!
In ICT, we were also lucky enough to have the opportunity to Skype with Kathy Cassidy, the author of the eBook we read as a class, titled "Connected From the Start". It was really neat to talk with her about her book. I have never talked to the author of any of the books I have read so I found it to be a really interesting process. Our class had the opportunity to ask Kathy questions about her book. It was such a cool concept to Skype with her after reading about the positive impact Skype could have in the classroom. I didn't have any questions for Kathy because I feel she explained her ideas and concepts in her book thoroughly, but I was curious if any of her other teachers or colleagues within the school used technology similarly to how she did. One of my fellow classmates asked Kathy a similar question and we were all relieved to find out that another teacher blogged with his students and helped keep up their blogs. I thought this was great that technology evolves as the students go to the next grade. I will be curious to see if the teachers at the school I am student teaching at uses blogs or Skype in their middle years classroom.
My tech task for ICT this weekend is "every selfie tells a story". I have to take a selfie of myself (hence, selfie) and in the picture incorporate text from Kathy's eBook. Seems easy enough, right? ITS NOT, I'm not a fan of taking selfies, the concept is awkward to me, as are my efforts at taking one. I tried to take a selfie last night, but I failed and took more photos of the wall than myself. The photos I did manage to get of myself are blurry. Even though I am a self titled selfie amateur, I plan to stay positive and hope that I will snap a quality selfie sometime within the next twenty four hours! Wish me luck!
Until next time!
Saturday, 22 February 2014
Week 7
Hello! Week 7 is here! This week I have spent A LOT of time watching the Olympics both in class and at home. I'd have to say my favourite event that I have watched so far was the Women's Hockey gold medal game between Canada and USA. It was a very exciting game with Canada winning 3-2 over the USA in overtime. I know that if I was out in the classroom teaching right now that the Olympics would be a theme in the classroom. I know some of my professors have been really lenient on letting students watch the olympics in class and I'm really happy about that.
In other news, our ICT group finished our video which was suppose to be a 3 minute video, running 8:31 minutes long...oops. I think we may have gotten a little carried away, but it was a lot of fun to make. I think next time we may need a timer to ensure that we do not exceed the time limit. In other video news, I finished reading Kathy Cassidy's eBook, Connected From the Start. Chapter 7 talks about using video to connect to other classrooms. Sometimes distance is an issue when connecting classrooms, and with distance comes a time zone issue as well. Therefore, videos are an excellent way to connect classrooms. In Kathy's book, her classroom came up with questions to ask a classroom in Greece- some of the questions were as simple as: What do you eat? What are your hobbies? The two classrooms made videos that answered each others questions, and included subtitles to explain what they were talking about. I really loved this idea, as I can only imagine how excited each classroom was to connect and learn from each other. My cousin is a teacher that currently lives in Cairo, Egypt and I hope that in the future we have the opportunity to connect our classrooms using video.
Below is a link dedicated to the gold medal game, until next time!
Hockey Montage
In other news, our ICT group finished our video which was suppose to be a 3 minute video, running 8:31 minutes long...oops. I think we may have gotten a little carried away, but it was a lot of fun to make. I think next time we may need a timer to ensure that we do not exceed the time limit. In other video news, I finished reading Kathy Cassidy's eBook, Connected From the Start. Chapter 7 talks about using video to connect to other classrooms. Sometimes distance is an issue when connecting classrooms, and with distance comes a time zone issue as well. Therefore, videos are an excellent way to connect classrooms. In Kathy's book, her classroom came up with questions to ask a classroom in Greece- some of the questions were as simple as: What do you eat? What are your hobbies? The two classrooms made videos that answered each others questions, and included subtitles to explain what they were talking about. I really loved this idea, as I can only imagine how excited each classroom was to connect and learn from each other. My cousin is a teacher that currently lives in Cairo, Egypt and I hope that in the future we have the opportunity to connect our classrooms using video.
Below is a link dedicated to the gold medal game, until next time!
Hockey Montage
Monday, 17 February 2014
Week 6
Hey there! Welcome back! What a crazy week it has been! This week in ICT we finished our projects using powerpoint. We were instructed to make a powerpoint using one sentence to tie all the slides together. My sentence was related to travelling: "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page" - St. Augustine. In my powerpoint I showed pictures from some of the famous sites I was lucky enough to see on my trip to Europe. It was a cool idea to use powerpoint in a new way to display something personal about myself. In my first year of education, I have learned it is necessary to personalize learning in the classroom.
In class we also started a group project - shooting a video about any topic of our choice. There were four people in my group, including myself and our video was a Youtube tutorial video. I think our video turned out pretty good. Our group got along well and it was easy to bounce ideas off of each other to create our Youtube tutorial video. However, prior to filming our professor had us watch a cautionary video about filming vertically and somehow we still managed to film a clip vertically (#fail). Filming our video allowed me to use my iMovie application on my Macbook for the first time (even though my mac is three years old!). I guess I just have not got around to playing around with this program. Once I got started editing, I found iMovie to be surprisingly easy to edit and move clips around. Our project was a lot of fun to make and I plan to add transitions in this week (with my professor's help of coarse!).
Over the weekend I spent a lot of time watching the Olympics (#goCanadago) and discovered a great app to stream to my AppleTV (Apple plug number 3). The app is called CBC Olympics, and it keeps me updated on all of the events. I find this app to stream smoothly and it has better quality than any of the websites I have come across. If you are interested in the Olympics, I highly recommend checking it out!
Until next time!
In class we also started a group project - shooting a video about any topic of our choice. There were four people in my group, including myself and our video was a Youtube tutorial video. I think our video turned out pretty good. Our group got along well and it was easy to bounce ideas off of each other to create our Youtube tutorial video. However, prior to filming our professor had us watch a cautionary video about filming vertically and somehow we still managed to film a clip vertically (#fail). Filming our video allowed me to use my iMovie application on my Macbook for the first time (even though my mac is three years old!). I guess I just have not got around to playing around with this program. Once I got started editing, I found iMovie to be surprisingly easy to edit and move clips around. Our project was a lot of fun to make and I plan to add transitions in this week (with my professor's help of coarse!).
Over the weekend I spent a lot of time watching the Olympics (#goCanadago) and discovered a great app to stream to my AppleTV (Apple plug number 3). The app is called CBC Olympics, and it keeps me updated on all of the events. I find this app to stream smoothly and it has better quality than any of the websites I have come across. If you are interested in the Olympics, I highly recommend checking it out!
Until next time!
Sunday, 9 February 2014
Week 5
Welcome back! Week five has come and gone quickly, but there was still time for learning to occur! Using technology in the classroom is starting to make more and more sense to me. I think this occurred after I finished creating my classroom website (which was my first attempt at making my own website, ever!), I'm really impressed with weebly and what newbies like me (and perhaps you?) can create. If your interested, you can click here to view my classroom website. Although I do not have my own classroom yet, in the future I plan to communicate with parents/guardians and students through a web based platform. I also plan to keep my website fresh and updated because to me there is nothing worse than visiting websites with broken links or reading a bio that is five years old-or discovering an email address you found on someone's contact information to be out of use. So here, my technological pledge is simple, I promise to take the time to keep my online tools updated, fresh and user friendly!
Now, to get back on track, let me review all of the neat things I learned this week in ICT...One of the things that stood out to me is that we talked about powerpoint, and watched a video of a comedian discussing powerpoint and how poorly it can be used. In his stand up, he explains all the factors that makes powerpoints "suck". One of the no-nos he refers to is if you use times new roman font, you are boring. I of coarse took immediate offence to this, as I developed a preference of this particular font in my undergrad (okay, maybe I wasn't allowed to use any other font, but now its my go to). I think to change things up for Week 5, I will type the remainder of this blog in Courier font (which shows creativity), as he suggests in his video. This already feels weird.
Anyways, in ICT we continued our discussion about digital storytelling and edited digital images. Photo editing is something that is not really new to me, as I'am an avid user of Facebook and Instagram - editing photos is like breathing. However, hashtags are something I am still getting use to #nofilter. Some of the editing websites our class used were Ipiccy and Picmonkey. If you have an Iphone, I suggest downloading Camera + which is my app of choice to edit photos.
This week in Connected From the Start (Ebook that I am reading for ICT), I read Chapter 4 and was really interested in what Kathy Cassidy had to say about using blogs in her early years classroom. I was really concerned with privacy and finding the time to blog, as I know in my first teaching placement I found myself to be very busy. It was great to discover that Kathy discusses how she did not need more time to do blogs, but spent her time creating and monitoring blogs over other means of displaying student work. Before reading I was curious how privacy worked with early years students using the internet. In her eBook Kathy cleared up my concerns, one of the effective ways you can ensure student privacy is to not match student names with photos of the student.
I am really enjoying reading about blogs in Kathy's book, as I find the information to be relevant and extremely helpful. Every time I feel as if I may have a question, it is immediately answered. I don't mean to sound like a salesperson for this book, but it is really interactive with its exemplary videos of students doing what is being said in the text!Now,back to my font.
Now, to get back on track, let me review all of the neat things I learned this week in ICT...One of the things that stood out to me is that we talked about powerpoint, and watched a video of a comedian discussing powerpoint and how poorly it can be used. In his stand up, he explains all the factors that makes powerpoints "suck". One of the no-nos he refers to is if you use times new roman font, you are boring. I of coarse took immediate offence to this, as I developed a preference of this particular font in my undergrad (okay, maybe I wasn't allowed to use any other font, but now its my go to). I think to change things up for Week 5, I will type the remainder of this blog in Courier font (which shows creativity), as he suggests in his video. This already feels weird.
Anyways, in ICT we continued our discussion about digital storytelling and edited digital images. Photo editing is something that is not really new to me, as I'am an avid user of Facebook and Instagram - editing photos is like breathing. However, hashtags are something I am still getting use to #nofilter. Some of the editing websites our class used were Ipiccy and Picmonkey. If you have an Iphone, I suggest downloading Camera + which is my app of choice to edit photos.
This week in Connected From the Start (Ebook that I am reading for ICT), I read Chapter 4 and was really interested in what Kathy Cassidy had to say about using blogs in her early years classroom. I was really concerned with privacy and finding the time to blog, as I know in my first teaching placement I found myself to be very busy. It was great to discover that Kathy discusses how she did not need more time to do blogs, but spent her time creating and monitoring blogs over other means of displaying student work. Before reading I was curious how privacy worked with early years students using the internet. In her eBook Kathy cleared up my concerns, one of the effective ways you can ensure student privacy is to not match student names with photos of the student.
I am really enjoying reading about blogs in Kathy's book, as I find the information to be relevant and extremely helpful. Every time I feel as if I may have a question, it is immediately answered. I don't mean to sound like a salesperson for this book, but it is really interactive with its exemplary videos of students doing what is being said in the text!Now,back to my font.
Sunday, 2 February 2014
Week 4
Hello again! Welcome back! I have a lot of fun and interesting things to share with you from my week in ICT!
To start with, I have to say, in only four short weeks I have learned a lot of helpful tools to use in the classroom (and I hope you have too!). On Monday, I continued to work on my website (which is almost finished), I promise I will post it in the next blog at the latest! Last minute I decided to gear my website to my upcoming 4/5 multiage preservice teaching placement, and as a result I have a few more details to include.
In other news, I signed up for a Animoto account, which is a lot of fun! I really like this website because it is simple to use. The website allows you to create your own digital story videos and helps you make it beautiful by selecting a complimentary theme. The videos are approximately 35 seconds in length, but if you are wanting to create longer videos that is available as well. In my video, I recreated my visit with my cousins in Okotoks at their community beach. I can't wait for beach weather again, the -30 Manitoba weather is beginning to be unbearable!
In the future, I plan to have my own classroom website that allows parents to stay updated on what's new in their child's learning activities. It will also give students access to assignment due dates and homework overview. Although I currently don't have a FAQ page, I may include one, as it would be beneficial to students who need to review assignments that they find unclear. I also plan to use Animoto as a platform to display what students are doing in the classroom. This will continue to allow students to explain to their parents what's new in the classroom, as well as provide a visual to their explanation.
Below is a link to my first Animoto video. Enjoy!
Beach Day
To start with, I have to say, in only four short weeks I have learned a lot of helpful tools to use in the classroom (and I hope you have too!). On Monday, I continued to work on my website (which is almost finished), I promise I will post it in the next blog at the latest! Last minute I decided to gear my website to my upcoming 4/5 multiage preservice teaching placement, and as a result I have a few more details to include.
In other news, I signed up for a Animoto account, which is a lot of fun! I really like this website because it is simple to use. The website allows you to create your own digital story videos and helps you make it beautiful by selecting a complimentary theme. The videos are approximately 35 seconds in length, but if you are wanting to create longer videos that is available as well. In my video, I recreated my visit with my cousins in Okotoks at their community beach. I can't wait for beach weather again, the -30 Manitoba weather is beginning to be unbearable!
In the future, I plan to have my own classroom website that allows parents to stay updated on what's new in their child's learning activities. It will also give students access to assignment due dates and homework overview. Although I currently don't have a FAQ page, I may include one, as it would be beneficial to students who need to review assignments that they find unclear. I also plan to use Animoto as a platform to display what students are doing in the classroom. This will continue to allow students to explain to their parents what's new in the classroom, as well as provide a visual to their explanation.
Below is a link to my first Animoto video. Enjoy!
Beach Day
Sunday, 26 January 2014
Week 3
Zooooooooooooooom! Have you ever felt like time is travelling at warp speed? If you're a student, I'm sure you're nodding your head in the up-down 'yes' motion. I feel like it was just yesterday I was anxious about writing a blog and now I'm writing my third one!
This has been such a busy week in both school and my personal life! Tomorrow morning I am going to sign the paper that declares I just purchased a condo (cray, right?) and as of this week I will be a real life homeowner! I already have so many ideas as to what to do with remodelling and thankfully many websites offer online planning maps to use in order to gauge whether or not a certain style would work in your home. Even though I am somewhat technology illiterate, it sure does make life easier and would be hard now to live with out it. In other news...
In week 3 I began to create my very own website that I hope to use for my own classroom in the future. At first, I was very hesitant to create a website, but now I am coming around. I used Weebly to create my site and I was really impressed with the variety of well organized templates and colourful themes to choose from. Weebly makes it easy to personalize my website, while also looking organized and professional. I would say my style is very modern, simple and organized (which I hope my condo will exhibit) and I believe that particular style is coming across in my website. I also attached a calendar to my website that parents and students can refer to for assignments and upcoming events. It was a little tricky to attach a calendar, but I did it! I plan on posting the link to my website in a future blog post to inspire other teachers to use a classroom website. I believe the site will be very useful to keep parents and students updated and to stay connected with parents by posting weekly updates of what we did in the classroom.
Until next time!
This has been such a busy week in both school and my personal life! Tomorrow morning I am going to sign the paper that declares I just purchased a condo (cray, right?) and as of this week I will be a real life homeowner! I already have so many ideas as to what to do with remodelling and thankfully many websites offer online planning maps to use in order to gauge whether or not a certain style would work in your home. Even though I am somewhat technology illiterate, it sure does make life easier and would be hard now to live with out it. In other news...
In week 3 I began to create my very own website that I hope to use for my own classroom in the future. At first, I was very hesitant to create a website, but now I am coming around. I used Weebly to create my site and I was really impressed with the variety of well organized templates and colourful themes to choose from. Weebly makes it easy to personalize my website, while also looking organized and professional. I would say my style is very modern, simple and organized (which I hope my condo will exhibit) and I believe that particular style is coming across in my website. I also attached a calendar to my website that parents and students can refer to for assignments and upcoming events. It was a little tricky to attach a calendar, but I did it! I plan on posting the link to my website in a future blog post to inspire other teachers to use a classroom website. I believe the site will be very useful to keep parents and students updated and to stay connected with parents by posting weekly updates of what we did in the classroom.
Until next time!
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