Final Reflection

I feel like I did meet all of my goals for this semester in this class.  I got to figure out how to use a Smartboard and different ways to present information for students on the Smartboard.  This is really important to me because I am going to be an Elementary school teacher and we use this technology often.  I am in different elementary schools right now and all of the teachers I have been in their classrooms with use their interactive white board and like using it.  I believe my favorite project was the iMovie one because it had a personal meaning to me.  I am glad we are required to take the TPTE 486 class because we learn many things that are important to use in the classroom.  I also got a lot of really good online resources to use in my classroom through the Resource Wiki pages we did in groups.

Blogging in the Classroom

Blogging in the classroom is important because we need to reflect on our work we have done.  It allows us to go back and reflect on what we did, what we used, and what we thought about it.  Sometimes, it was hard to remember to blog about something since we have class only once a week.  I have never blogged for class before so this was a different experience and I really liked it.  It allowed me to slow down, focus on what I had just completed, and reflect on my feelings of the project as a whole. I like the concept of blogging because I had never blogged before and now I know how to.

Safety Minute

I thought some of the Safety Minute topics were more interesting than others.  For instance, the being aware of your surroundings is probably the most important one for me.  Safety is important, but some of it was boring and I felt like we could have used the class time to do more productive things.  The topics that were more familiar and relatable were the ones that I paid more attention to than some of the other topics.  But all in all, it was a good thing to bring up in class because so many of us have almost been run over by a car on campus or run into people when we were not paying attention of where we were going or driving while on the phone and texting.

Blog extra: shortcuts

I really learned how to use an Apple computer this semester.  I have a Macbook Pro and did not realize how many different things I could do on it.  The shortcuts on the keyboard are awesome and so very helpful to know.  I have had this computer for 4 years and did not have any idea that I could do half the cool things on it as we learned in our TPTE 486 class.  I have been showing my friends who have an Apple computer all of the shortcuts and they are just as amazed as me.  So, again I am very thankful and glad I learned these useful shortcuts.

Interactive White Boards

Making the Interactive White Boards was at first frustrating because I would click on the wrong thing and mess up my page.  But once I figured it out, I liked it and all of the things a teacher can do with the Smartboard.  I most likely will have a Smartboard in my classroom. So, I needed to know how to use it and to be able to do different pages on to make it interactive for the students.  The ActivInspire Software is easy to use. I did my project on Living and Non-Living things for Science.  It was fun finding pictures and playing around with the software.  I will utilize this software in my classroom to keep the students engaged.

Digital Storytelling

I really liked the digital storytelling.  I got to be very creative and I learned how to use iMovie.  I have an Apple computer and had never used iMovie before.  Once I figured out how to use it, it was really easy and fun to use.  I did mine on Dr. Seuss' Oh, the Places You'll Go!  I picked out pictures from Google or my own photos. I recorded my voice reading the book with the words on the page I was reading with a photo to go along with the words.  I think this was my favorite project because this project held the most meaning to me.  This book was given to me by my parents on the day they moved into the dorms for college my Freshman year.  I did not know they had left it until I got into my bed and  found it under my pillow.  I am glad we had an opportunity to use iMovie and do a project on pretty much anything we wanted to.  I will definitely try to use this in my classroom as a project for my students.

Inspiration Diagram

Once I figured out where everything was and how to use it properly, Inspiration was easy to maneuver around.  I like how we learned to make a diagram and teachers can teach their students how to make one as well for a project instead of the teacher making one.  It would take some time for a teacher to make one and finding the time may be hard.  But perhaps the more one uses Inspiration the easier and faster one would be to make different diagrams.  I would definitely use Inspiration in the classroom to have different representations of things in different subjects.  I would also incorporate it into my smartboard so that the students could fill in the blanks or interact with the diagrams.