Thursday, July 19, 2007

Emerging Technologies

I can't believe this class is basically over. All we have left is the final which doesn't seem to be that difficult. We have all learned so much in this course. That's what I like about summer courses. That we can come to class and have everything done at once. There is no waiting to get through an entire 15 week semester. I wish all classes ran this fast and smoothly. It would make it much easier to finish what we need to get done with our degrees. I enjoyed meeting all of you and learning about all the things and ideas that you brought to the class. I also hope that we can all still talk through our blogs to run our ideas past someone. I know that most of us won't have the time to post something everyday like we had to for class, but an occasional blog being posted to let us all know how each of us are doing would be nice. I hope that you all feel the same way.

Have a great rest of the summer and lots of luck experimenting with all our newly learned technology skills in your classrooms.

Michelle

Assure Method

Using the Assure Model for my lesson plan was great. At first I didn't quite understand the format for it, but once I got the hang of it I thought it was one of the easiest formats to use for a lesson plan. I put it in a chart format which seemed to work best for me. Everyone did a great job with their lesson plans.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

lexiphanicism

Today's word of the day on Answers.com is lexiphanicism. Does anyone know what is means?

It is the use of pretentious words, language, or style.

Subscribing to this Word Overheard Site is really interesting. I'm learning lots of new words. It also shows you how and where the word was used.

To subscribe to it, click the link below and subscribe using your bloglines.

Word Overheard

Monday, July 16, 2007

Smart Boards

I liked working with the smart board in the lecture center. It was so much easier than the one in our normal classroom. Learning about the smart board was interesting for my presentation. I never realized that there were so many different brands and versions of smart boards. When people talked about the smart boards that they all used, I thought that they all were talking about the same smart boards. Little did I know....

Power Point

I enjoyed learning all about Power Point. I was always able to get things done with Power Point before by trying this and trying that. Now I feel like I have a real sense of what I am actually doing. I had a lot of fun working on my Michigan Power Point and my Emerging Technologies Power Point. I emailed my Michigan Power Point to my boyfriend's family and told them that they had to have it completed before I get there next week. It will be interesting to see how they liked it since most of them have already been there before and seen most of the things in my webquest.

Friday, July 13, 2007

My webquest

I had a lot of fun putting my webquest together. Although I found it difficult at times because you can add so many things to it, I really enjoyed it. I wish that we had a little bit more time to work on it. I know that with more time I would totally get myself carried away on a topic. There is just so much information to go through to put on there for students. I like that if you want students to be able to search the internet they aren't wasting valuable time searching on their own. With webquests you tell them which specific sites to use. I also like the idea of putting your webquest in a power point presentation.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

sardoodledom

Sardoodledom was one of the words in the spelling bee competition that is going on in Washington. One of the 11 year old contestants received the word sardoodledom, which means a melodramatic plot. After he composed himself from laughing over the word, he asked the questions that he needed to ask in order to try and spell it and he succeeded.

Has anyone ever watched the national spelling bee? I was flipping through channels one day and I saw that it was on and I was just astonished as to how well these children do in front of so many people. It draws you in and you can't help but watch them and react when they spell the words. If you have never watched it, I suggest that you do.

This reminds me of the movie Akeelah and the Bee. This movie was based on a true story. I thought that movie was great. The process in which these children go through in order to take part in these spelling bees is so impressive. Here is a link to find out more about the movie.

Akeelah and the Bee - movie

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Blogs and Furls

Blogs and Furls. If I wasn't in class today, I would have thought that someone was speaking a different language when they said these two words. Now I know better.

Blogging has become a little easier with everyone's help in class and just trying to figure everything out on my own. It can become a little addicting though. If I had the time I know I would probably spend more time on here figuring things out - it's just fun.

The furl accounts I found quite confusing at first. I didn't really understand the point to it. I thought, like many other people, that it was just something that created "favorites". After a little bit of exploring the site, I realized and finally understood that it is a favorites list with the exception of being able to access your favorites from any computer anywhere. This I thought was a great feature. I like that you can view other people's favorites as well. I found that if you put a URL in the topic of personal, only you have access to that site from your furl account.

I also found using the interactive white board to be very hands on and a great tool for the classroom. Today was my first time ever using one and I can't wait to be able to use it more often and learn more about the different types. The box thing that lets the teacher see what each computer is doing is also a great feature that teachers and school districts should have. It's a great way to monitor students without them always knowing you're checking on them.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Blogs in general

In reading sample blogs today in class, I was amazed at how many different types of blogs you can write. The only blogs that I knew about beforehand were through myspace and that is where I can just ramble my thoughts and feelings. The blogs for this class need to have a link embedded somewhere within my text. So here goes my first attempt.

http://central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/americanstudies/


I like the way that this blog is set up. It shows the teachers blog as the main focus and on the left hand side there is a list of all the student's blogs that you can then link to. When you click on the students' blog links, they post their thoughts and can even add pictures.

I didn't realize that you could do so much with a blog. It seems really interesting.