Week 9: Wordpress

For this week (5-26-15), we had a guest speaker teach us about Wordpress.  Even though I was sick and could not attend this class, when I came to class this week (6-2-15) I still got to experience what it is like to create a website through Wordpress, and that is how I created my final website. Overall, the site is extremely user-friendly, and I would definitely use it again to create another website.  I really like how it turned out and I would recommend it to anyone that wants to quickly create a website.  The only problem that I encountered was with creating a home page and not being able to delete the original home page.  Other than that, it was a breeze.

-Mandy

Week 8: DreamWeaver

Today we worked with DreamWeaver to build a website. This was not easy at all. In fact, I thought it was extremely difficult to grasp just because of the coding aspect of it.  Playing with Hour of Code beforehand didn't really help at all. Even though Hour of Code was fun, it still got to be a little bit frustrating towards the end. Overall, I would not choose to use DreamWeaver to build my own website.  I think that I would go with something a little easier that will take less time.  I did find the experience enlightening, but it was not my favorite thing that we've done.

-Mandy

Week 7: Mobile Learning

This week, we played on iPads and found some apps that could be used in a classroom setting.  I played around with Splash Math for 1st grade.  It was a game that allowed a student to answer 10 questions per day, in any sort of math area.  I focused on the questions that were directed at learning how to tell time.  I think that for the grade level and content area, this is a great app.  It can be used for individual students, or for small groups of students.  I decided to create my mini lesson plan around the idea of telling time, and included content standards as well as a link to another website that provides worksheets that would work for my lesson.  Overall, this was very helpful and useful because I know that creating lesson plans involving technology is going to be incredibly important.

-Mandy

Week 6: Podcasting

This week, we worked with GarageBand.  Since I was sick, we agreed that I could do an experiment and try to do the podcast on an iPad instead of the computer.  For the most part, GarageBand worked just fine on the iPad.  Once I got done, the problems began.  I tried to share the podcast on YouTube, but I wasn't allowed to sign in because it wanted a "username", but there is no "username" for YouTube.  I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked.  I also looked at sharing on Facebook, but that wasn't working for me either.  Overall, I think that GarageBand and doing podcasts are a great idea, but maybe just leaving them on the iPad would work best for a younger classroom anyway.

Mandy

Week 5: Literacy

This week, we focused on internet literacy.  This means that we learned how to tell if a website is real, or if it is a hoax.  There were a couple of ways to tell: looking at the source of the website, looking at what kind of website it is (.com, .org, .net, etc.), looking at the content of the website, looking at what the resources are, and other aspects like that.

Overall, it was very straightforward and seemed like there are some obvious methods of telling if the website is fake.  This will definitely be useful for me to know, so that I can help students find legitimate websites when they are doing research.

-Mandy

Week 4: Google Earth

During this week, we worked with creating a tour in Google Earth.  I made my tour about the 5 largest cities in Oregon.  These included Portland, Eugene, Salem, Gresham, and Hillsboro.  I learned how to mark cities and add a description, image, and link to the city website.  I learned the code to create a break in the text, which may come in useful later on.  I feel like creating a tour like this would be incredibly useful for a geography or social studies lesson.  I could create a tour of the places the students are going to learn about, and give them a brief description and insight to the places or things they will be learning about.  This would provide an interesting and attention-grabbing preview for the lesson that day.  Students will likely be more interested in what they will be learning about if they have a basic idea of what that might be.

I also learned how to create the actual tour (recording), so that could make it even more engaging for students, instead of having them just watch me clicking on the places individually.  Overall, this was really useful and I think that i could definitely use it in 1st-12th grade classroom.  It might not be the most useful for Kindergarten students, but I might be able to find a way to make it work.

-Mandy

Week 3: iMovie

Last week, we filmed a video as a group.  We used iMovie to turn it in to a short, 30-second informational "commercial."  The actual filming was very fun and easy -- who doesn't know how to use a video camera?  Although I had never had any experience with iMovie, it was pretty straightforward.  On the computer, it isn't my favorite thing to use because I don't think that younger kids would be able to use it easily.  Since my ideal grade level is Pre-K or Kindergarten, I really don't feel like I would use it much in a classroom setting.

We also used iMovie on an iPad, which was much more realistic for a classroom.  This one was limited, but it was incredibly easy to maneuver.  I feel like even 5 or 6 year old students would be able to make a short little movie to show something that they have learned.

Overall, I like the idea of using iMovie in a classroom, but probably not on a computer.  I think that since more schools are integrating iPads into the classroom, it would be much more relevant to use iMovie on an iPad.

We also start to talk briefly about Google Maps, but since I haven't started that project I will talk about it later.

-Mandy