Did I meet my goals??

I feel that I met my goals. I have a good foundation of understanding for powerpoint and am very comfortable with going about doing more lessons on my own and even using it to teach peers and colleagues. I refreshed my memory of powerpoint from my undergrad days and learned some other pretty cool techniques as well. I did learn how to narrate a powerpoint, however it was not applicable for my project.

I re-familiarized myself with kidspiration again but I kinda feel like there is more to explore within the program. I saw on other people's blogs that they made schedules for their school days. I think I would like to explore that further. I made a good start learning the program but I feel like it has more to offer than what I chose to do.

Final Project Plans

I am struggling now with trying to decide what to do for my final project. I would really like to do something that I can and will use in my classroom for the upcoming school year. So I am leaning towards a sample lesson. I have been involved immensely with Social Studies GPS and am team- teaching Social Studies this year. I think that a powerpoint that involves map skills or highlights some of the historical figures covered in first grade would be very beneficial to me and my colleagues.

It would also be very cool to have a powerpoint running during open house that hightlights all of the topics that new students and parents need to know.

Its all swirling around in my brain and I will play and experiment with powerpoint and see what direction it leads me in. :)

Kidspiration Reflection

I loved kidspiration! It was not as much fun as photoshop, but that might be because it is kid-geared and kiddie-user friendly. Anyways, I decided to do a vocabulary mapping activity. I used one of the stories that we actually read in first grade and chose a vocab word from the book. I think this would be great for vocabualry review since that is such a big part of first grade. We have a series of read-alouds that go along with our reading series and they each have lots of vocab that we study along with the story. It would be really cool to have a slide show of sorts for each of the stories vocab words already up for the year. I think that might be something to think about and work on for the upcoming year to share with all of the other teachers.

But I liked the program overall and I think that I could utilize it for lots of things, especially since we are going to have a computer lab this year. So I could have the kids make story maps, work on the writing of story elements, and do other subjects such as Social Studies where I can hit the GPS using technology. It is alot to think about.

Question 2: Article

The term triple coding refers to the multiple intelligeces and using them in the classroom. Research shows, that if a teacher uses a minimum of three MI's to teach a lesson, odds are the information is going to stick with the students.

A good example of this is when Mind-Mapping is used in the classroom. A mind-map is when a visual record is made of some information. When students use a smorgesboard of MI's all at once to create this mind-map, they are more likely to remember and have learned the information.

My Goals for the 2nd Weekend

I have used powerpoint before, in my undergrad days, although, it has been awhile. Therefore, I am guessing that there is a lot that I am not familiar with in terms of new advances in the program. I like the thought of using more powerpoints to teach my lessons. I really would like to learn more about putting videos within my powerpoints, especially to use United Streaming. I like how some of the examples of final projects were narrated and I loved that fact that kids narrated the powerpoint!! That is great and I would like to learn more about that.

I have also used inspiration and kidspiration before, but once again, that was along time ago in my undergrad days and I need some refreshing. So I guess my goals for this two programs would be to learn how to utilize them again, especially in my classroom with my students. If I remember correctly, it is great for story mapping. :)

Overall, I am excited about broadening my horizons with all of this new technology!!

Final Thoughts for Weekend One

I have really enjoyed this weekend and I have learned far more than I ever imagined. All of my Lesley classes seem to be following this pattern as a matter of fact; the outcome far exceeds my expectations. I have learned to love Photoshop and will now beg my husband to buy it for me so I can have it for future use. I also love the fact that I now have my very own web page so to speak on blogger.com. I am very proud of all of my accomplishments. I believe that the last blog entry I wrote expressed my frustrationswith Photoshop, but fear not!! I have found my creative outlet at last!!! Hooray!!

I plan on using the blog material that I have learned so that I can create a classroom website so I can enhance the communication between my parents and myself.

Photoshop Fun

Last afternoon we began learning how to manipulate photoshop. We started out small and basic and on Sunday, we began to get down and dirty. I started out by playing with all of the tools and seeing what kind of outcome I would get. I eventually would mess it up far beyond recognition and end up deleting the whole thing. I am still in this unhappy spot. But a few things that I did like were the filters effects and I also like using the reverse color effects. At the end of the morning I did discover the backgrounds and the frames which was cool. Hopefully, I will find some creative outlet that will make all of my frustrations disappear. :)