Smilebox

Smilebox was Bethany and my Web 2.0 tool. Smilebox is a free, read-to-use tool that allows its users to get creative to share photos and videos in a variety of formats. It gives the options of designing your own invitations, greetings, slideshows, online scrapbooks, photo albums, newsletters, and calendars. Smilebox is fun to use and play around with, it can turn any event or project into something visually appealing. After becoming familiar with the website by creating our own account we were able to present and teach the class how to navigate and use Smilebox. The overall learning of Smilebox and teaching the "how tos" to the class went well. It has become a useful tool of my own, and once I figured out how to use I have become familiar with each format and have many of ideas how to use it now and in the future. The presentation went smooth as well. My peers seem to catch on fast, and we had each one of them create a Halloween party invitation. They were spooky cute!

I could use Smilebox in my future classroom with a number of things. The invitations could be used for holiday classroom parties, up-coming events throughout the school year, and for student's birthdays. The scrapbooks and slideshows would be essential assets for collecting memories of the things going on in class or simply a student's progress and "milestones". Also, Smilebox helps with creating newsletter to send out to the parents and calendars for families to keep in their homes. This Web 2.0 tool has endless opportunities to better organize a classroom and a teacher's way of communicating with parents.

I'm not sure I would do anything differently. I loved the Halloween classroom party invitation I designed. I enjoyed learning, using, and teaching what I know about Smilebox! :)

All about the four seasons diagram

I made this specific diagram to help second graders learn more about the four seasons, and how the seasons change throughout the year. I provided each season with three to four little facts that would help kids recognize certain changes they experience during the spring, summer, fall, and winter. I used pictures to provide a visual aid for each season and little notes to add additional information as well. I think this assignment went well. Once, I understood how to use the tools provided in Inspiration it was easy to navigate and create an appealing diagram to a second grader's eye. The images were easy to find and relate to the topics in the symbols box. Also, posting the diagram to my blog and website went smoothly too.

I will use this tool in my professional instruction with students when going over the atmosphere during a science lesson. The four seasons are great and vital teach the students what happens when the seasons change and how to prepare for the temperature changes. It would also serve as a great way to lead into discussion on what each student does for the upcoming seasonal adjustments. I will definitely use Inspiration in the classroom to be a tool that accompanies my future lessons. Inspiration can provide connection with an organized and grade appropriate structure.

If I had to do something different, I would put more thought into the fonts and figure out how to size everything exactly the same to make it flow better. Also, I would extend the information and put more facts with each season or what ever the concept to elaborate more. However, I feel this was a great start to using Inspiration and happy with the overall outcome of my diagram.

Excel Activity

Google Presentation: Hunt

The scavenger hunt I was assigned to was alphabet letters A through L. My group was to roam around the University of Tennessee campus and find objects that started with the letters A through L. Once we found our object we were to take a picture. After finding all the objects that started with the correct letter we came back to the classroom and loaded them onto our Mac computers. Then, we were to post them onto Google presentation and create a slideshow. I thought this activity went quite well. My group got stuck on a few letters, as easy as we thought it was going to be, but we put our imagination to work and found what we needed. Google Presentation was easy to use and created the slideshow pretty quickly. I think Google Presentation could have more format options, but other than that the whole assignment was fun and went well.

I could use Google Presentation in my professional instruction by teaching students the alphabet, animals at the zoo, weather patterns, and endless concepts and lessons. Google Presentation makes it accessible to teachers by having all teacher's slideshows in one place and quick to find each year when it is time for a certain lesson. Also, to have my students go on a scavenger hunt and find certain objects for an educational purpose would be a beneficial hands-on activity. I would have older students use the Google Presentation themselves. I believe it would be a different and advance way to learn a new concept.

I'm not sure what I would do differently, because I thought everything went over well. However, trying to make the slideshow more appealing would be the first thing I would change if I had too. Also, I could have tried to make the pictures more visualizing inviting, but for the most part I thought they worked just fine!

Picnik Snapshot

I really enjoyed learning about Picnik. I had always wonder how my friends got their pictures to look so artsy and different on Facebook. Now I know how to edit and really alter my pictures for the better. I took one of my pictures from Facebook and edited the color scheme, whitened the teeth, and made the border of the picture into a Polaroid. This Web 2.0 took has been one of favorite so far! I will definitely be using Picnik in the future.

Glogster Practice

Glogster was not one of my favorites at first because it was difficult to figure out how to design a well organized "poster". I actually had to use Glogster for one of my classes, and I got to play around with it much longer. My finish project in my Reading Education 430 class made me warm up to the idea of using Gloster in the classroom while presenting an idea.

Delicious Tags

How delicious!! I think delicious is a very handy tech web 2.0 tool.  It organizes a person's most popular websites they use for easy access. I have been using delicious ever since it was introduce to us in class. It is a lot better than having a whole bunch of history and typing in the same website over and over again. I would really recommend using Delicious on every computer to have some part of your life easy and organized.