November 26, 2013 - SMART Board

Today's class was a thorough tutorial on the SMART Board.

I was really looking forward to this lesson and found it to be a great tool to use in the classroom (if the classroom is set up with a SMART Board).  The SMART Board functions almost reminded me of Windows Paint and seemed to have a user friendly look and feel.

We learned how to use the utilize the different tools, including the pens and shapes.  One of the pens, the Magic Pen, does several functions.  It functions as a multipurpose drawing tool that lets the user zoom in on certain areas of the SMART Notebook page or add a spotlight to an object by drawing a circle around. The tool also allows a SMART user to write notes on their SMART which then disappear after a short period of time.

For homework we're going to apply what we learned in class and make up a lesson using the SMART Notebook program.

November 19, 2013 - Todd Nesloney's Webinar

For the November 19 class, I watched Todd Nesloney’s webinar from 05. 07. 2013 about flipped classroom.

Todd explained it’s not ALL about the videos.  He mentioned that videos are only about 10% of his flipped classroom.  When he puts together his videos, he tries to make his videos an average of 6 minutes long, and he usually only puts in one example.  He leaves it up to the students to research more examples if they need it.

One important tip I learned is that he does a few videos at a time.  He will do three videos at a time, so he’s not making videos all the time.  He said he doesn’t do them at home, he’ll come into work an hour early and work on his videos (I’m not sure why he does this, because personally, I’d rather be at home and do it.)

Todd covered a lot of bases in his webinar, but if I could ask him one question, I would like to ask Todd if he’s ever encountered a parent who is opposed to this method of teaching, and if so, how did he deal with opposition from the parent.

After watching Todd’s webinar I think I’d be more inclined to use the flipped classroom teaching method. I know that schools want to make sure teachers are inventing new methods of teaching, and based on Todd’s positive outlook on flipped classroom, I think I would integrate it into my classroom.  I wouldn’t want to completely do a flipped classroom, but I think it would be great to implement it a few times a month to keep things fresh and make things interesting for the students.

November 12, 2013 - Sophia, Flipped Learning

In today's class we logged onto a site called Sophia and learned about flipped learning in the classroom.  Flipped learning is a form of teaching in which students learn new content online by watching video lectures, usually at home, and what used to be homework is now done in class with teacher helping.
Some common criticisms that were discussed in class were:

• Kids do not want to sit at home watching boring video lectures on the web after being in school all day.
• Some kids do not have internet access at home.
• How do I even know if kids are watching the videos?  If they don't watch videos, don't I just end up reteaching the material in class anyway?

For next class we will be constructing our own flipped video and a sample flipped classroom on Sophia. 

November 5, 2013 - Prezi

This week's class we learned about Prezi and how to do various effects.  Prezi is a lot like Powerpoint, but it's more seamless and fluid.  It's cloud-based presentation software for presenting projects. Where Powerpoint is more structured and has a slide-like appearance, Prezi is more creative and allows content to become exciting and interesting.

I was excited to learn about Prezi because I know several jobs I've applied for in the past asked if applicants were familiar with Prezi.  So this is something I know will be used in the future.

October 22, 2013 - Horizon Report, Gamification, Presentations

In our October 22 class, we did class presentations on the Horizon Report, finished up Gamification, and did a short video with a group on Creative Commons.  We did our Creative Commons video on the different types of licenses through Creative Commons.  I enjoyed this activity because the video had to be short, which made it easy to decide which material we wanted to incorporate, and also the software we used to create the video was fairly user friendly.

Professor Ross mentioned this week we will be learning Prezi, which I'm looking forward to learning about because I've applied for jobs in the past and I know that businesses are looking for people who are familiar with this application.

October 15, 2013 - Hangouts, Open Content, Twitter

In today's class we did our Google hangout with Professor Ross.  It's a lot like Skype except with a group.  Each hangout was about a half hour and my group included Sarah and Alex.  While the other groups did their hangout, we worked on a few items as a group and a few individual items.

One of the things our group put together was a website that details Open Content.  We provided some links and You Tube videos that give a nice amount of information and give a good overview of it.  Here is a link to our Open Content web page: Open Content Website

One of the items we worked on individually was a task list Professor Ross put together for working with Twitter.  Some of these tasks included tweeting a picture, following 5 educators, and tweeting an educational quote.  This was good for me personally because I don't "do Twitter" but since I'm more familiar with it now, I might make it part of my social media repertoire.

October 9, 2013 - Social Media

In today's class we presented different social media sites with our groups that could be incorporated into teaching.  Our presentation was on Pinterest and the other groups presented Scoop it, Symbaloo, and Livebinders.

I'm familiar with Pinterest because I use it personally, but of the other 3 that were presented I think I really like Scoop it!  I liked how it was a newspaper style pinboard and the articles were posted directly to the page, as opposed to a link to an outside site.

After our presentations, we covered Edmodo, which was great because the 8th grade ELL class I'm currently observing uses Edmodo daily and I had no idea what it was.  Professor Ross put several tasks on Edmodo and showed us how to turn in assignments thru the site.  Our assignments showed us how Gamification can be used in the classroom.  It was a lot of fun and definitely something that would keep students interested and engaged.