Wrapping it up

A week from today will be the final day of class. Admittedly, when this summer class first began I did not think that I would learn anything useful or that I didn't already know. However, this preconceived notion of mine has been drastically altered as I near the end of this class. Some programs that we worked with I was familiar with but most of the programs that we used were not only new to me but some of them I had never even heard of!

As I have progressed through this class I have tried to imagine when I might use certain applications (i.e. voice thread, blogger, iMovie, etc.) in my own classroom. Some of these applications are probably beyond the level of students that I will be teaching, however other programs will certainly be used in my class. For instance, the Inspiration software for making graphic organizers/webs is, without a doubt, a application that I will use in my classroom. As a visual learner, I think this is a great tool for my (future) visual learning students to help them grasp both easy and hard concepts. Another application that I will most certainly use is a classroom website. I had not thought of using this type of thing to communicate with both students and parents, but I feel that it really invites the parents into my classroom (virtually of course) so that they are constantly connected with what we are doing in class. Adding a blog feature to connect to this website is another great idea so that I may inform parents of new projects and happenings in and around the classroom, and they can respond back to me (if they chose to be followers of the blog). As I continue to work on my classroom website for this class, I become excited when I think about using it when I am actually a teacher.

Other programs that we have worked with, I will admit, were not my favorite and were at times a HUGE headache. As is reflected in an earlier post, iMovie is one such application that I wish to stay faaaaaar away from in the future. I do not think that for all of the frustration it causes it will truly enhance the learning of my students. I feel that I could do just as good of a job, if not better, using an application such as Microsoft PowerPoint.

I have always known that I will continue to be a student for life, learning as much as I can to enrich not only myself but my future students. Up until now, my thinking of continuing my education never incorporated the use of technology and staying current on different software and applications, but this class has helped open my eyes to the utility and fun of using technology in the classroom.

iMovie is an application that I have been working with in class, with much frustration I might add. However, I did manage to put together a little slide show of my niece, Avery, who turns 1 in just a few days. The pictures that I have included are of Avery from just a few weeks old to her at just about a year. I hope you enjoy looking at these photos and find her as precious as I do!

Loving Inspiration...hating iMovie

At the end of last week we finished creating a project with the software Inspiration. This application quickly became one of my favorites as it was easy to use and self-explanatory. No headaches, no frustration...just simple creation. As a future teacher I can absolutely see myself using this type of program to create visual maps or graphic organizers for my students. The particular topic that I chooses for the class assignment was to make a representation of the different layers of the Earth. After completing this assignment, I found myself wishing that such a program had existed when I was in elementary school. I have always been the type of person that I have to see it to understand it. Simply hearing a teacher lecture on a topic was never enough for me to fully comprehend it, and I always had to have something written down for me to read or have the concept drawn/mapped out. For ideas that are more abstract I can imagine that my future students will benefit from this type of program.

The joy that I experienced with Inspiration was quickly squashed in today's class as we began to work with iMovie. The commercial for this program, of a young boy creating a movie easily and swiftly is a joke. I have now been playing with this application for over an hour and a half and I am about to pull my hair out! I try to add a title to a photo and sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. When I go to play through my movie, it decides whether or not it wants to work. Forget about trying to format any of the titles you want to come up for each photo...it's not worth the headache. And when I try to make each photo the same length, it all but deletes the preceeding picture. What a nightmare. So much for the ease of using this program! This is definitely one that I will stay away from as long as I can.