The newest project that the class is doing is the flipchart. The flipchart is an interactive way for students to get engaged in the class and learn the ins and outs of the flipchart. The class has been introduced to the concept of the SMARTBoard in general from the beginning of the semester. We have been able to see how the board works and recently we have been able to see examples of how to use the board in new and innovative ways so that the students will be able to interact, too.
One helpful thing that I found from the instruction of the flipchart is how we were interacting with it before the assignment of making our own was even close to happening. We were able to get a taste of what the flipchart was like when we had to open part of the study guide for the midterm that was used with the flipchat. By doing this, I was able to see different methods to interact with the students to have them see the answers or have them write their own answers in the flipchart. I thought this aspect was extremely useful.
If I could change something about the lessons, I would say that I would like to have more experience with the flipcharts prior to making our own. I did like how we have other examples of other student's flipcharts. It is helpful to see the different ways that they created theirs. I also think we should have more days to work on ours in class because it is so complicated to figure out some of the methods of the technology. Besides that I really enjoy it and would recommend it to a lot of upcoming teachers!
For the past week, the class has been introduced to a new concept of modern teaching: flip charts. When I think of teaching students, I think of having them do worksheets at their desk, group projects at centers, or a teacher directly instructing the students. What I do not see a lot of is student interactions at the front of the class. With the new introduction of this nifty technology of flip charts, I can see my students being able to mold their learning styles in new ways. How can a flip chart add to the students' learning styles? Flip charts are on interactive smart boards that are positioned at the front of the class. Students are able to write and do many other cool things on the smart board. With the ability for students to engage with the rest of the class with these smart boards, the students are able to show others their work and explain how they came to their conclusion. If the students are able to teach others their ways of figuring out the answer, the other students are able to see various perspectives instead of their own and the teacher's.
Another thing that I found interesting and helpful about the smart board is that the students are able to take informal quizzes on the board by placing their answers in the right spots on charts. By doing this, they are able to talk about how they came up with the answers and help challenge the other students to come up with the answers, too.
One thing that I am nervous about to learning how to make these and finding out different ways to engage the class. I think this project coming up where we have to make our own flip charts will be really helpful for me to find out new ways to do this.
This week, we were asked to make a digital image project. For this project, we were asked to take pictures of various objects either inside the building or outside the building. My group's topic was "opposites".
When we were finished taking pictures, we uploaded them from our iPhones to dropbox on the computer. We had to resize them. This aspect of the project was extremely useful to me. I had always wondered how to resize images to make them more computer-friendly. The images that we took were fine for the website because they were already 72 megapixels and around 6x8. Because of this, we didn't have to resize. It was still useful to learn this tool because of future pictures that are taken on a camera instead of on an iPhone.
We also learned how to make a Google presentation for our images. This was helpful because it is always on the computer and we never have to worry about saving it to our computer and either emailing it to ourselves or having a flash drive. Instead, the PowerPoint is always on the internet and we can access it from anywhere.
This project was useful for many reasons and I am excited to learn more about how to edit and use digital images.
Wet
Dry
The past few weeks my TPTE Elementary team and I have been working on Resource Wikis. We have seen how effective team activties are using wikis for projects for the children but it was really neat to see how effective the wikis can be when using it for projects for different teaching teams.
One thing that I liked about the resource wiki that we put up was that it was a collaborated effort. We all made sure that we had five sources, but at the same time we could all check each other to make sure we had contributed something to the project. Along with accountability for the project, I also like that we could also edit the font for each other in the different pages. We all wanted to make sure that the wiki looked uniform, so when we went on the page, one person could change the font to make sure that it fit with what we wanted it to look like. It was really helpful for everyone to be on the same page and to want to have a uniformed wiki.
Another thing that was my favorite about this particular wiki is that I can actually see myself using this when I become a teacher. I could possibly see myself using the projects for the students but I could really see how collaborated effort to post interesting sites and activities that teachers could use in the classroom could really help a lot of different activities without having to make a ton of emails and send them to each other about different websites and resources. I think it would be extremely effective to make a combined wiki site for all the teachers that are in the school to really make sure we are connected as a team and sharing useful resources.
