Adios, TPTE 486!

Today is the final day of TPTE 486. When I first started this class, I honestly thought I'm a tech-savvy person, and I won't really benefit from a class on technology. Boy was I wrong! I learned about so many tools and resources that I can use in my classroom to enhance learning. I will say that technology has a way of creating frustration instantly. It's not always predictable, and it doesn't always do what you want it to do. However, so many of the resources we learned about in this class will help me present information in a variety of ways that will help all learners as well as help students demonstrate their knowledge to me in a variety of ways. In one of my other classes last week, I was talking with my teacher about using a Wiki to help general education and special education teachers work together when co-teaching a class. I had a classmate say "what's a Wiki?" I was so glad that I knew the answer to that because before this class I would have had a very similar response.

Designing a Classroom Website

I didn't think designing a website could be so easy. Google sites made the process fairly easy to figure out. The hardest part was figuring out exactly what was important enough to put on my page. I did have some trouble with certain images. The size of the screen can greatly change the appearance of the content, so that is important to consider when designing a site. 

I think that having a classroom website is a very good idea, and it is definitely something that I plan to have in my classroom. The only problem I see with using websites is that it may not be the most effective way to reach certain students or parents, especially in high poverty areas. Teachers should consider the demographic of the school at which they are teaching. In such situations, the teacher could still have a website but should also remember that notes home and keeping the parents informed through other means will be necessary.

iMovie Project

Working with iMovie was a lot of fun but very frustrating at first because I didn't understand the program. Once I got the hang of it though, I became a lot less frustrated. The hardest part for me was working with several different audio files and trying to perfectly match and transition them between ideas. I'm glad that I now know how to use this program because I find it to be a very good tool for making book trailers, which is something I plan to do a lot in my classroom. I think the program would be a little too much for students to create their own for a book they are reading with this program, especially if they are not familiar with Macs. However, I do find it a useful for my purposes.

Spreadsheet Project

I created this practice grammar quiz for my students using Excel spreadsheets. I never thought of using Excel in my classroom, so I'm glad I got the chance to play with this tool and see what it has to offer for an English classroom. It's a great tool because it allows me to create my own interactive grammar activities instead of passing out a worksheet. At first, the process was a little tedious, but the more I practiced with it, the more comfortable I got with the tool.

Hunger Games Inspiration Project

Today was my first time using Inspiration software, and I have to say that I would definitely see about purchasing this for my classroom or using a cheap alternative. The various diagrams and maps that students could create using a novel as their basis are unlimited. I did a web diagram on characterization for the main character of the novel Hunger Games. The process involved quite a bit of critical thinking and working with the material. I had to first know what the elements of characterization were and then search the text to find appropriate examples. It sounds easy until you have to start figuring out the difference between what Katniss is saying and what she is thinking and then see how those are different from what she may be doing. A lot of factors are involved when authors are creating characters, so it was cool to go through that process since I plan to have my students do similar activities. Also the process of connecting images to text requires some critical thinking as well. Overall, this activity would be useful for my students, and it was certainly useful for me.

Scavenger Hunt Presentation

Scavenger Hunt