Tool Article #2

My Grade Book
The tool that I have chosen to use in my classroom is www.gradebook.com this is such a great thing for teachers to use. It is fast and easy to use. It lets you put in the points that the student got on the assignment, and then it calculates the percentage for you, therefore you never have to worry about doing the math. It also lets you see your class average right there. It is easy to make reports on how your class is doing. Nevertheless you can show your principal, or you can print off individual ones for parents to show how their child is doing. It lets you customize those reports to the way that you want them to be. It also lets you manage attendance online. Nevertheless you can just have the computer on at the beginning of class, and take attendance right there fast and easy. When a child is tardy or absent you can email the parents’ right from there letting them know. This will help in letting the parents know how much school their child is missing. You can also give students and parents access to see their grades online. This is nice to use so that students can stay caught up in school. Because it is on the web you can access it from anywhere that you need to. It also is backed up; you never have to worry about losing any of your data. My grade book is such a great tool for teachers to use in the classroom to keep track of grades. It had many other features included in it like creating your own quizzes, or making a seating chart downloading pictures of the students. This is a great way to put the names with the faces. I hope to one day use this tool in my classroom, because it has so many

Tool Article #1

Mapping our World :
The second tool I chose to do is Mapping our world, you can find this at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/mapping_our_world/mapping_our_world/l/home/index.htm. I think that this is such a great tool for teachers to use in the classroom to teach students about geography.
Mapping our World explores relationships between globes and maps, and how our different projections influence the way we look at the world. There are three lessons to choose from that you can use to teach your students about maps. The first lesson is what a globe looks like. It talks about how the earth looks from space, and if a mole dug through the center of the earth where it would end up. The second lesson is about the idea of projections. It teaches about Mercators and Peters and who they were, map merging, and that there is no perfect map of the world. The third lesson is on how different projections and orientations affect our world, an another activity that helps you to match the flags with their countries, and another activity talking about do the projections of countries fit their true size, and another activity asking if one country is more important than the other.
I think that this website is such a good thing for teachers to use to teach their students about geography. It gives teachers good subjects to talk about and activities go along with them. I would like to use it in my classroom one day

GOOGLE WEBSITE

This week in class I spent time working on my google website. This has been a great thing for me to learn so that one day I can use it in my classroom. I had to do six pages the first was page was all about me so that my students can get to know the teacher that is teaching them. The second page was the announcement page. This helps with kids and parents to be able to get on this site and to know what is coming up in the classroom, and what they need to be aware of. The third page was a calendar I put things in there like Christmas Assembly, Christams Party, Spelling test etc. This was a cool thing to learn how to inbed a google calendar into a website, it will become useful one day. Then the fourth page was student od the month. I did a boy and a girl. I made up names and their favorite things to do, where they liked to eat etc., and why I chose them as student of the month. The fifth page was the homework page. This is a great page to have on the website so that students can never say that they did not know what was due. Also if a student misses a day then they can go onto the website and look up what homework is due for the next day. I did three subjects for my homewrok math, reading, and spelling, then made up homework assignments to go with them. The last page is four tools I have not finished that page yet. I hopefully should be done with it my Tuesday.
This google website has been a great thing for me to learn, and I would like to incorporate it into my classroom.

ONE DAY!!!

This week in class there was only one day of class. Me and about four other girls showed up for class since it was the week of Thanksgiving. I decided to attend class so that I could continue to work on the things that are do at the end of the semester. I am very close to being done with these things, and still have two weeks to go so this makes me excited! In class I worked on my brochure. I started this a couple of weeks ago but because I only saved it in PDF I had to redo the whole thing. I did my brochure on Africa. I talked about how we will have guest choreographers come teach the children a dance, how we will have foods from the different countries in Africa, also how we will color a map of the different countries and learn about them. Then for the end reward I said that I was going to take the children on a virtual safari, and teach them facts about African animals. I put some pictures on there of Africa, it turned out really cute, I like it. Then Thursday was Thanksgiving so no class. It was a short week, but I got things done so I was excited about that!

GETTING THE PROJECTS DONE!

This week in technology we continued to work on the projects that are do at the end of the semester. On Tuesday the thing that I worked on was my newsletter. I enjoyed doing this! My newsletter consisted of two sutdents of the month a boy and a girl. I just made up things about them and gave them a fake name, then I told the reason why I chose them to be student of the month. Then I talked about a tool that we are starting to learn in class which I chose power point, and I just talked about what we are going to do with that. Then I made up a field trip to the zoo, and a Easter Egg Hunt! This was a lot of fun to do, just to pretend like you are a teacher, and just think of things that one day I wan to do in myclassroom! I added lots of pictures to it, it turned out really cute I was excited about it. Then I was going to finish my brochure but I only saved it as a PDF, and I cant make changes on that so I will have to start over. But it's it all good it will work out. Today in class I worked on my ten classroom rules. I worked on this with Libby and Aubree, it was fun to think of rules that we would like to have. I tried to think of rules that I really feel strongly about implying in my classroom one day. We had a lot of fun doing this together! We found cute pictures to add to the rules, which helped a lot in making it colorful and fun. I really had a great time in class today working on this, and also listening to music and talking. We all had a great time.
All I need to do now is finish my brochure, my google website, and then one more tool article. I am getting close to being done and that makes me excited!

WOW the semester is close to being over !!!!!

So this week in class, we our assignments for the rest of the semester which so far I have enjoyed doing. We have to make a flyer, brochure, classroom rules, a google classroom website, and tool articles. All of these things are great things to do because one day I can use them in my classroom. So far I have done a brochure and a flyer. For my flyer I did a sledding fieldtrip. This turned out really cute. There is snowflakes on the side of it. It just looks wintery and fun! This is a great tool to learn so that in my class one day when we do go on a field trip, I can make a fun flyer telling my parents and students about the fieldtrip that is to come. It is also a good way to put out the information what kids need etc. in a professional manor. The other thing that I have done is the brochure. This has to be on a concept about what you are learning in the classroom. Since I want to teach second grade, I chose to do it on Africa since that is a subject that is taught in second grade.I just talked about the activities we will do and then put some pictures on there. This is a great way to get children excited about the upcoming units, and to get parents excited.
I am excited to finish up these projects and to see the outcome. I can't wait for the day that I can use these things in my classroom. It is also crazy to think that the semester is almost over, we only have these assignments left to do and then we are done CRAZY!

KIDSPIRATION!!!!

This week we had the chance to play on Kidspiration which I loved and really enjoyed this! I think that it is a great tool that I will want to use with my kids in my classroom one day.
The first thing that i liked about it is that you as a teacher can make your own activities that you want your children to do pertaining to the curriculum that you are learning at the time. It also gives the children a chance to listen to the word that is in the activity. This is a nice tool becasue if children cant read then they are able to hear the word, and learn how to read it. It also has the tool of letting you see the definition of a word. This is a great thing to have to teach children vocabulary and the defintion of the vocabulary. With tha activites that teachers can make themselves you can make ven daigrams, pictures and add the words to them. It has a lot of great tools to use to make activities.
I had the chance to play around with a lot of the activities that Kidspiration already had made. This is a tool that I want to intergrate into my classroom. It had great activities to learn about many different subjects such as reading and writing. Some of the activities that I want to use is learning about adjectives, gives you the definiton of adjectives, and words that are adjectives. They also have a great activity in there to teach children how to write their first report. When I have children write a report in my classroom, I will do this activity with them to help them learn. It also teaches children how to say their beggining sounds, they can listen to them right their and learn how to say them. It also had great activities to do for math. Teaches children about adding, adding with regrouping, alomost halves, balancing, bar graphs, teaching chuildren how to measure things, in this case it was furniture which helped them learn about incehs.and many more. These activities are great to use so children can play around with the concepts of math and help them to learn it better. They had great science activities as well such as: learning about the life cycle, animal habitiats (you drag animals into the habitats that they live in) teaching children the different habitats that animals live in. They also have an activity that teaches children about gravity and how it works. Another subject that is taught is soical studies. I really enjoyed these activitis and since social stuides is my favorite subject I am looking forward to using these activties in my classroom. One of the activities was looking at a map of the United States and putting the name of the state with it.This is a good way for children to learn the states instead of just coloring a map. They also had an activity to do with the three branches of government. This is a good thing for children to learn because many people do not learn this. There was another activity comparing the Colonists and the Native Americans with a ven diagram. Great way to see the differences and the things that were the same that these two groups did. I also enjoyed putting the different holidays in the months that they were in. I actually did not know when some of these holidays took place. Therefore it will be a great activity for children to learn these holidays. Then I think it would be fun to do an activity in class where we celebrate the holidays that we usually dont celebrate. There also was an activity that taught students how to eat a healthy balanced meal. This is so important for students to learn, because so many of them are malnourished these days. I would like to have the children do this activity and then bring the healthy foods they learn about in the classroom, and let them realize that they are delicious to!
Kidspiration is such a great program to use in the classroom. It gives children great activities to do, to learn so many subjects, and learn to comprehend them. It also gives teachers excellent ideas to use for lesson plans. They can look up an activity that they want to do, and then create a lesson plan from that, incorporating hands on learnig. I really enjoyed playing with Kidspiration, and can't wait to use it in my classroom!

Powerpoint Presentaions

This week in class we spent time presenting the powerpoints that we made. It was fun to see everyones powerpoints, and to think of ways that I can use them in my classroom. We saw a powerpoint on no smoking I thought that this was a cute idea, to have kids do in the classroom so they can learn about the effects of smoking. There also was another one of guessing who the person was, it gives you facts about the person and then you have to guess who is it. I liked this becasue it gives chilrdren a chance to see if they know the person, and if they don't then they can learn about them through the facts givem. We also had a chance to learn about the solar system. I really liked this powerpoint bedcause it taught me about space. I learned things that I did not know, so I am sure that it will teach children about solar system. We also learned about idioms which was fun.
We learned a lot of great powerpoint presentations that I can use in my classroom. I thought they were all really fun, and I am so excited to use them in my classroom. We also had the chance to dress up and present them. I liked that we did this, because it will help me when I become a teacher and I have to present an idea to my coworkers, I will feel comfortable in doing this.
I also enjoyed working in groups, and hearing other peoples ideas, on how they would like to do the powerpoint. I always think that it is good to work in groups, because it teaches people how to work together. In the world today we all need to know how to work together, therefore I think that this is important to use. The one thing I did not like about working in a group is worrying if the people in your group would do what they were suppose to. If they did not then it reflected on your grade, so that was stressful. All in all I enjoyed it though. I want to incorporate group work in my classroom one day to teach kids how to get along with eachother, and learn how to work together. This a great concept for the children to learn for the rest of their lives. I am glad that I had the chance to learn that when I was young, and still continue to learn it while in college.
It was a great experience, and I am glad that I had the chance to experience it and learn about presenting.

POWERPOINT WEEK

This week in class we got the chance to use our book 50 Quick and Easy powerpoint activities. We worked in groups to create two powerpoint presentations. The two activities that my group chose was the comic strip, and New Year's Resoultions. It was fun doing these activities. I enjoyed thinkning back in the past of what my New Year's Resolutions were back then. It made me laugh when I wrote them down, because they were being nice to my family, playing with my dog, and all of those simple things. Now my resolutins are more complex and totally different from what they are when I was younger. It is interesting to look back and think how simple life was back then and how c0mplex it is now. I enjoyed doing this project.
I am excited that we got a chance to use the book this week, and I enjoyed looking through it and seeing the different power point presentations to do. I hope to use these presentations in my classroom one day. I think it will help to get children aquainted with powerpoint, and learn how to use it and understand it. They are fun activities so they won't get bored.
I enjoyed working with my group we all worked together well, and had great ideas. I am excited to show the class next week our final preojects, and to show them our picture powerpoint presentations.
It was a fun week to learn more about powerpoint, and to get to kn0w the girls better in my class!

More Digital Camera stuff

This week we had to decide 5 ways that we can use digital cameras in our classroom. Here are the 5 ways that I would like to use digital cameras in my classroom.

1. Take pictures of students to put on my seating chart this way I can put the name with the face, and it will help me to learn their names easier.

2. Use pictures on the job chart this way children can see their picture and know that is is their turn to do the job.

3. Take pictures of children showing good behavior, then bring out the picture often to remind them about using good behavior.

4. Take pictures of parties, field trips or activities that we are having in the classroom, post them on a blog so that parents can see what we are doing in the classroom.

5. Take pictures of children to use with an art project, for example making a christmas ornament with their pictures.

These five things are ideas that one day I would like to incorporate into my classroom.

This week in class we used the pictures that we took in groups to make a slideshow presentation using them. Ours was about being safe. This was a lot of fun to do, it is a great learning tool to use in the classroom to keep children safe. I have really enjoyed using digital cameras and I think it is so important to use them in a classroom. It has been fun to learn many different ways that I can use digiatal cameras like taking pictures of the things that we are learning in the classroom, fieldtrips, pictures to make books, making cards and many different things. I am excited to one day do these things in my classroom.

DIGITAL CAMERAS

This week in technology class I learned more about digital cameras and ways that I can incorporate them into my classroom. I was able to read three great articles that gave me ideas on how I can use digital cameras in the classroom. I read a list of 100 ways to use them. I found some great ones like taking individual photos of your studeunts, and using that photo to put in the job chart. I also liked the idea of taking photos of field trips or any parties or big classroom events that you have. I thought this would be fun to do, and then I can email these photos to parents, so that they can see the things that we are doing in the classroom. This will give them a way to be more apart of the things that we are doing in school. I also liked the ideas of taking photos of things that we are learning about in the classroom. For example taking photos of community helpers, to teach the children about people in their community. I also read an article on using a digital camers properly, this was good to read, because sometimes I have questions about my digital camera, and this helped answer some of them. It taught me that if I want to print off my photos then I need to make sure that I keep my resolution turned up to the highest JPEG or TIFF. Also sometimes I forget to bring extra batteries along with me on trips, and this gave me a good reminder to remember to always have a spare battery. I also learned if I want to take pictures of something that is fast moving I need to turn off my LCD screen preview and it should work faster. In the third article I read about incorporating computers in my classroom using digital photography. A kindergarten teacher had her children learn how to use a digital camera and then learn how to upload them to the computer, and then taught them how to crop and change the pictures to look better. I thought this was such a great idea, it taught children how to use cameras, and how to better work a computer. The article said that it really did help the children to become more confident with computers. Someday I would like to do the same with my classroom, because it is very important for students to learn how to use computers.
This week in class was a lot of fun I had a great time working in groups taking pictures. During this time I got to know the girls better, and learned more about the core curriculum. I learned more about Picassa and how to change photos on there and make the pictures look better. It was a great week in class, I am grateful that I had the chance to learn about this stuff.

POWERPOINT FUN!

This week in technology we learned how to do powerpoints. I am pretty familar with powerpoint, becasue in high school I was the publicist of our dance company so I had to make a power point presentation for our end of the year concert. But here I learned how to add music to the powerpoint I was not able to figure out that in high school, so I was excitred to learn how. I also learned how to hyperlink. This is so cool, if there was a website that I want to look at during my presentation I can just hyperlink it to my page and go right to it from there. This was so nice to learn so that during my presentation, I don't have to click out of the whole thing I can just go right from there. I also learned how to add a graph to the powerpoint. I am so grateful that I learned Excel so that I know exactly what to do with my graph, and then to add it right to my presentation.
This will be such a great tool for me to use in my classroom one day. Just like me I will probabaly have children that are visual learners. I can help them in doing my lessons through a powerpoint presentation. I can have pictures of what we are learning about, and music to go along with the lesson plan. This will help the children to see what we are learning right there in front of them.
I am so glad that I learned how to powerpoint presentation, it will be so great to use in my classroom, even if I have to do a presentation, for the teachers that I am working with it is a great thing to learn.

THIS WEEK IN TECHNOLOGY CLASS!

This week in technology boy did I learn alot! I got a chance to work with the UEN website, and I learned a lot about this website. We had a chance to do a scavenger hunt with this website. Here I leanrned how to upload videos, documents. and pictures. This was so great to learn for one day when I have my own classroom. This will be a great tool for me to use, in uploading videos I would like my children to watch. to help them better understand what we are learning in class right now. For example if we are learning about counting money, I could upload a video onto UEN and have them watch it to better understand the concept. I also can tell the children about myself and post pictures of myself so that they can learn more about me. UEN was a little hard to understand at first but after I go use to it then it was pretty simple, which is a good thing becasue teachers don't have a lot of time to sit and try to figure out computer systems. They need to be fast and easy, and UEN was both of these. UEN was a great thing to learn, and I am so glad that I got the chance to learn it.
I also had the chance to learn about internet safety for children. This is so important to learn becasue we need to be making sure that our children are safe on the internet in our classroom and at home. If teachers take the time to teach children about safety on the internet, then we can help them to be safe. I found lots of great websites to use for internet safety for example http://home.disney.go.com/guestservices/safety, was a great website for children to use that had lots of fun games to play. I also found many other great websites that I can use in my classroom when I have one. They had great games for children to play to learn the tips they need to know. I also got to make an activity I found websites to have the children look at, then I was going to have them make up skits using the safety tips. One day I hope to do this activity in my classroom.
I learned alot in technology this week, that will benefit when I am a teacher, I am excited to learn more next week!

UEN Reflection Paper

UEN REFLECTION PAPER
This week I learned how to use the UEN website. This is such a great tool that one day I will use in my classroom. I loved how I could look up the curriculum and find lesson plans for the grade that I want to teach. It had so many great ideas. They had lots of great ideas on how to teach lessons and, many resources that you could use to teach.
I liked using Pioneer Library you could find cute videos to show the children to watch through emedia, showing different core curriculums. You could also use the tool searchasaurus which is great to use in the classroom to teach children about animals, health, and history etc.
I enjoyed looking through the core curriculum and researching what one day I will teach the students in my classroom. It helped me to better understand the core curriculum. They also had great ideas on interactive to do with the kids. For example they have quizzes that you can use to make sure that the children comprehended the curriculum that we have learned.
I really enjoyed UEN I think that it will be a great way to help children learn how to use computers, and to keep up on school. If they have a website that they can go onto and see what assignments we are doing in class in will be so much easier to understand, and stay caught up on school.

FUN WITH WEBSITES!

This week was a week of making lots of fun websites. I had the chance to make my own personal webpage on google. Here I talked about ten of my dreams, which was fun to write down and remeber, and just to dream. I also wrote a paragraph about myself. This is such a great thing to know how to do for when I get a classroom one day. Here I can go on and talk about myself, and just let the kids know who their teacher is. I also learned how to insert pictures, and use many great tools that can help with any project that I need to do. It was so much fun and I am so grateful that I got the chance to get my own website, and to know that I made a website. I also made a UEN website this week. This is the best thing to have for teachers. Here I can find great search tools to look up ideas for lesson plans, or even to look up meanings of words. It also has a calendar on this website, so that in my classroom I can write down everything we are going to do in class. Then I can write all of the homewrork, and when it is due. This is a great way for students and parents to know what we will be learning in class and what the homewwork will be. I also learned how to make my webpage more personal by decorating it. I decorated it with an orange layout and a pumpkin as my icon, becasue Halloween is coming up. Here i can bookmark all of my favorite websites and just be able to go to my UEN and find my websites from there. Every teaher needs a UEN, and I am grateful that I have one now. This week was a great week in technology class, and more to come.

WOW I learned alot this week in technology class!

So this week in technology class was another great week of learning many new and important things. I never realized how much i did not know about technology, there is so much out there to know about computers it is amazing. We started out the week by making our dream computers using Microsoft Word! My dream computer was an iMac, of course because they are simply the best computers. Doing my dream computer, I learned some of the "secrets" that there is on word. I learned how to use the painter that paints all of your word the same font and color without having to highlight them. That was nice to know because it will help save a lot of time. I also got a refresher of how to insert pictures and text into word which is always a good reminder. This will help me in my classroom, to write notes using word to parents, or simply just to make assignments for my children in the classroom. It is good to know these things so that I can make my assignments with lots of pictures, and fun colorful text. Making it more interesting for the children to look at, and want to do the assignment. I also had the chance to become familiar with Excel. I had never really used Excel before so I learned a lot. With Excel we picked out our favorite olympic event which mine is swimming because of beautiful Michael Phelps. We put down the toal of medals won, and made a pie chart using these numbers. It was so cool to learn how to make a pie chart. This will be a great tool to use in my classroom, I can do grades on there, or I can put in kids math scores in for example then make a pie chart and see how well the children are doing in math, or any other subject. It was so much fun to learn. I am enjoying learning so much, and can't wait to learn more!

What I learned this week in Technology Class!

This week I learned a lot of new things about technology, it was great. I got a blog which I had never even knew how to do. I thought this was a good idea in getting because I can use this in my classroom. It can give the children in my classroom a way to learn a lot more about me. They can know the background of the person who teaches them everyday. It can also give me a way to post up homework assignments, letting the parents know that their child has homework, because a lot of the times the child forgets they have homework, or they just don't want to do it. I also got a face book. I am really glad that I got this because it seems like everyone in college has a face book, and I never had one. All of my friends kept trying to talk me into getting one and I just never got around to getting one. I have now joined the twenty first century, and my friends are all so proud of me that I finally got one! I also got a chance to do a crossword and learn more about the hardware basics of a computer. I did not know a lot of the basics of a computer.I felt that it helped me to become more acquainted with the computer. Now I know a lot more about computers and how they run. Which will be good for the future in my classroom when I need to learn how to use a computer. I really enjoyed learning all about technology this week, and am excited for next week!

EDEL 2200

Test Post