Stingray!

Turtles!

Google Earth

Google Earth is a lot of fun! A little creepy though...But anyway! When I was playing around with this I thought of my favorite book, where the main character goes on a few trips with her friends. So, I made a tour of all the places she went during the story. I think this would be fun for a class, where students can either write there own story create tour of the places their character goes, or they can map the places of a book they read.

Hudson Valley Home Matters in the running to win the Pepsi Refresh Good Idea Project!

Glogster Assignment

I think Glogster is pretty cool! I love how creative it is, and I think students (as well as myself, haha) could really have a good time using this site both in and out of school. I like the extensive choices for images, background pictures, text options and whatnot, but I think at the same time this aspect gets a little distracting and could make the user focus more on text color rather than the larger project at hand. I wish you could print the posters! When the site was first introduced I got really excited thinking that's what you could do with this, but sadly no...Still a great program though! (Plus I guess you could do a screenshot of the poster you'd like to print.)

I can see myself using this in class, and I think I would like having students using it for projects or to use in conjunction with a presentation or report. I'm not so crazy about having it all online, and I'd want kids to print out their posters - but this might be an issue, since the posters lose some of their effect without a color printer, and I can't assume every student has access to this. But overall, I think it's a lot of fun, and I'd be excited to introduce it to my students.

Hamster!

Penguins!

Fish!

Jing Assessment

http://screencast.com/t/Ggwupvjb

Survey Monkey Assignment

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Wordle Assignment

I think Wordle would be really fun to use in an English classroom to help incorporate a visual aspect into the lesson. I like the idea of creating a Wordle out of student writing, either to look at it critically and become better writers, or just to see their words take a form outside of standard text, which might be more interesting to them after spending their whole day in class reading textbooks and doing worksheets. I like how Wordle adds another artistic element to writing, and I can see this really helping students become more involved in the reading and writing process by using a program like this in class.

Poll Everywhere Assignment

Make a live audience poll at Poll Everywhere

Replace audience response hardware with Poll Everywhere


I think this site could be really useful to take quick polls from students (duh) in order to find out a little more about them in a way in which they might be more enthusiastic. For example, teachers can find out about student hobbies, likes and dislikes, and even conduct a one to two point kind of extra credit assignment. I like how quick it is to take a poll and how teachers can find out some good information about their students through such an easy and approachable medium.

Using Second Life in the Classroom

This year I will be using Second Life in class, to see how well students like it and how it can fit into our English classroom experience. I do have some concerns about using such a program in school, but I think there are many interesting applications that can be employed in the classroom setting and from which I think students will really benefit. I would not be using this as core resource in class, and I will definitely be focusing on other modes of assessment and exploration in the class. I don't want students to get so involved with this game that they loose focus of the goals of the assignment or that other areas of their lives suffer. I do think that Second Life has some resources that will help students find new perspectives and learn about how other live. I would like students to use Second Life for extra credit assignments or as supplementary additions to class presentations and projects. Aspects of Second Life that I found particularly interesting was the Shakespeare world, the Van Gogh painting world, and other such realms that allow students to see things that they might not be able to see in real life or have an adequate experience of in textbooks or museums. Another realm that I found interesting (yet definitely a bit disturbing) was the one where students could experience what it felt like to be schizophrenic. I would encourage students to incorporate these worlds into their projects or research for the purpose of learning perspective and being able to step outside of their own individual realms of experience. I think that if I focus on conveying the importance of realizing other perspectives and different paths of life, then students will really enjoy broadening their frames of reference and looking into these various simulated worlds in order to gain a greater world view.

Diigo Assessment

• No soap radio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Annotated
  
  
  • body of the joke is not related to the punch line itself, but is made out to be humorous by participants in the prank
  • No soap radio is a traditional punch line for a prank joke
    • Random?
  • The punch line is known for its use as a basic sociological and psychological experiment, specifically relating to mob mentality and the pressure to conform.
  • • False understanding is acting as if the joke is humorous when in fact the victim does not understand the joke at all.
    • Negative understanding is expressing confusion about what the joke means and feeling left out (e.g., "I don't get it"). The victim may switch to false understanding after receiving facetious derision from the conspirators. Normally after some time of negative understanding, the prank is revealed in full to the victim.
  • Two elephants are sitting in the bathtub. One elephant says to the other, "Pass the soap". The elephant replies to the other elephant, "No soap, radio!"
  • Two ducks walk into a bar but find that they have no money to buy drinks. They decide to go beg on the street. The first person they see is a white man. They ask him for money and he says, "Sorry, I left my wallet at home". The second person they see is a black man. (If the listener laughs here, anticipating a black joke, it is customary to reprimand them, saying things like, "Why did you laugh? Do you think black people are funny? Are you a racist?" until the train of thought is lost, then abruptly resume the joke.) The third person they see is a Czechoslovakian pianist. They ask him for money, and he turns to them, and says, "No soap... Radio?"

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Windows Movie Maker Assessment

Useful Tools from Class

I really like all the software and tools that we've learned in class so far. They're really interesting and I think they'll really help us as teachers when we're teaching in our own classes. I like that there are a lot of programs that we're learning about that we might not necessarily find out about on our own, and since we're learning them now we can try to incorporate them when we start student teaching, or they might even lead us to other programs that could be even more help. I really like the Google Forms that we just learned, and I think that would really cool to use as take-home quizzes or pre-assessment activities. I also had a lot of fun making a Prezi presentation, and I will definitely be using that in future class presentations in college and in my future classroom. I thought that was a really fun alternative to a PowerPoint, and I think students will be more interested looking at a Prezi and taking in the information I give out to them in that form.

I really want to learn more about how to use Microsoft Office more effectively, especially Word and Excel. Word is a program I use all the time, but there are so many tools that can be employed through that program, and I have no idea what they are or how to use them. I can only create simple documents, and I can barely make a simple spreadsheet on Excel. I feel like these are really important programs to know and use, and they are not as intuitive as some of these other programs we are being introduced to are. I feel like we could figure out how to use, for example, Zoho Writer and Prezi if we took enough time to figure out all the details of the program, but Word and Excel are not as obviously (to me, anyway). I would really like someone to go over these programs and introduce us to more of what these programs have to offer us so we can really use them as they are intended to be used, making full use of all the extras and characteristics that make them so useful and lasting.

Live Binder Assignment

                   

    

Poetry Unit

I think this Live Binder is awesome! It's absolutely chock-full of useful things to use in the classroom, as well as inspiration for me as a teacher that might help me come up with my own lesson or find other things that could be beneficial to my students. This is for a poetry unit, and the teacher who created it has everything very organized and planned out for day-by-day lessons and topics to be covered. I love that this teacher uses all kinds of outside sources - there are a few Prezis in there, a link to Globber, connections to a Jimi Hendrix song, and even a video from one of my favorite go-to gurus, StrongBad from HomeStarRunner.com. Along with the outside sources, the teacher posts very detailed lesson plans for each day that would really be helpful if I need a last-minute plan for a class, or just want to try out a lesson that may interest my students more. I love the resources used (Prezis, the StrongBad video, etc.), but not only would I use some of these resources in my lessons, but I would also just use them as a jumping-off point for my classes. I think it would be a lot of fun to use these resources, but I would also just like to model my lessons after these plans and learn to make my own lessons as fun as these without having to copy someone elses.

SAS Curriculum Pathways

The lesson I looked at was called "Unclear Pronoun Reference," launch number 893.

I think this lesson is really important for an English class because this proper pronoun reference is a problem in all grades levels, and is a very critical issue to address in order to improve student writing and help them communicate their ideas more effectively and professionally. I really like how the lesson was set up on the site and how clearly marked the steps were: first students would read about unclear pronoun references and look at how it causes confusion in sentences, then they would research examples of confusing sentences because of unclear pronoun references, and lastly they would respond by collecting examples of sentences with unclear pronoun references and explaining how to correct them to make more sense to readers.

I like this lesson because it has everything the teacher needs right there in one place. I like that there are two websites provided for students to get familiar with correct pronoun usage so that when students are doing their work they have a little bit of variety during the lesson (I know that's not much, but it might keep them more active then if they were just staring at the same site for the whole lesson). I also like that the worksheet needed for assessment is provided. I do think that this lesson doesn't leave too much room for creativity on the part of the teacher. If this lesson is used, it's all laid out for the teacher, which is a definite plus, but there isn't really anything that makes it particularly interesting or exciting for kids. I suppose this is something the teacher would have to do her/himself, which of course is great, but I'm sure there are a lot of teachers who won't bother trying to make the lesson more interesting and will just be glad to find a ready-made lesson that they don't have to do much prep-work for. However, if the teacher using the lesson is willing to put their own spin on it and make it even better, this is a great resource.

A Fancy Prezi

My New WikiSpace

I don't know if we need to post our Wiki page here, but just in case:

http://erin-comp-in-the-class-wiki.wikispaces.com/

Homework

Things that I like about Zoho Writer that makes it unique:

• 1. I really like how you can have multiple users editing the same document at the same time, and you can see at the bottom of the page the number of users you have using the document.

• 2. I like how everything is very neat looking, how all the tabs for your documents come up at the top and all your tools are organized in one place. I didn't like how in GoogleDocs, almost every new thing you would click on would open a new tab in your browser, which gets messy. Zoho keeps all your document tabs in the same browser-tab. Cool.
  

• 3. It's very similar to Microsoft Word, especially the older versions. I hate going into the computer labs at school and having to get used to the new Microsoft where I can't find anything, when I'm so used to the older (don't hate ) version that's on my laptop and that I'm used to.
  

Things that I think Zoho Writer lacks in comparison to other word processors:

• 1. I don't like the limited fonts...I love my fonts!

• 2. While I do like how neat all the tabs are at the top of the page, I can see how they would get start to seem constricted and a little to tightly-packed together.
  

• 3. I don't think I would use the offline mode - it sounded confusing in class, and I think that if I had to get something done I would make sure I could do it all in one sitting or have it sajvk   saved somewhere else just to make sure I wouldn't have to deal with any of that confusion.
  

I could integrate this program into my classroom by...

I would have my students use this in school or with a project if it involved a group project. I think that would be a really good way for students to collaborate - either on a paper or an outline or just some kind of organized write-up of their ideas - when they're not in school together, or if they absolutely cannot meet up in person. It's a little bit easier to edit than e-mailing a draft back and forth between multiple users, and this way the changes are virtually instantaneous and students can get their ideas across to others faster. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think I would prefer a trusty word processor to write up my own documents and I would encourage students to do the same, just because it has been reliable in the past and I'm comfortable with it. However, this is a pretty convenient and ingenious tool, and I would definitely put it out there for students to use if they felt comfortable with it and if it suited their needs.  

P.S. - During that last big passage, my font totally just got changed mid-sentence, and I can't change it back. Sigh. Guess that's a strike against you, Zoho!

  

Grading the Book Review

I think our book review projects should be graded as a group, since there was so much emphasis put on collaboration and working with all the members in our group and whatnot. I think in extreme cases, if it is obvious that one person did all the work or there is a person who clearly did no work, or none compared to the work of the other group members, then that should be taken into account and the person (people) who did not contribute enough will be penalized - but again this is only in the case that the work was obviously not shouldered by the entire group. I think there are parts (if not the whole) of the project that could easily be done by one person, so the fact that such emphasis was put on group cooperation and participation should mean that the group as a whole will be graded for it's ability to incorporate these qualities into the project. I think grading this project as a group will also give more incentive for all the group members to participate, especially if it is known that if all do not participate there will be a penalty. While grading individually would also provide such an incentive, I think that if the point of the project is to cooperate together and share the work, then the grade should be shared as well, and the penalization of slackers will be kind of a look-over-the-shoulder to guide participants to do their share of the work.

Thinkfinity in the Classroom

I really liked the Thinkfinity site that we looked at in class last week. It had so many resources and choices of media and activities to use in the classroom, and I love all the variety that was available. This is an incredible resource for teachers who may need to add something extra to their lessons, something that may get students more involved in class or make their experience of the lesson more than just reading textbooks or taking notes. There are lesson plans and worksheets available on the site, but there are also videos and interactive activities, which I think will require students to do more than just repeat back information. In class we saw a little bit of a video presentation on the Japanese internment camps during World War II, and I think activities like that one will give students more than just facts and dates - they will learn about empathy and various moral dilemmas people face and the impact it has on those around them. I think it is our job as teachers to not only present the facts to our students, but to also present various ways of thinking about a problem or situation. This way we can allow them to think for themselves and find out what they think is right for themselves as individuals, after being shown the facts and events that have been deemed important by us, curriculum, or just society in general. With the resources provided by Thinkfinity, we will have more opportunities to present our students with a richer classroom experience where they will learn formulas, dates, and theories as well as more about the human experience, what it means to be a democratic citizen, and how they can influence the world with their thoughts and ideas.

SMART lesson - hyphens

Ok, so here's my SMART Board lesson. I decided to do it on something with grammar, since I kind of like the subject and think it's something people should know. It's kind of a simple lesson...I don't know how crazy I am about using the SMART Board to teach a lesson like this, so I guess I would have to really practice it more before I started thinking about using it too often in the classroom.

Here 'tis:
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/eg/Desktop/smart%20hyphen%20lesson.notebook

^ I hope that works, if people can't see it let me know please! 

Digital Nation videos

I watched the video called "Digital Parenting: Protecting and Empowering Kids." I think this is a really important issue when it comes to what we allow kids to have access to on the Internet. We really need to teach kids how permanent everything that they do over the Internet is, but we also need to have some faith in them and not be as overbearing as the mother in this video. You have to be careful with what you do online, and you have to watch out for others who may be out to hurt you, but you still have a private personal life that shouldn't be intruded upon by parents or anyone else who may think they know what's best. I think as teachers we can only do so much during school to make sure kids are safe, and parents need to me mindful at home, but at the same time they can't push their kids away by being overprotective and sneaking into their personal life.

First day of class

Hey guys!

So...this is my first blog, and I'm pretty unsure how to run this thing, haha.

I guess what I want to learn from this class is just how to be more computer-savvy. I can do some basic things with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and things like that, but I can't do more than write papers and put together a basic presentation. I was so impressed with some of those name tags people made in class!! I have no idea how to do any of that fancy stuff, so I'd like to learn more about what Microsoft Office can do. Other than that I guess we'll be learning about all kinds of different programs and software, so whatever we go over I'm sure will be useful.

Anywho, I s'pose that's it for now...see you all in class!