End of Blog!

I am now closing my blog for EDM 310 Summer semester! It is complete!

What I Have Learned This Semester...And Blogs.

I have really enjoyed this class this semester. I had to do projects in this class that will really help me when I start teaching in my own classroom. It has shown me that technology is a great tool to incorporate into any subject you are teaching. I have enjoyed using the blogs and I believe they will also come in handy in the classroom. It allows students to share their ideas about different subject with not just the teacher but with the class as a whole. I hope to create a website and blog for my students when I begin teaching. As long as students use the blog for intended subject use I see no drawbacks for using blogs in the classroom.

I have learned about...
Blogs and their use in the classroom
The magic of PowerPoint
How websites can enhance the classroom experience
and how different forms of technology can be used in the classroom for educational purposes, not just for entertainments sake.

iGoogle in Education

iGoogle is a very interesting site! I have always used Yahoo or MSN for my homepage but iGoogle offers so many more options. And you can custom fit these options to your needs. I think that iGoogle could be a great thing to incorporate into the classroom setting. You could have these students customize their page to fit your classroom needs.

The first option I enjoyed was the translate opinion. There is a world of interesting and educational web pages from all around the world and with the translator option, you can read web sites in many different foreign languages.

The second feature I enjoyed was the Google Notebook option. I find that when I cruise the Internet doing research, I waste a lot of paper by printing whole pages for just a little information. The notebook feature would allow me or my students to surf the web and clip and paste info or photos into your notebook. This would help keep your students better organized while doing research and create virtually not paper waste.

A practical "stuff" item I like on iGoogle is the To Do section. Sometimes it is hard to keep assignments and project dates organized and this is a great tool to help you prioritize what you need to do and when it is due.

The fourth feature that I believe will help immensely in the classroom is the Docs & Spreadsheets feature. This would allow students to upload documents to iGoogle and they would be able to access and work on these documents from any computer. These will allow students to not have to worry about having their flash drives on them at all times to do just a little work.

Lastly, I really enjoy the news feature. Many children to do not keep up to date on what is going on in the world around them. You could have students put at least one news source on their iGoogle page and they would post a blog or do a paragraph assignment about one event they have followed for say a week or so.

iGoogle is a great idea and hopefully one day I can use it as a helpful tool in my classroom.

Check out my Web Page!

Well, it is almost the end of the semester and my web site is almost complete! I have one or two more corrections to make and then I will be done! If I had more time I would have organized it a little better and made it look a little "prettier" than it does. I am happy with what I could do with it considering I knew nothing about making a web site before I started the project. I would love to improve the web site after the class is over because my subject, The Mobile Azalea Trail Maids, is an organization I am actively involved with. Check it out here and tell me what you think! I would love to hear your imput!

iPhones in the Classroom.

After our demonstration in class Thursday night with Dr. Strange's new iPhone I thought of a few practically uses for the iPhone in the classroom setting. The iPod feature of the phone is the first excellent feature that could be used. I will be teaching secondary ed Social Studies so I hope to use lecture as would of my main teaching techniques. Students would be able to download past lectures to their iPhone and use them as a reference for test and other assignments. As a current college student I understand how hard it is sometimes to take great notes while a teacher is lecturing so this would be a very useful tool to use to make sure you didn't not miss anything in the lecture.

Another useful feature of the iPhone is the video capabilities. I personally am a visual learner and love watching films on historical events. The downfall of that is that most films take up so much of the class period. The iPhone would allow students to download required videos to their phone and watch them at their convenience. You could then quiz the students on what they learned from the video. The students could also use the phones internet capability while in class to find information about a particular subject they may be studying at that time.

The iPhone would probably be a great organization tool as well. With a built in calender and notes area, the students would have no excuse for not remembering the date of a test or when an assignment is due. Plus, students would be able to access our classroom home page from their phone to help them keep up with assignments and test date.

These are just a few of the uses I have thought of for the iPhone in the classroom. If I happen to come up with some more ideas, I will be more than glad to make another post! I would love to hear some comments one what you guys think about these ideas!

I have included a couple of links to several different web sites and blogs that discuss the use of iPhones in the classroom!

E-Portfolios for Learning:Apple's iPhone in Education?
The iPhone Scene
3 Features of the iPhone That Will Impact Education

Spreadsheets in the Classroom

I found many useful web pages referring to the use of spreadsheets in the classroom environment. The first site I visited was "Integrating Spreadsheets in the Classroom". This site contains a vast about of resources about how you can use spreadsheets in the classroom. I have several friends who are teachers who say they use spreadsheets for grading purposes but this site offers much more than that. It provides examples of how students can use spreadsheets to help organize data. Students can use spreadsheets to compare and contrast data. I found many projects on this site that used spreadsheets to help organize their data.

As I mention before I have several friends who are teachers that use spreadsheets to help organize grades. I found a great site here that shows teachers different ways to use spreadsheets as a management tool. Spreadsheets can be used to create grids for checklists, sign in sheets, grade book pages,and maintain a budget. Many of these sites not only showed you example of work that can be done, it also gives you instructions on how to do it.