Student of the Week- Google Sites

This week as we continued our in classroom work study on our assignments i learned that being a teacher involves a lot of hard work, dedication, and behind the scenes work outside the classroom. I am glad i am being prepared for my future teaching work load now so i can be a better teacher. I really have enjoyed using and learning about the functions of google sites. This week i created my tab for student of the week and i have to tell you that i had a lot of fun creating them. I had fun googling the pictures of my students hobbies and i liked being able to key in on students in my classroom who are doing positive things to enhance the quality of learning in my classroom. I believe by acknowledging the students who are doing good things it will make my classroom a more positive place to be in and encourage my students to behave. Not only that but the parents of my students will have access to this tab in our classes google sites page and be able to see what their student has been doing in class and recognise them at home therefore encouraging the students to do good at home and at school.

Google Sites & My Home Page

This week i learned about Google sites again in doing our imaginary classroom web page assignment. On this web page i created my classroom calendar and i found out how much fun this program on Google sites can be for me and my students. I think it will be a more appropriate tool for my older students to use starting in about second grade. On this program my students can view upcoming assignments, classroom trips, and breaks from school. I especially like creating this calendar because i can tell my students in a message box what will be included in the assignment or tell them what we will be learning in class that day so if they are absent from class they know what we did and what homework was due so they don't have to bug me about it except to get the assignment.

This tool can also be very beneficial to my students parents. So they know what i am teaching the students in our classroom and so they know what assignments are due. I think this is also a good program for parents because most children are not honest about what homework they have when their parents ask them and this site will allow the parents to know what homework is due for their child and teach them discipline and this will in turn make my job as a teacher more rewarding and easier to attain because i will not have to nag my students about turning in their homework. It will also be nice for parents to use google sites calendar for our classroom and can be used as a classroom newsletter so they know about upcoming field trips our class will be attending and print out the calendar to post in their home so they can prepare for them effectively. This will also prevent the students from losing the newsletters which will create a lot less havoc for both me and my students parents.

I will definitely be implementing this web page into my future classroom because i can see the positive benefits of using it for me, my students and my parents.

I also enjoyed writing a professional paragraph of myself for my students, parents and future employers to learn more about me and my passion for teaching and i also included my top ten dreams to help my students see that one of my dreams was to be a teacher at a young age.

Assigments related to Teaching

I am very excited that you are having us do computer assignments in class as if we were already teachers doing stuff for the students in our class. I was very excited to have an assignment for google sites; i think it is a great resource to use in my classroom and i thought it was fun to create for our ten dreams assignment. It will be a bulky assignment but i can find relevance to use it in my classroom as something my students can use to be informed about what is going on in our classroom as far as assignments, announcements, a calendar of class events and what we will be doing in class each day.

One function that we need create in google sites that i am looking forward to creating is the student of the week and why they were chosen; it's a way for me to recognise and reward good behavior in my students and encourage good behavior from all my other students and create a happy classroom atmosphere for me and my students to learn in.

Another thing i find relevance to is the flyer assignment; using them for things in our classroom. Since i will be teaching kindergarten as my grade focus i chose to do a flyer on a trip to the zoo. I am having fun learning new functions on the computer in word while i create this fun flyer for my students and parents.

I am also excited that you are teaching us things we need to learn for our classroom and then having us collaborate with other 'co-teachers' in the class and learning from each other. I just wish that i would've been one of the students you taught about google calendar because both my teachers either didn't understand what to do or they were teaching someone next to me and not paying attention to me. But it is a good opportunity for us to learn how to teach computer programs to use in our classroom and help us to remember them better.

Kidsperation & Insperation

I Learned a lot about the computer programs Kidsperation and Inspiration this week and found many ways to use kidsperation in my classroom.

After playing on Kidsperation for over an hour i realized what a valuable resource it will be to both me and my students in the classroom. The mathview program on it is a great way to teach students about geometry especially cubes. It's a fun way to learn about volume, area and perimeter and even surface area of a 3-D shape. The students can also separate the cube into parts to see the shape broken down into pieces. I had a lot of fun on this program and my students would also love to use this program because you can change the size of the shapes and the color which allows for creativity in my classroom and makes learning about shapes more enjoyable.

An English program on Kisperation is a great way to help students learn how to write outlines, form a main idea or thesis of a paper and keep their thoughts organized. This program is probably more effective for students 5th and 6th grade to help them with a paper i ask them to write. But i can use it for younger students just to form the basic idea of how to organize a paper to make later grades of writing papers a little easier for my students.

"Why I am Special" program was also one of my favorite programs in the reading and writing section of Kidsperation. Students can write about themselves in text boxes underneath pictures of a heart, head and a house. It asks the students what their unique talent is hobbies etc. This is a great program to help the students get to know each other and create a good social environment for my students. I could even have them create this page and then print them out and either put them in a book for the class to find out about their class mates, make books for all the students, or i could make a wall in my classroom where i take one of my students creations and spotlight them in class and then post it on a getting to know you wall for all my students to read in the classroom. Any or all of these ideas would work well in my classroom; this activity will also help my students with defining themselves as young people by talking about themselves and help them understand that everyone they associate with has different talents and abilities to contribute to our classroom. And in the process i can also learn more about my students interests and what kind of people they are.

In the math section of Kidsperation i found a program about bar graphs that uses tables of virtually any item you give them; the example in the program is about colors; Its asks the students to place the number of boxes in the spaces for the number of each color and see which color was the most popular among students and it asks you to record your observations. This is another great program to make bar graphs a fun interactive for my students to learn about.

I found the program "Alikes and Differences" in the science section of Kidsperation. Made for younger students this program is a great way to teach my students about science and grouping of similar things in the science world. The program even allows my students to browse for pictures of similar things and paste them to the page and then write about why these science objects are similar. It meets all three forms of learning if i do it with them on the computer i can include the auditory, the visual and the kinesthetic students in my classroom making this a very effective tool to enhance learning in my classroom. And i had a lot of fun playing on this program myself.

The last program i found was in Social Studies called "How Well Do You Know the 5o States?" Although i think this program is more suited for a teacher thats focus is on social studies i think this is a wonderful way to test students memory of the 50 states and where they are located on a map. Rather than using paper this program allows for creativity, memory, hands on learning and allowing the students to use a medium they are very comfortable and will make the learning or testing of the states enjoyable for the students. For my age group focus i could probably use this program to introduce them to the 50 states and not as a means of testing them on the states but as a way to be aware of the states names and locations. There is also a function on the computers i could tell my student about after they have had fun trying to figure out how all the states fit together; this function tells them what each states name is. I would have to show them a completed map as an example on an powerpoint hooked up to my computer so they can compare the completed map to theres and see how well they did.

Now for Insperation; honestly i didn't find a lot of reasons why this program would be an important tool to use in my classroom. It was obviously not created for students but more directed for educators; even then i found little use for it in my teaching except to help me create an outline for my classroom lessons. It also had cool pictures but i don't understand why there was just a Van Diagram in the program with a million pictures. I probably will not be using this program in my future classroom and it was worth the ten minutes you told us to spend on it.

However, I will definately be using Kidsperation in my classroom. I had a great spirit of discovery as i played and learned from this program on tuesday; in essence i found my inner elementary schooler, which is not hard to find, but i had fun learning about the programs involved in Kidsperation and could've easily spent a lot more time exploring these wonderful interactive activities for my students. This program has also reaffermed my desire to be a teacher because i am excited to use it in my future classroom so thanks for the assignment.

Integrating Power Points into my Lessons

I had a lot of fun using and creating power points in my group in class this week. We were all able to use our talents with computers, power points, creativity, & teaching to learn how to integration of power points into our lessons as future teachers.

My group used an ABC power point which takes any subject you are teaching your students and have them find information that correlates to the Alphabet in a power point, every letter must have a fact that starts with that letter. Bu doing this your students can have enhanced learning and is very helpful for reviewing information for a test or quiz.

We also used a Van Diagram to compare things likeness and differences such as planets; but i can use any subject to have my students compare and create a power point; i could have them do it on paper but it's a very singular activity that way and doesn't enhance creativity like doing it on a power point would do and can be done in groups with other students and they are able to use a medium the are comfortable with a computer to make learning in my classroom fun and enjoyable.

I learned a lot from my fellow students in our class about integrating power points in my classroom and i really do think i can take all of their ideas and apply them into my classroom. The one that was presented that sticks out in my head was about new years resolutions in a power point interactive; it will allow my students to be creative about new goals for the year and could be shared with other students which will make it more likely for them to accomplish the goals.

One other thing i remember from the presentations that will be of benefit in my classroom is that by using a power point in a lesson versus writing on the black board is that i will be able to be more interactive with my students and not have my back to them as i teach them. I find this very important because many of my college teachers also use this new interactive alternative to teaching and has been very beneficial for me as a student and is something i am excited to integrate into my classroom.

I never realized how much fun i can have teaching and using power points in my classroom for both me and my students and its all thanks to our group presentations about power points in our class. I am finding more and more throughout this class how vital it is that i am educated about computers and technology to be an effective future teacher and have found a lot of relevance in what we learn in class to what i will be doing with my students in about four years.