It's the final countdown!

Hello once more!

It's our last week in classes and so we are working on our final class presentations.  Our class did a variety of presentations that demonstrated an assortment of apps or videos that could be incorporated into our classrooms.  I'll list a few below...

• Three-ring is an iPad app that allows you to video tape or photograph assignments and send a link to parents to show how a students is assessing in their physical education skills.
• Finale is a program that allows you to write your own scores and could be extremely beneficial for students in a band or chorale program to write their own music.
• Socrative.com is a free quiz website that allows you to curate a classroom and will allow you to make quizzes for your class as a whole.  It was a really interesting program and I can see it being extremely useful in the classroom!

The presentations were really good overall and I'm thankful that I'll have even more tools to use in my classroom!!

It's Over... but not actually.

So we have arrived at the end of term!  It seems like it has taken forever to get here, but it's also passed in a flash!

I had a very interesting time with ICT in my classroom while Pre-Service teaching related...I know and understand how I would have used ICT to my advantage over the course of my five weeks teaching if I had had the opportunity to do so.  Though I wasn't able to use as many of the tricks or tools that I've learned about this semester as I would have liked, I was able to convey some tricks and tools into my classroom.  These lessons were accepted by my students quite readily and they continued to ask more questions regarding online literacy.  Students, I found, inertly know and understand the need for the internet and the tools it provides: Today's student has not lived without the internet, and cannot fathom life without it. 

Based on how my students view ICT, I have come to know and understand the importance of ICT literacy in the classroom.  As a society, we will only move forward technologically.  There really is no going back.  To ignore the technological advancements would be a tremendous disservice to my students. 

So.  For this term I have to admit that I've learned a whole lot about ICT.  There are a ton of apps, programs and tools that we can integrate into our classrooms.  And we do have a responsibility to promote internet literacy in our classroom, but not at the sacrifice of the curriculum material.  There is room for a ton of integration into our mainstream classrooms and we need to start working on this as educators now. 

Mostly, I plan to incorporate an ICT element into all my classroom presentations.  Powerpoint, aniomoto, prezi, and so many more tools are easy ways to do this.  Specifically, with the classic "What did you do over the summer" presentation, animoto could be fun.  Here's one I made....
http://animoto.com/play/cKaklG1Su8mGWBcXCJNlxQ
Animoto provides a fairly easy slide show set to music that would be easy for most students to work on.  By coupling a technological aspect with a traditional curricular outcome, like writing, you can create new assignments that still contain curriculum.  Innovation is needed during this new wave of technological advances!

Much like society, schools will only have more technology in the future.  There truly is no going back.  I would like to see a smart board, utilized properly, in every classroom.  I would like to see students blogging about their day-to-day lives and their educational desires.  Mostly, though, I would like to see teachers and students embracing the educational power and proficiency that ICT provides for everyone in the classroom!!

I personally cannot wait to continue learning about ICT.  I know over the course of my career there will be so much more to learn!  Much like everything else, ICT learning will be life long.

The end is in sight!

So we have finally reached the last weeks of term.  In lots of ways, it feels like the term has flown by, but these last few weeks have truly been an endurance test for me.  Luckily for me, the eportfolio process was not as arduous as I had initially anticipated.  Much like making my website, my eportfolio just sort of flowed.  Once I had a concept for how I wanted things organized, things came together quite quickly.  I tried to capture part of my personality on my eportfolio while simultaneously highlighting why I would make an excellent classroom teacher.  There is an extremely fine line between professionalism and having just the right amount of personality in a document like a portfolio.  I hope that my portfolio gives all readers a good general idea of who I am, what I value, and what kind of teacher I'll be.  It's quite a tall order and I hope my portfolio is up to the task.

Oh, one note about what I used to create my portfolio...
As my ICT instructor will tell you, I am extremely  reluctant to publicly post much online.  This blog has been a bit of a struggle for me in that sense.  But.  I made the choice to use Weebly to create a beautiful, simple portfolio, thanks to their simple site designs. Weebly is just so user friendly that it's hard to say no to their designs.  I really appreciate how easy it becomes to organize all your material when Weebly inserts drop down menus for you.... it really could not be any simpler.   I published it and made the whole site visible: quite a big feat for me! 

That's all for now!  happy portfolio-ing!

Online Portfolios.

Hello Friends!

...know what's busy?  The last two weeks of term as an education student as a university student.  Assignment, upon assignment, upon test, upon group project.  Who needs sleep!?  Not this gal.

Fortunately for me and my busy busy Ed friends, making an online portfolio could not be much simpler.  I just used Weebly, the same site I used for my classroom website.  Though I wouldn't exactly call the process joyful, it was easy and relatively painless...except for the fact that it was time consuming.  I'm thankful that it's done and am looking forward to the next project!

Back to school.... as a student

Well that was a swift change of pace!  In a mere 3 days I went from teaching a class to being a student in a class!  Boom... just like that.  I loved my time away student teaching, but man, did it ever identify things that I absolutely need to work on!  I'm very excited and thankful that I've got a full 4 months to continue to work on things before I head back to teach in another classroom.  I'll admit that I do miss my students though, of course :)

Back in the ICT world, we had the chance to hear a speaker in our class.  One speaker demonstrated how collaborative ICT projects could be complete relatively easily in a few short minutes.  Here's an image that I created based on his instructions....

This assignment took me maybe five minutes, which included downloading the app.  Its a great way to allow students to quickly see the fruits of their labours and also allows the teacher to have some insight into their students.  Happy photo editing!

ps.  the app I used to create the above image is called 'phonto', it was ridiculously easy to use and could prove to be lots of fun!

The Technological Dark Age

Hello Readers!

It's been a few weeks, but let's just say I've been a bit busy.  I've been working away during my student teaching placement here in Rural Manitoba  and I've been loving it.  The students, by and large, are engaged and excited learners and seem to be excited to be doing their class work.  Mostly.  But seriously, the students have mostly bought in to what I've been trying to teach them in their classes and have made me feel exceptionally welcome in their classroom.

During this placement, I've fully taken over the grade 9 English class.  My CT has even allowed me to come up with my own unit plan for my time here.  It's been quite a lot of work, but it has ultimately been extremely rewarding.  I've had to come up with daily lesson plans and have been responsible for all the assessment in the unit, with close supervision of course.  I'm really pleased with how everything has gone.  My only complaint is that I need more time!  But isn't this always the case?

I'm sure you're wondering how all this info applies to ICT in the classroom!!!  Well.  Here's the thing: mostly, it doesn't.  My school has zero smart boards, only 4 IPads (for 200 students), and no projectors affixed in any classrooms.  Thus, technology has not played a large role in what I've accomplished here.  I've had a few students use PowerPoint  (it was awful: their presentation was good, but, for some reason, they decided to set it up on a timer.... let's just say this was a better idea in theory...) but other than that, I haven't really used technology.  I've had to stick to more traditional types of presentations (*ahem* posters.  On paper.)  This hasn't been a problem at all, it's just rather disheartening for me because this is my semester for ICT and right now, I've got quite a few ideas would've liked to incorporate into the classroom.

It's been particularly frustrating in my grade 11 English class because I've been teaching essay writing.  I'd love to post up examples on the board quickly and easily, but I haven't been able to do so.  I'm not always able to access a projector, either, so typically we do notes on the board.  Again, I'm not complaining, but rather observing.  Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), the students don't know any differently so they aren't at all disappointed with my lack of tech in the classroom. 

All in all, it's been amazing.  I'm so thankful for such a wonderful first experience.  Hopefully I'll easily adjust to time back to being a student in the classroom! 

Thanks for checking in!

Photo aterations

Hello once again!

Two posts in one week?!  I'm obviously on a roll.  Just kidding.

Photo editing has become somewhat of a hobby of mine in the past years.  I work primarily on a mac and have found that, particularly after traveling somewhere interesting, I really enjoy altering the photos to enhance what my camera captured.  We used a few photo sharing sites in classes, which I found helpful.  My personal fave was 'instacollage', which allows you to make collages of photos you've taken on your iphone.  I personally made a mashup of two delightful cookbooks I found at my gramma's house: The Joys of Jello and The Right Touch For Chicken Microwave Cooking. I'm hoping that the reason I choose to make a collage of these specific photos is obvious...

I've also done some thinking about the learning that we're doing in ICT.  We're in a foturnate space while we're taking a computer class specifically designed for educators, but it's gotten me thinking about the advances technology will make while I'm a classroom teacher.  I think it's important for me to realize and understand now, prior to the beginning of my career, that I'll have to continually be aware of software updates and prepared to implement these tools into my classroom.  Below is a photo of my trip to Peru that I was able to edit.

So, there it is.   Photo editing.  Its fun.  Check it out!