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!