This weeks focus has been on the use of PowerPoints in the classroom. First I want to take the moment to discuss the technology explorations from this weeks assignments and then I'll discuss a PowerPoint I have created and used in the classroom.
Technology Exploration 11:
Comic Life and iSpeech were both reviewed for this technology exploration. Comic Life is a program that allows you to create comics, picture albums and more. I found this program to be great for a classroom setting and could see this being used as an opportunity for students to create their own customized comic. Not only would it be fun, but it would provide them with an opportunity to work on their writing and illustration skills. I would recommend that teachers use the free trial to see if it is something they would actually utilize this product in their classroom before purchasing.
iSpeech is a program that allows you to upload documents and then listen to them as they are read aloud. As good as this product sounds and may seem I found the voices used to read the documents to be rather robotic sounding. Also, it would be best to use one of the upgraded versions due to the limited amount of information you can type into the text box or upload with the basic edition.
Technology Exploration 12:
VoiceThread and VoiceThread 4 Education were the two sites reviewed for this technology exploration. VoiceThread is a multimedia program that allows you to show a slide show with images, videos and documents that allow people to leave comments and information. This is a great tool for collaboration purposes within the school you work or with a school in a different country. I found this to be a great resource for teachers and thought it could be easily implemented into any subject area.
VoiceThread 4 Education is a wiki that provides a place for classroom partners to provide their contact information for collaboration purposes. It is also a place to collect examples of VoiceThreads that have been used in the classroom. It is a great resource for teachers if they are considering using VoiceThread in their classroom.
Technology Exploration 13:
Storybirds and Scribblar were the two resources reviewed for technology exploration 13. Storybird is a site that provides teachers with the ability to create their own stories that are art-inspired. I found it to be a great resource to get students interested in writing.
Scribblar is a program that uses whiteboards, image upload and download ability, text chat with the user list and more. I found this site to be confusing and didn't understand what I could do with this site. I tried the free demo but didn't see that it helped explain the possible uses for this program. It was not a resource I cared much for.
Technology Exploration 14:
The two sites that were explored for this tech. exploration were Xtranormal and Virtual Manipulatives. Xtranormal is a place to make your stories come to life. I found it to be interesting and would let educators know if they plan on using it to make sure they have plenty of time to explore all the capabilities of the program before trying to use it in the classroom.
Virtual Manipulatives is a great resource for teachers, providing math manipulatives that can be incorporated into any grade level K-12. This is a resource every teacher needs to have bookmarked for use with students struggling and to use as an interactive resource with students.
We were asked to create a PowerPoint presentation and mine was created for Kindergarten age students about rhyming words/pictures. I used this as part of a unit on rhyming words this past year. It was presented to them as a pre/post test and a review to help teach rhyming words, see what the students already knew, and to see that they understood the concept of rhyming words. I placed two pictures with the word typed underneath the picture on each slide and asked students if they rhymed.
Students were directed to use the TurningPoint clickers to answer the question by pressing A for true or B for false. We did practice these steps before and the students had to be given a visual to know where to point their clicker for it to work. I am proud of the automatic feedback I received from using this PowerPoint because I could see which students understood the concept and which students were still struggling. This then allowed me to work with individual students on the concept as needed.
I would modify the presentation and use it later in the year when my students are better readers and change from using pictures and words to just using words. I would do this to see that students understand the concept of word endings and how that correlates with rhyming.
My students loved the presentation and found it as more of a game than a test. They loved playing with it and each day that we used the clickers as a review they would ask if they could get the remotes out and play the game again.
No comments:
Post a Comment