GPS

Using the GPS to find different locations was a lot of fun. We did have a problem finding our second location but that was because we were given the wrong coordinates. But overall I really enjoyed using the GPS. I could see myself using this to teach kids about latitude and longitude and make a treasure hunt out of it.

We showed our pictures to you in class

Zotero

Zotero is a great tool to be able to group all of your websites depending on the subject of the website.

I could see myself using Zotero to keep all of my websites together for a project and with Zotero I am able to high light stuff and write myself notes to remind me what I wanted from that website.

Delicious

I would use Delicious for resources for my students. The students would be able to go to the class Delicious page and look at the resources I put on there so they can use them to help with there projects.

http://delicious.com/ckimm

Prezi

Prezi is a fun and new way to make a powerpoint. Here is my little prezi presentation I made about Google Sketchup.

C:\Users\Curt\Desktop\google_sketchup_prezi.swf

Twitter Answers

Twitter Answers is an application that can be used to answers different questions. You can ask any question you want and someone will answers it. I don't know how accurate it is but it can be used as a quick check of things. Twitter Answers can be used in the classroom whenever a student may have a question. Or you could use it in a activity to see how accurate the answers are. You could have the kids look up an answer to something and ask that same question to Twitter Answers and see if it is the same answer.

I think this would be a fun activity to not only give the kids a chance to work on there research skills but to test to see how accurate Twitter Answers is also.

Reflection on ideal classroom

1. Describe the topic of your Ideal Classroom project.
Our topic included science with social studies. The kids will learn about the surrounding areas nature. They will learn about it and take pictures and will use those pictures to make a collage later on. The kids will then learn about Belgium's nature and climate. We will then use skype with a classroom from Belgium and learn about there climate and we will teach them about ours.

2. Why did you select that topic and what did you hope to create?
We all remember that we liked learning about nature when we were in elementary. So that is why we decided to to something with nature. We were hoping to create a fun atmosphere that the kids were having fun while learning a lot. We were also wanting to create a interest in other countries. Now that they have learned some things about other countries maybe that will get them interested in learning about other countries.

3. Describe the thinking and creation process that you used to create your final project.
As a group we specialized in certain areas of our project. Although we specialized we also made sure to communicate with one another about what we were doing. We also made suggestions with one another of what else we could add to our part.

4. How did you use technology to collaborate with your team partners?
We used google docs at the beginning of our project to jot some ideas down. But besides that we didn't use a whole lot of technology to collaborate with one another.

5. Explain at least one barrier that you confronted while completing the project.
The only barrier that I can think of would be coming up with exactly what we wanted to be teaching. Working in a group helped a lot to figure out what we wanted to do.

6. Explain what you learned from this project? This could include topic material, group work, etc.
The one main thing I learned while doing this project was using Google Sketchup. I used this to create our floor plan of our classroom.

7. Any final words that you might have about the project or the process.
I enjoyed this project because I was able to learn how to use Google Sketchup.

Early Lit. lesson plans

Last semester I took Methods of Early Literacy and had the great opportunity to work with students from nearby elementary. Once a week for about six weeks we visited this elementary and worked one on one or on occasion two on one working with the student to improve there reading abilities. In our class we had to come up with one lesson plan per week to use as we taught our child. For my example I am using the very first lesson plan that I wrote up.


Coming up with my first lesson plan, I wasn't sure what to expect. But, to my surprise it went pretty good for my first time. In my first lesson plan I had four things to get through. An interest inventory to get to know my kid better, an interactive read aloud where I would read to him, a informal guided reading where he would read to me a book of his choosing and lastly a writing time where he would write something to his choosing. Some things that went really well was the informal guided reading time. He was really excited to read his book that he chose to read to me. One thing that needed more work was deciding what he was going to write about. He wasn't that thrilled to write at all and I didn't think about ideas before hand that he could write about. He ended up writing what he did that past weekend and it turned out alright.

Somethings that I had changed up and will take into consideration into making lesson plans from here on out is to make sure you have enough to do. It is better to have too much planned than not enough. We got through my lesson plan a lot quicker than expected and we ended up just reading whatever he wanted too. But, from now on I know to add more stuff to my lesson plan and if I don't get to it all that, that's alright. I also made sure I had different ideas that he could write about when we got to that part of the lesson.

My findings of some science blogs

mad scientest



In my search of finding some science blogs that dealt with science in the elementary classroom, I was able to come away with a few.

This first one was just one blog on scienceblog.com. This blog was by Nate who i presume works for Atlantascience.com since that was in his email address. But his blog Reaching Elementary Science Students on a New Level stated how he believes that teachers are finding a hard time fitting science into the everyday routine of the classroom. I find this very true and thus why I found this blog interesting. He also said that the website Atlantascience.com could help you.

So the next place I went was to that website and to my surprise but not really all that surprised I found another blog. The blog on this website titled Atlanta Sciece Blog: Experiments, News, Activites for School and Home this blog is fairly new and does not have a whole lot of info but i can feel that it has potential to really help a lot of people. The basis of this blog is to share their ideas of diff ways to use science in the home and at school and also to tell us news of diff science things.

The other blog I found wasn't as geared towards elementary science but it was still interesting. The blog is on Sciencemadecool.com this was a blog simple stating rather random things about science some were cooler than others but all in all pretty interesting reading.

-Curt

First Post

My first post. More will be coming later.