The End has come

Well you may have guessed it with finals week next week and all, yep our Technology class has come to an end. From a teacher standpoint I am very glad that we covered all that we did in this class because I will be able to use the knowledge of the programs that I worked with to better my teaching strategies in and out of the classroom. Thanks for the great times Jon! It was fun, a little frustrating at times but it was a good class. Now that I have created my game on scratch I can see the importance of us spending the time and effort that it took to create a project. It was fun once I got in and figured out how to do some of the things. I bid you all farewell and until we meet again have a great Christmas!

The Quest Continues!

As my title states the quest to build the snowman game continues. As the semester is coming to an end and all of these class projects and such are coming due I actually am having fun making this game. That's not to say that it is time consuming and a bit frustrating because it is both of those things very much so in fact but that's okay. In my last post I talked about not ever using these games in my class, or I should say not every taking the massive amounts of time that it takes to make my own game. I do think that they are valuable as long as they are planned out and have a learning objective as opposed to a means to entertain the students. This task is challenging but as these educational games are created they really can help the students learn the diverse topics that we as educators cover in our classes. Stay tuned for the end result!

Snowman

So this week we have started learning the ins and outs of the scratch program, and I must say that I am a little slow at picking this program up. Our assignment is to make an educational game and may I say that I have a good idea, but getting it to work out on the program is another story. I think these interactive educational games can be beneficial for the students in my class room. As for myself I most likely will not be making a game because it is time consuming and takes a lot of focus. The idea behind these programs are brilliant and I would like to capitalize on these great resources that have been made or can be made for the classroom. Stay tuned for more updates on my game!

UEN/Scratch

So this week has proven to be pretty fun and adventurous for sure. We have finished our UEN page and it was very benificial to see what different things we can include on our webstites and how accessable we can make our lesson plans, daily activities and any other activities we choose to do accessible to our students or their parents. In one of my other education classes we have the option of creating a website that we can use in our classrooms and the skills that we have been introcuced to by building our very own UEN page has been very valuable in deed. I can now apply the techniques and delve farther into the meat of what UEN has to offer. On another note we have the chance to get involved with Scratch. I am a little scared to tell the Truth and I do not know what I am going to do, or even how to do it for that matter. I know that the principles behind these skills that we well learn can be applied to the classroom in many ways. For one the activities that we create can help the students experience the material and learning objectives in a new light and really accomplish the tasks that these games have to offer. By completing tasks they can accomplish the learning objectives and by using these techniques learning can be made fun for children who have grown up in the information age.

Our Very own UEN Website!

Out of all of the assignments I am most excited about this upcoming UEN website. This week I have had the chance to finish up my flash project which was a little intimidating but I made it work out, I will not be using to much of the Flash technology in the classroom but it was neat to learn about. Our upcoming project as I have already talked a bit about is building our very own website, and I am most excited for this because during my years in the education program I have done alot of lesson plans and rubrics and different things but all of these things are all over the place and extremely disorganized so building this website is going to get all of my resources on the same page as it were and help me get ready to be a successful teacher. I love to be all organized. This website can be useful in many different ways. As an educator I can get on to the websites and see what creative things teachers out there are doing so that I don't have to reinvent the wheel but rather get inspiration from them and apply their great ideas into the lessons that I prepare. Also it will help me keep everything, all of my lessons and things in one spot so that I can be more organized. Stay tuned for the masterpiece!

Flash the boy genious!

So basically I haven't been doing to well keeping up on my blog but that does not mean that we are not doing anything worth mentioning in class because we have learned some interesting and useful information that can be used in class as well as outside of class. On Monday we had the chance to build our own google website and I had some fun putting some stuff together there. Websites can be used very easily in the classes that we as educators teach. We can make a class website and post all of the activities that we do in class that way if a student has to miss class they can know exactly what we did and know what to prepare for when they come back to class. It can be used similarly to blackboard in the sense that you can let the students access the web page and do different activities right there on the class web page. Let's face the facts here we live in a time where every student has a cell phone and can manage their way around the internet better than I can, so by applying technical techniques in our teaching methods we can tap into the students interests and really help them to grasp the ideas that we bring up in class. We have also went over very briefly Flash and I must say that it is a bit complicated but you can do some very cool things. I haven't really played with it too much so I don't know what I can do or even begin to do on it so for updates on how Flash will be coming to a History class near you stay tuned!

IMOVIE

This week we have been making our mini movies for our class. The ending goal was to create a movie that would introduce the topic and demonstrate to the students how to acomplish the task at hand. I must admit that it was a whole lot of fun and the skills that we started to sharpen will come in handy in the classroom. The end product that you see here on my blog could have been a bit more fine tuned but it was my first attempt at movie making and it turned out ok I thought. Some may ask how this relates to teaching students and do I have an answer for you! I can use Imovie to create many things in my class room that can help the students have fun with learning the different topics that we cover in class. The movie that I made pertained to science but I can easily make an instruction movie with a little planning and preparation. I can turn a trip that I took to a historical place into an in class field trip so that the students can still learn about the topics that we cover without having to step out side the classroom. It is an excelent way to present the material in a different way so that those students who learn better visually. More fun to come!