Saturday, November 22, 2008

Classroom Webpages

This week we have been getting started on our classroom webpages. I was very excited and very nervous about working with the webpages. I have always felt that classroom webpages are an essential tool in the classroom. They are a great way to communicate with parents and to let them know about everything that goes on in the classroom. A webpage for my classroom would allow parents to know what we are doing in the classroom, our daily schedule, upcoming trips and events, educational resources for parents and students, etc. It will also provide parents with multiple ways to contact me if they have any questions, comments, or concerns. On the other hand, I was very nervous aboout creating webpages because I never have before and after Monday's class, I was very confused and frustrated with the webpage creation. I still dont know if I could set one up on my own without assistance but that is something I will just have to research once I have my own classroom. Wednesday was better because it is not quite as confusing to edit the page once you have created it. I look forward to continue working on these and hope that it will be a great way of knowing how to create my own.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Finishing and Presenting the Powerpoint Tutorials


We finally finished up the PowerPoint tutorials this week. I am very proud of how my tutorial turned out. I was worried that it would be very hard to make and would not function properly, but as I worked and progressed through the program, I found that it was very easy to work and very easy to set up the hyperlinks within the program. The only problem I had with PowerPoint tutorial is that they take a really long time to create. It seems very impractical to spend ten hours working on a six question quiz that will only take the children a few minutes to complete. I can see these however being very useful for a unit lesson review. They could be set up as a game that the children play to review a great deal of material that they cover over an extended period of time. They would not be used everyday for every topic covered, but they could be used as a fun and engaging way to practice and review the material or even as a good way to study for a test.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Powerpoint Tutorials

This week in IT 486, we have been working on our PowerPoint tutorials. For my tutorial, I selected the topic of Famous Tennesseans. The children were allowed to explore and learn about six famous Tennesseans in history, and then I can take a brief quiz over the material to see what they have learned. I have had a fairly extensive background using PowerPoint so I felt very comfortable in its use. The only aspect of PowerPoint that I had not used yet was the hyperlink, but following Jeff's demonstration on how to create the links throughout the PowerPoint, I found it very easy to use and actually kind of fun. I see how these could be very valuable in the classroom. It could provide children with fun and new ways to learn the content. These could also be used to make games that the children can play individually or as a classroom. This would encourage children in interactive activities as opposed to simply listening to me talk. As useful as these activities would be, I feel it would be too time-consuming to spend eight or more hours to create a six question quiz. I do see these as being useful to present other material maybe in the format of a jeopardy game or other large group activity, but it would be difficult to make them for each and every topic that is covered in class.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Beginning our work on Multimedia Tutorials

Last week, we began work with multimedia tutorials using PowerPoint. I can already tell that these will be valuable tools to use in the classroom. They can be used to present any form of information to the students, and they can be fun for them at the same time. I know that I am REALLY going to have to practice and work to become skilled at creating these, but as with everything we have done in this class, it simply takes time and a willingness to try things and make mistakes. I feel confident in my use of PowerPoint so I thing that this new way of using PowerPoint will only further my abilities and will help me create the best presentations possible for my students.