Insomnia: Reflect on A-ZZZZZZZZZ

Man, I woke up at four in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep. I start thinking about stuff (usually assignments) and it makes it difficult to go back to bed. So, this is one of the things I was thinking about.

Yesterday, my group ( Chloe, Patrick and I) went on a picture scavenger hunt for images that begin with the letters of the alphabet. It was to then be used in a slideshow presentation. There were some funny moments trying to find things that start with the letter J, Q, X, and Z. You know, the hard ones! I was trying to take visually interesting pictures while keeping the extraneous background out. That way Patrick had an easier time cropping and resizing the pictures. Chloe put together the slideshow. We definitely work well together as a team on most of the tasks, by asking each others advice and coming to a consensus. I was going to present but we ran out of time. Here is the gist of what I was going to say:

"This presentation is a image representation of the alphabet. The target age group is Pre-K and Kindergarden. This tool is perfect for guided reading. Each image corresponds with a letter, such as C stands for Clock or Y is for yellow, etc. Then, at the bottom of each slide the question is asked, "what else starts with this letter?". This fosters class discussion and can be used for individual assessment. Computer centers or individual station work is another use for this tool. Children of this age group have the ability to "click" through the images to look at the pictures and through real world experience know what the names of the images are and how that sound matches that letter. A third use for the picture side show could be an educational screensaver, something that could be scrolling at all times in the classroom for interest."

Pretty good, huh? Ya, I thought so too. I would definitely use this in my classroom. Creating the slideshow was something very familiar. Power point is a main staple in many college courses but using the technology to share the images to then collaborate with each other on the project was where I learned the most. Knowing that you can work on the presentation at the same time as someone else (on another computer) was pretty interesting. Me like-y! I think A-Z was a success!

My Journey in TPTE 486

It's a picture description of my learning of skills, for this class and an explanation of my name. It's a visual interpretation of this blog.

Wikis and Depatrments Stores

This week in class we were dealing with wikis, maintaining our blogs(*cough) and discussing web based searches. Okay, that is a big chunk of information. I find that there are just to many options and links and things. It is a little overwhelming. It's kind of like why I don't like shopping a large department stores: to many options and most of it is crap (pardon). You really have to weed through sites to find quality content. Just the other day I was looking for a few quality, elementary age appropriate sites about Dung Beetles. One of the sites looked fine until I realized that there were ads on the page. Most of them where innocent enough until I came to the last one. It was some nonsence about "find hot Costa Rican women". I scrapped that site.
Positive note:
I know that if I keep working at it, it will become easier to navigate my way though the sites, blogs and wikis. The more I play around with them. the easier it will be to ignore the unimportant functions and zoom in on relevent ones. I mean I'll shop at a department store and find something if I HAVE to, so I know I can do this eventually.

Web Resources

The Nobel educational site is really entertaining and is on the cutting edge of science. WHO COULD ASK FOR MORE!!!!http://nobelprize.org/educational/

First Entry Hmmmm...

I am having difficulty with working with Mac. I guess this is good that I am becoming more familiar or literate in Mac as well as PC. It is frustrating though. I have a short attention span and if I get to far behind, I become slightly despondent. Part of the problem is the time of the class and the lack of food in my stomach, I am sure. It is interesting though, not to mention extremely useful. So now that my attention is starting to wain, I think that this is the end of my entry. Good night.