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!
Amanda, This is exemplary reflection. I love the title and how it ties into both your state of mind at the time and the theme of your scavenger hunt. Mostly, I like how you turned a negative (not being able to present in class) into a positive -- this post captures everything you would have said in class, and then some!
ReplyDeleteI will definitely share this in the tech gallery at our course site. I also want to test drive it with my son Henry. He is learning letter-sound associations right now. Last year we went on a shape hunt; maybe after he sees this example, he will want to go on an ABC hunt!