farm fun

Week 8 Reflection

Using Video Media in the Classroom

What?

I thought that the educational simulations on National Geographic were awesome for classroom use. It's a great way to easily recreate an experience or trip, when an actual visit or experience might be too dangerous or costly to actually perform. It was fun exploring teachertube and finding so many great teaching videos that can be used to explain concepts and subjects to students.

So What?

It would be fun to have my students go on a virtual field trip one day to a volcano or a rainforest. I really liked the idea mentioned in class about bringing in something real to enhance the virtual field trip, such as a real starfish or perhaps a fossil of some sort. Kids love learning with visual, hands-on tools like that. It would be great to show different video clips from the web, such as the life cycle of a frog. The students can then go online and virtually disect a frog. It might be fun to do a spotlight on different countries and have students "travel" around to different countries (stations) and experience each culture, climate, etc. through a simulative video on National Geographic.

Now What?

I think that using such media in the classroom really helps children understand subject material in a fun, hands-on way. As teachers we need to keep up on technology and take advantage of the great educational resources that are available. It's important to bring education into reality for students to really understand what's being taught. For example, when teaching students about different environments, it would be very helpful to actually show students what each environment is like and use as many of the six senses as possible, to really bring home the lesson.

Millennial Generation Video

I really liked what one of the students said about not using credit cards in the future, but fingerprint scans instead, in order to prevent idenity theft, etc. It was funny when the students talked about their parents not having a clue on technology matters. My parents call my husband on a regular basis for tech support. I can see my own kids being even more tech savvy than my generation. My 4 year old is constantly on the computer, playing educational games and is already competent in using a mouse, printing, etc.

Educational Videos

Week 7 Reflection

Picasa

It's funny because I was just telling my husband that I needed some kind of program to edit my pictures, write text on them, and just make them look cool. And then in class we learned about Picasa! I love it, it's so user friendly, I've already downloaded it (for free) to my home computer and am now importing all of my pictures onto it.

I think Picasa would be a great tool to use in the classroom. Students can create sideshows, time lines, picture collages. It's simple to use, so students can learn how to crop, edit and add effects to photos they have taken with digital cameras. Students can also create a web album, with all of their photos in one place.

I'm excited to play around with Picasa a little more and become more familiar with it. I've already been having a lot of fun with my pictures! There really is an endless amount of projects that I can think of doing with this awesome program!

Here are some of my creations...

Week 6 Reflection

The Pros of Using Digital Cameras (digicams) in the Classroom:
There are a lot of great ideas out there for bringing digicams into the classroom. Using this media form is a great way to get students involved in fun and interesting projects. They can decide what they want to learn about or study, snap a picture and write a report on it.

Pictures can enhance almost any project. A science experiment of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly could be photographically documented at each and every stage of development.

I think that using digicams helps students to see and learn from the the world around them. For example, I did my slide show on shapes. I found shapes in unconventional places, which will help my students to start taking a closer look at the world around them. They can pick out a banana and identify it as a crescent shape. Doing projects like this, really encourages kids to get excited about learning in their everyday life.

Another great thing about using digicams is the ease of snapping a photo and then transferring the image straight to the computer. This makes it easier for students to edit photos for assignments or projects. It's also great for visual aids in presentations.

"top 10 things you don't learn about teaching in college" video
Love it! Very cute video. I will be taking some of those tips and storing them in my brain, such as believing a student when they say they really have to use the bathroom! I liked the one about hearing your last name so much, you'll want to change it.

"mash-up" video
Wow! That is really amazing how they remixed all those videos together to create a song! Very fascinating how the guy didn't have to do much, since they already flowed together so easily on their own (the videos). That might be a fun project for students to try.