Wrapping up ECDC Service Project

This past friday i was able to go into Mrs. Reynolds classroom and work with a few groups to complete their projects. I worked with two young boys, Ramiro and Mason that had frogs as an animal. I had tremedous help from Delmy and Jessica. I was able to help the boys get all their information transposed to the voicethread. I did have to go to work so Jessica helped wrapp things up. They were excited to piece everything together and hear their voices go together with their voicethread. The service project helped me and the students become better equipped with voicethread.

Service Project

Well i have not met face to face with the ecde students yet but i will meet with them on Friday. The students that we are working are doing there project on the Beetle. The project is coming along quite well. My role in my group is the one of the online person. The students have already completed their research and are eager to see the finished project. Our project should be wrapping up soon. The animal nine blog is coming along quite well.

Digital Storytelling: This revolves around the idea of combining the art of telling stories with a variety of digital multimedia, such as images, audio, and video.
Student Literacies:

Digital literacy- the ability to communicate with an ever-expanding community to discuss issues, gather information, and seek help

Global literacy- the capacity to read, interpret, respond, and contextualize messages from a global perspective

Technology literacy- the ability to use computers and other technology to improve learning, productivity, and performance; students who create digital sotries improve their skills by using software that combines a variety of multimedia tools including working with text, still images, audio, video and oftentimes, Web publishing.

Visual literacy- the ability to understand, produce and communicate through visual images

Information literacy- the ability to find, evaluate and synthesize information

There are three different types of Storytelling:

Personal narratives- stories that contain accounts of significant incidents in one’s life

Historical documentaries- stories that examine dramatic events that help us understand the past

Stories designed to inform and instruct the viewer on a particular concept or practice

7 Steps of Digital Storytelling:

Point of view- is how an individaulpercieves information
Emotional content- I see this as what can link the material to a student through personal expericence
The gift of your voice- Our voice is sound and the sounds make words...Our voice conveys a message that is important
The power of the soundtrack- The music in a vido essentally brings it to life... it gives a sense of emotion.
Economy- This basically is a run down of information
Pacing – putting the information in the right order and making sure everything is done at the right time

Spread Sheets

Spread Sheets are a great way to budget. Spread Sheets allow you to see the maximum amount of money you can get away with spending and how much you can scrape by with out spending so much. With that said we all know that spread sheets are a good way to monitor money but it can be intergarted into lessons and lesson planning as well. The use of practical day to day spending is a great way to put the use of spread sheets into persepecive. Take a look at my spread sheet for my wedding budget.

Writing For A Purpose

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Writing For A Purpose

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Digital Story Telling

I found that this assignment was a challenge to complete. Using Slideshare was something brand new to me. I took sometime pieces pictures and information. After a significant amount of research and reflecting upon what i had done using VoiceThread, slideCast or slideShare is something fairly easy and useful. Digital story telling is a great and new way to communicate information. Digital story telling can be used in various lessons and topics. Digital storytelling is a way for people to express themselves through technology in the form of a story. Their story can have music or voice sound, images, or text.
In my future classroom, according to my unit plan (Why is writing important) using voiceThread and slidecast would be useful. My students would be able to actually see the writing process take a different form. This would be different and fun way of learning. In this form they could actually hear the other students voice while being able to see them at the same time and virtully interact.
Using these tools in my future classroom is something that i can see myself applying in different lessons. For VoiceThread I could design a video, or music clip, or power point introduce a new lesson, activity or book. SlideShare/SlideCast could be use show pictures of what and how the lesson should pan out. Overall, presented this challenge to create a slideshare presentation it was a great experience and you suggest many to learn to use it!

Internet Resources

How can you envision using a variety of Internet resources in your unit plan?Unit plan topic: Why is writing important? Ill admit my topic question seems very vague. The start of this topic in my blog seemed like i was going to have a really hard time finding anything relating to my unit topic question. Needless to say, i have found an emense amount of information as well as sources relating to why writing is important. Teachertube kindergarten students can watch videos that demonstrate the importance of writing. A first grade writing project that i found on teacher tube that i especially thought was a useful tool in learning the importance of writing was creating an original riddle.To emphasize on the importance of writing students can see actual students the same age as them completing the writing importance and seeing the various styles and formats of writing. For example students can watch a video of students writing short stories on a generated topic to studnets writing letters to a close friend or family member. Again cohesive blogging in the classroom can be a great way students can work together to add their thoughts to a class topic. A great place to create a blog is Blogger.com. Students can write their own thoughts in any format that they choose. Other search engines as Google or Yahoo can provide pictures and videos as well as information to research. As a future teacher i would suggest that monitoring such websites and Google or Yahoo because its not specifically geared to younger students. To view the sites ive talked about click this link http://http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcff6mms_0hcvr97c8

A New Idea

Introduction: Writing Inquiry-based learning is a learning style approach to teaching. Its premises include the requirement that learning should be based around student's questions. Inquiry based learning requires students to work together to solve problems rather than receiving instructions on what to do from the teacher. The teacher's role in an inquiry learning environment is to help students discover knowledge themselves. Inquiry learning is a form of learning where the student has an active role in deciding what they want to learn about. Progress is measured by how well students develop ideas and analytical skills. My essential question is my unit plan is Why is it important to write?This is a good question in my opinion because its a question that emergent writers to experienced writers or students ask. The process of writing begins in the early child hood stages for example prekinder and kindergarten. Students are learning that writing is a
tool that they will need to use. Most begin by writing their own names or alphabet. The
importance of why writing is so essential becomes more apparent thought out time
because it serves as a way of communication and ultimately in school a way of
assessment. In my unit plan inquiry based learning is used based on what the learner wants to write about and what questions will be answered in there writing. My unit questions are Can I write ?, Why do i have to learn to write?, and How do I know if I'm writing well? The use of Project Based learning and the need for it in my unit plan is apparent based on the fact that children are motivated by things that interest them. The writing process can entail "PBL" by incorporating the use of technology to display writing.

Blogging as a Tool in the Classroom:In my future classroom, I can envision my students using blogs in just about every subject that can be taught. The subject of writing is an obvious one in which students can use the tool of blogging to post journal entries or complete essays as well. Students can use blogs as a way to reflect and re evaluate their writing. The idea of an online journal can be more appealing than the normal pen and paper routine. Blogging in this area can be useful in peer evaluating and correction of mistakes. Ideas can be bounced off on another as well as collaborative work can evolve from blogging. Math and science are closely connected because they both use formulas to complete a finished product. Students can blog about science experiments or math problems and create links to display actual things they have worked on. History or social studies can use the tool of blogging as well. History is a set of events that never change and derive from true facts. Students in my future classroom will use blogs to reenact the past by creatively writing about historical figures of their choice. They will be able to tell about an individual and their significance in history by not only using words but hyper links and videos to make their writing come to life. In the following link (http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/), it is said that most students are comfortable with blogging already. "It's part of their culture". Children actively use "myspace" and "facebook" websites to post things about themselves and write about their hopes, fears and most of frustration. Blogging can be used as an outlet for students for not only frustrations but as well as a creative way to complete their homework. By using blogging in the classroom you are using a medium that the child is knowledgeable and most of all comfortable using.