Slide.com

Today we worked in groups to create a slideshow of pictures to tell a story. My group (Myosook, Colleen, and Aggie) chose to do "Goldilocks and the 3 Bears". And it just so happened that Myosook had puppets for the story. :D
To create the backgrounds for our pictures, we used Powerpoint and added clip art for the house, porridge, chairs, etc. We also added speech bubbles to move the story along.
We uploaded all of our pictures to Slide to create a slideshow presentation. Then we posted our slideshow to our blogs.
I have previously used Slide to create slideshows of pictures and I found the program very easy to use. I also learned how to post the slideshow directly to my blog which is very convenient. There are also a lot of ways to customize your slideshow and post it to a variety of networking sites.
I would most definitely use this program in my classroom. I would let my students use the program to do presentations that involve pictures. And slideshows can also be created for special events like assembly, graduation, or PTSA nights. I think anything that lets kids use the computer is a great motivator for them to do their work.
As for myself, I am going to use Slide for my blog for my ED 471 Practicum. ;D

Games for the Classroom

Today we went on to Discovery Education's Puzzle Maker and Crossword Puzzle Games to create a word search puzzle and a crossword puzzle about a theme we can use in the classroom. For my word search I used words from my 5th grade science unit on The Changing Earth and for the crossword puzzle I used the 5th graders' vocabulary words from their Language Arts reader StoryTown. I liked how easy it was to come up with the puzzles on these sites. The only problem I had was printing out the crossword puzzle - the box was empty. Instead I just printed out a screen shot. :D
Online puzzles can provide for quck reviews of vocabulary or key words. They are also good for concepts that just have to be drilled. Older students can make up puzzles for their classmates to solve.

XTimeline: The History of Computers

Today, we created a timeline on the 10 most important events in the history of computers. We used Xtimeline to generate our timeline and my partner and I decided to focus on events that had an impact on education. I really liked using Xtimeline because it was easy to navigate and it also let you add media like pictures. You could also add as many events as you wanted and you could view other timelines that had been created. I liked Xtimeline better than Teachnology.

Timeline

Today we went on to Teach-nology 's Timeline Generator to create a timeline of our life. We had to pick 8 events and produce a timelin e to share with the class. The Timeline Generator was very simple to use, however it has very limited features and there is no way to increase/decrease the number of events you want to include on your timeline. Timelines can be very useful in the classroom. You could use them on the first day of school to get students to learn about each other. They can also be used to assess students' understanding about events in history or the processes / cycles in science.

WebQuest

A WebQuest is basically a kind of online scavenger hunt for students. Teachers can set up a topic with pages for an introduction , task, process, evaluation, conclusion and resources. Myosook and I created a WebQuest on puppets. Our task would span about 6 days that would take students from researching about the history of puppets to the actual putting on of their own puppet show. We included several websites for the students to take a look at.
I enjoyed experimenting with creating a WebQuest with my partner Mysook. I had seen WebQuests before, but never made my own. I enjoyed the opportunity to practice making one. One thing I didn't like about the site we used Zunal is the fact that the layout options are very minimal. Everybody's WebQuest looks the same exceept for the pictures and topics. I wish they would offer more layouts that we could customize to match our topics.
I would definately use WebQuests in my classroom. If I were working with lower grades, I would probably create the WebQuests myself and have them complete it. I liked Teresa and Chasmyn's idea of having a scavenger hunt for the different alphabets. With the upper grade students, I would have them complete a few WebQuests, but eventually I would like them to create their own WebQuests that they would share with their fellow classmates.