Friday, November 20, 2009

Analyzing Student Data in Google Sheets

I had a hard time with both google spreadsheets and excel, but that was to be expected. I feel I still need to learn more about it before I am able to confidently use it in my classroom. I do see the benefit when assessing students progress. Also I can see if there are dips as a class where more instruction may be needed. I can use the data to pair students up as well. In my chart I can see the students that are progressing at a steady pace and those that are more sporadic.

Multimedia Project-Windows Movie Maker

Check out my mini tutorial.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Movie Maker in the Classroom

For my multimedia project I chose to learn about windows movie maker. This tool can have many uses in the classroom. Students can dress up and role play to make a lesson more fun. It can be captured in video so that it can be paused and played back at the teacher's convenience to emphasize certain points. The video can also be shared with absent students and other classrooms or groups of students to collaborate. I decided I might want to use it with my kindergarten class on a nature walk. I would have the students or myself record interesting things we saw during our walk. Afterwords, back in the classroom, we would have a discussion about the things we saw. For example, in my video, there are clips of animals. This could be a good intro to learning about squirrels or ducks and seasons, etc. Take a look...

Friday, November 6, 2009

Skype Experience

I have never used skype before, and had it not been for this class, I probably would never use it. It sounds pretty cool, and I was suprised to find a couple of friends and relatives. I look forward to skyping with them in the future, but for now I didn't get the opportunity to skype with them. I have at least made the first step in creating an account and understand its purpose. This would be a useful tool to use with parents who may be homebound, however, they would need to have internet access. In the classroom it would be useful to collaborate with other classes and learn what other kids are doing around the world.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Followers