Digital Story: Cesar Chavez

I loved the digital stories; this was my FAVORITE assignment hands down. Personally, I am 100% captivated by an interesting story, especially when there are pictures, videos, and music that go along with it. One thing I saw in some other people's projects that I would like to incorporate in future digital stories is more title slides; you can put questions, vocabulary, or examples on them to refocus students’ attention on the topic. It is also a way of letting students know what the following sequence of footage and video is about.

I truly had so much fun making this video. I picked Cesar Chavez because I had previously read this story about him that fascinated me, Harvesting Hope: The story of Cesar Chavez. I went from there, and realized it scared me that I didn’t know that much about a man who according to the VA SOL’s was on the same level as Thomas Jefferson and Rosa Parks.  I learned a lot, and think that students would also when watching it. It is also a topic that is fairly recent, students can relate to it. Everyone eats produce, knows what it is, I don’t think a bunch of students are going to get lost on this topic.

In the future, I will definitely spend even more time in garage band! This was only my first time using garage band and I think I did a good job with layering. Next time I will perfect my voice over, and incorporate even more interesting sound effects. I also think this is something that will be easy for kids to pick up, have them create a digital story of their own. All of the fun is in the making, and I think this is something that all students could enjoy, especially because it is like story telling on steroids. I think students would also take a lot of pride in the fact that they get to publish their videos to YouTube. Everyone knows what YouTube is! I thoroughly enjoyed this project and look forward to making my next digital story.

On the last note, thanks for teaching such an awesome class this semester. When you asked us why we were taking this class on the first night, I said to learn something because I knew nothing about technology. I learned more than just something, I learned how to use a lot of the materials available to me, but more importantly I learned that I enjoyed it a lot more than I originally thought I would. Thank you!

WebQuest: Adaptations

I really enjoyed making the WebQuest, but you were right when you said that the hardest part is the planning and time blocking. I had never really understood what WebQuests were even though I had always heard about them, and I really like the idea behind it. I like the part where you find all the websites and narrow down which ones work for your topic. I had so much fun going through all the creature features myself.  I realize that if you are interested in your topic and finding pertinent materials, your students will be interested as well. 

My strengths on this assignment were definitely the variety of resources and animals I included, the poster idea, and my attempt to remind students of prior knowledge. I had so much fun making that poster! I think students will too. I also think I did a good job including the vocabulary sheet that can help students throughout their research.  Some areas I need to work on are building in greater scaffolding for lessons and revising the rubric. This was the first rubric I’ve ever made, so I have to give myself that. I’ve learned that they are HARD to make. I need to incorporate categories that are easy for children to understand. I also need to create an additional rubric for ME to grade the students’ projects, not just the ones the students are using to self evaluate one another. The last thing I intend to tweak on my next WebQuest is how I start and end my lessons. I need to come up with something other than, “come to a stopping point, we’ll continue this tomorrow.” That’s too weak. I also can’t start day 2 of the WebQuest by saying, “pick up where you left off yesterday,” I think I need to build in a little more prior knowledge activity there.

Overall, I am proud of myself for improving the assessment part of this assignment. I finally figured out what you were looking for in terms of having each assessment address a particular objective. I’m also proud that I picked an interesting topic that I think kids will really like. The time planning was definitely the hardest part, its hard to determine how many days it will take, how much will get done in a day etc. I learned a lot from this first WebQuest, and out of all of the assignments we've done I think that I will be most likely to use this one frequently in my future classroom. 

Smart Board: Money Sense

I felt much better about this assignment than I did about the first. I enjoyed making interactive problems for students to solve. Even though I felt this way, it is still very apparent that I don't come across confidently when I'm presenting my lesson plan. I have to admit I have found it very hard this semester to connect with the assignments because these resources are so foreign to me. I want to be comfortable and familiar with these resources, it is something that will be critical in my future classroom. While I may find it hard to connect and come across with confidence in my lesson plan, I do stand behind my plans and think that they would work in a classroom, I just need to do a little tweaking.

I really need to work on becoming more detailed in my lesson plan especially with teacher actions, for example "introduce the topic" won't cut it! I need to really think about HOW I will introduce the topic in a way that is sure to captivate student attention. I need to think more critically about student engagement...if I don't model the problems for the students will they be able complete independent practice? I need to realize that this presentation has to capture the attention of the entire class, not just the students that come one at a time to the board to interact with a problem.

As for next weeks assignment, I am feeling extremely stressed right now. I most importantly need to come up with a webquest that poses a problem for students to solve. Hopefully over the next day or two I can come up with an idea by looking at other examples of webquests for inspiration. I will definitely spend more time making my lesson plan more detailed. Maybe practicing more and rehearsing my webquest will make me feel more comfortable and confident when it comes time to present in front of classmates.

The Declaration of Independence Prezi

I learned through this assignment how boring regular PowerPoint presentations seem to me now. I think it would take a great deal of time and effort to make a PowerPoint as interesting and captivating as a Prezi. Even though I barely scratched the surface of Prezi's capabilities, I am completely hooked on the zooming aspect and think that creating a path between different groups of information is much cooler than flipping through slides. I especially loved how easy it was to incorporate videos and images, especially the fact that you can search for an image without opening an internet browser. The Declaration of Independence video I included is still one of my favorite tunes, and was really the force behind my decision to focus on the topic. In the future, I really want to go further and figure out how to turn my pictures into questions or reveal hidden answers...all of those cool features that I haven't mastered yet.

On my next Prezi, I will certainly get better about fitting the frame for different groups of information so that the content doesn't overlap. With this presentation, sometimes when I zoomed into a statement or an image you could see some text from another statement in the corner, which could be very distracting for students. I need to make sure that the screen shot is only of the specific content or statement I am focusing on at that moment. I also wish to focus more on different vocabulary words. I saw so many cool ideas that other classmates had where the screen would zoom into a letter in the word and the definition would be written within the letter.

What I regret the most is that I incorporated too much information, it was too broad of a spectrum. I should have focused on only one of the bullets under the SOL and gone into more detail. I had intended for this lesson to be taught at the end of the unit as review, but I still think that I could have either gone into more detail on the content I presented, or narrowed the amount. As for presentation, it appears that I'm very quiet. This is something I have always struggled with and need to make a conscious effort to improve. I also got a few comments that I was monotone and therefore seemed disinterested, and I don't want my students thinking this! I had no idea I sounded so drab and now I'm glad I know. In conclusion, the main thing I want to focus on for my next assignment is narrowing the scope of information, I want to focus more on less information- less is more!