Final Reflection

I came into this class a little apprehensive about using technology in the classroom, and not knowing a lot about technology in general. Over the course of the semester, I feel that I became comfortable with using technology and I have a much better knowledge of how I can use it in the classroom. Things such as IMovie and Inspiration are tools that I will use in the future to motivate students and engage them in lessons. This class has been very beneficial to advance my technology skills that I will use in the classroom!!

IMovie Reflection

Using IMovie was a really fun experience! It was somewhat confusing at times to figure out how to use the application, but once I got the hang of it it was easy to use! I liked the ease of the program and how it allowed you to use many different texts, formats, and transitions. Using this in the classroom would be a wonderful way to introduce new concepts to students and allow them to watch/create new movies!

Terriffic Tennessee IMovie

Excel Spreadsheet

After using Excel to create a spreadsheet that would serve as a quiz, I have discovered that this is a tool that I would incorporate into my future classroom. I loved how easy the tool was to use after I had some practice with it. I also liked how it seemed like a Excel quiz would be an easy way for a child to take a quiz on a computer. The way that the answers instantly came onto the screen was a great feature. I will use this in my future classroom for sure!

Inspiration Diagram

Using Inspiration to create this diagram was a very fun process. I think that this tool would be a wonderful resource to use in the classroom with students. I liked how easy it was to use the tool, and how organized the tool kept the diagram. This is a tool that I will definitely use in the classroom!

Wordle and Tagxedo

Both of these tools are very fun ways to create "word clouds" in different shapes, sizes, colors, and fonts. I really liked Tagxedo and how the words that you chose could be placed in pictures that you choose. In the classroom both of these tools would be interesting to use with the children. I liked how the presenters of Wordle talked about using the tool as an ice-breaker game!

Twitter and Delicious

Both of these tools were very interesting to learn about in class. I previously had a Twitter account before learning about it, so it was interesting to hear about how the presenters thought that it could be used in the classroom. I still don't know if I would want to use Twitter in an elementary school classroom just because I think that it may be a little advanced for most of the children. I think that Delicious would be a wonderful tool to use to stay organized and keep all of your bookmarks in one general location. I know that I have had times before that I wished that I had access to the bookmarks on my personal computer, and to have them all on one website would be wonderful.