Week 15

I decided to do a glogster for my final lesson plan. I wanted to do something new and different at first, but after researching and not finding something new that I really liked, I decided to do something from early on that I hadn't done a lesson plan on. Writing the lesson plan went really well, I wrote out the whole lesson plan and then at the end went to make my tutorial and glogster wasn't working well. I'm not sure what the problem was, but I could get images to link and images that I uploaded were taking forever. I was able to work around it to create a tutorial, but it was extremely frustrating to be so closed to finished and then have that unexpected road block.

Field Trip 2 Pompei

Pompei

For my final field trip I did another virtual field trip, this time of Pompei. I used the World Wonders Project from google to explore Pompei. I would use this in the classroom to have students get the opportunity to walk around in Pompei. I decided to do another virtual field trip as I haven’t had time to do a real one, and because I enjoyed the first one so much. I have traveled to Italy but sadly didn’t get to visit Pompei. It is somewhere that I hope to go someday so thought it would be fun to explore.

I had seen pictures before and had read about it before, but it was not what I was expecting at all. I guess I was thinking it would be more similar to other ancient cities that I’ve been to. I thought it would be more spread out and didn’t expect it to look so much like a modern European city. This field trip was educational for me so I’m sure it would be educational for elementary students especially if they hadn’t yet learned about Pompei.

Week 14

Aida's class with the students was not what I thought that it was going to be. I had thought that we'd have more interaction and there was very little after our icebreaker. She did say that a game she wanted to do was missing so perhaps that would have given use more interaction. The things that she did share were great and I think I may use them in my class room one day, but it just was not what I was expecting.

Week 13

I have been trying to pick what to do for my last lesson plan. I did some exploring of google earth with the World Wonders Project, thinking that I may do something with google earth . Some of the locations are really cool, they have 360 views of the Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon, a hut from a 1912 exploration team in Antarctica, Pompei. Out of those I've only been to the Grand Canyon, the views that they have I didn't experience as all of them are from down in the Canyon and I've only experienced it from the upper rim. It is really cool to be able to move around to see more, but it still doesn't have the awe factor of actually seeing it in person. It is a great tool to use when teaching about any of these places to be able to give the students a taste of what each place is like, but it still doesn't substitute the real thing.

Week 12

I'm nearly done with my lesson plan and think that this was the easiest one yet to write for this class. I hadn't made a screencast before that was just talking students through how to use a website. It took less planning and prep to be able to do that portion of the lesson plan and the rest of the lesson plan seemed easier as a result.

In the aftermath of the bombings at the Boston Marathon, I would use this opportunity to bring this current event and talk about it with the class. I would share with them that because I am a runner I also feel for all the runners that were running in the Marathon that after all their hard work did not get to finish the race. With this we could discuss point of view.

Week 11

I really enjoyed the virtual field trip that I did for my first field trip and think that I will explore the possibilities it has to offer further by developing my next lesson plan based around the students doing a virtual tour at home. I have come to find that I really love google drive when a speedy Internet connection is readily available. It has made it very easy to collaborate in this class and in our other class, TCH 630. I am starting to use it more for personal use as well. And my biggest gripe about it is that when using the app on a tablet, you can make the documents viewable offline, but can't make changes that would sync up once you get an Internet connection. This was an issue for me while I was traveling which I solved by just not doing homework while I was on vacation. :)

Week 10

From this weeks materials what i found the most interesting is skype in the classroom. I just think it is a great way to connect with other classrooms to create a collaborative learning environment. It seems like it would be so easy to find a project or create a project and find another class to work with. I think this would be a great way educate students about multicultural issues. I am not sure about using edmodo in elementary schools, I don't know that it would be a good way to communicate with first graders. Although, I do think that it could be useful for connecting with parents.