13th Blog

  I enjoyed the interactive power point project. It was good to play around with it, and figure out what goes where for the slides to make since. I made a jeopardy type game on history. If I had more time I would have gone into more detail with the game. I would have added more columns and maybe even a video or two to give them more information on that subject. I struggled a little bit on using the actions in shape forms. For example, instead of writing home and having it go to the main screen, I tried just using a picture of a house, but I couldn't get it to work for some reason.
  I will more than likely use this in my future classroom to help them study before their test or even if they just need more practice. It would be fun to split my class into teams and have them compete with one another. Maybe even to make it more competitive, I would have a surprise for the winning team.

10th Blog

  I really like the ALEX site. This is going to be very helpful when I become a teacher. There are so many lesson plans that actually stick to the standards of Alabama. Also, as an elementary teacher I will be teaching multiple subjects to one class, so the fact that ALEX has many different areas of study is very beneficial. Not only do they have lesson plans, but they also have podcasts you can listen to with teachers and even students teaching and talking about the lesson play they used.
  If you go to the ALEXville tab, you can communicate with other teachers using the website and those that are doing the same lesson plan as you. It doesn't just give you Alabama standards but college standards as well. This helps prepare your students for their future. I also like how you can save lesson plans to your workshop. That way if you don't need to teach it right now, you can save it for a later day. The lesson plans also tell you the tools you are going to need, in order for you to teach this lesson to your students.

9th Blog

  My students got the answers correct very easily. If I was their teacher, I would think that I made this video to easy for them. With the questions being right after the video gave the answer, it was a given. I would give them a questionnaire on the video, to see if they actually retained the information, and have an activity ready for them to do. Maybe make a mask they think the people would wear during the medieval times or have them make a pumpkin by using orange candy blocks.

8th Blog

  As a teacher, I plan on talking about a holiday that is happening each month. Whether that be Halloween, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, etc. Since we are in the month of October, I thought to teach the history of Halloween. This makes a fun history lesson for students, while also getting them excited to go Trick or Treating. I really enjoyed how many videos EDPuzzle had to choose from. It took a lot longer than planned to choose a fun, but interesting video. I wanted to teach the students but also make them have fun with it. I chose a video that was upbeat, had music, and good graphics.

  I learned that I should have probably made the questions a bit further away from when he said the answer, rather then right after. That way the student would at least have had to think and remember the video. This would be such a fun lesson for a class though! 

7th Blog

   This group project was a lot of fun! It was a bit difficult trying to coordinate our schedules so we could edit and video all together, but I think it turned out good. We were all very aware of each others schedules. Most of us worked, had kids, or had class on days one of us would be available. We knew what our video was going to be about in the beginning, but as we got more into it, we realized that this video was actually taking a different turn. Instead of making a video about non-traditional vs. traditional classrooms it ended up being about traditional teaching compared to non-traditional teaching with art integration. 

    I learned a lot about how I want to teach my classroom. I know that kids learn in a variety of ways and I want to be able to incorporate each way of learning in my room. If a child is a visual learner, then I will have lessons that apply to them, or if they are a hands on learner, I want to have experiments or class activities to help them fully comprehend what I am teaching. I also, really enjoyed watching other groups videos in class. It was neat to see how people had the same topic, but approached it in different ways. 

6th Blog

  I learned a lot from the video. We, as college students, are multi-taskers because we have to be. We go to class but do not fully focus on the lecture, we may be doing homework for another class, or we may be browsing online because the classes do not keep our attention. Many of the times I will go to class, but only 35 out of 75 are not there. College students loose interest in class lectures rather easily due to the fact that the teacher does not engage their students or the class is just uninteresting.
  As a future teacher, I will be sure to engage my students. I want to make my class fun and exciting to learn new things. I also would set aside homework time and let my students get an early start so they can ask me any questions they may have and have more time to be kids and enjoy time at home. I want to use everything I can to help teach my students, and use many different ways so that my students will learn and always be engaged in the classroom.
  I feel that in elementary, teachers want to do anything and everything they can to keep the students engaged so they won't become distracted or disinterested. Yet, once they hit high school and college  it is as though we are expected to sit there for an hour or more and listen to the teacher ramble on without involving us or using techniques to make the lecture interactive. I think that we would learn so much better and more quickly if teachers would make the effort and engage us in class rather than expect us to sit here and listen because that is what we are expected to do.

5th Blog

  I really enjoyed the guest speaker on Tuesday. The videos he showed us about how to use a smartphone made me feel a bit less stressed about this class. I was so worried that none of my videos would turn out right because I do not have access to video cameras or special lighting. He explained how to use a smartphone rather easily and not too technical. I didn't realize how much went into videos until he explained what to use. I thought I knew a bit about making movies and videos, but I was completely wrong.
   I really liked learning about the use of light and how harsh certain light can be. I didn't realize that you would want shadows on the subjects face. By using a key light, and fill light to get the right look on a camera, really changes the way a subject looks for an interview or solo scene in a video. I'm very excited to start our group video project and use the techniques I learned from the guest speaker.