HI! My name is Michelle, and I am in my graduating year of university. I am studying to become a math and science teacher, but I am also learning how to teach 21st century skills. Please join me in my learning adventure as I share with you my recent thoughts, discoveries, and interests of all things "techy" that I could use in my future teaching career.
Teach Me How to Tech!
If only I found this useful tip a few years ago… http://www.mrexcel.com/tip069.shtml. Basically, it teaches you how to make your own magic square using excel! Ahh… now my math mind can rest easy :)
So for the past few days, I have been addicted to a publishing website that my professor shared to the class. It’s called Issuu. It’s just a site where you can publish magazines, documents, pictures, etc. I think it’s a great way to share your work, especially for students to publish their work. Why am I addicted? You may ask. Well, there are SO many published issues that I am so interested in reading and viewing! They’re great! Once I am done reading one magazine, another one grabs my interest and I get sucked into this virtual magazine stand.
Take a look for yourself, but you have been warned.
Need to transport your students to a new location instantly? (Not because their misbehaving of course…)
Well, try TourWrist! It’s a virtual transporter that lets you look at places all around the world in a 360 view. You can take your students to a NBA basketball court in Phoenix, Times Square in New York, or even a Borno Park in Italy.
With the 360 view, it seems like you are practically there, and students can be more interactive and gain a greater understanding of the setting.
My boyfriend introduced me to an amazing program today! It’s called GameSalad and can be found on this link: http://gamesalad.com/.
What is it you may ask? Well, it’s a program that allows you to make your own App! Yes that’s right, your own App that you can customize and create for your own iPhone and iPad.
If I were to use this in the classroom, I would probably use it for project options that my students can take. It would greatly incorporate technology and higher-order learning skills.
I am still learning how to use this program, but so far it is really neat.
I was creating a lesson plan the other day, and I wanted to integrate a fun and interactive game. Then I remembered the site JeopardyLabs that my professor introduced the class. Because of this site, I was able to easily create a fun review game into my lesson. Trust me, it was easy! All you need to do is sign up.
HAHAHA!!! If only I could do that and not get caught… just joking!
I actually really like Smartboards, but since I have an Apple Mac laptop, I hardly use them since I don’t have the program installed. However, I still find them highly interactive, efficient, and a great way to motivate students’ learning.
I wish all classrooms had a Smartboard, but sadly, this isn’t the reality. Even my practicum classroom does not have one, and even if it did, my Practicum cooperating teacher would not use it (so she says).
But like this comic suggests, us teachers need to be smart about using SMARTboards.
This is a video I created a long time ago for class. The website we used to create this video is www.xtranormal.com. This website allows you to create your own animated video and publish it to YouTube. I thought this video making website was pretty easy and also fun to do. However, if you want your video to be exactly the way you want, you will have to pay for certain features. I can see my students being really creative and having fun with this program, so I will make sure to use this website in the future.
