Classroom Website

What I liked:
I really liked that you could easily select a pre-made template. This made the website look great before I even got started on it! I also liked how easy it was to find the buttons to edit and insert links and pictures and things like that. This is helpful when you want to focus more on the content rather than the process of how to get the content onto the site.

What I did not like:
I did not like that sometimes when I inserted links, they showed up as the color of an already visited link, even though I had not clicked on that link yet. Even though I know when someone else looks at the site it will look normal, it was still distracting to me that the links on the pages did not look uniform. I also did not like that when editing the side bar, the text boxes simply said "text box" and you could not tell what you were editing until you actual clicked into it.

What I would change:
I do not think that I would change much about google sites. I thought it was very well laid out and user friendly. If I had to change anything, I might make it more "blog-like" so that you could more easily move around the items in the side bar and such (like a click and drag item or adding gadgets type of thing).

Classroom Use:
This website will be a great resource to use in the classroom. Students and parents can both access the site to see classroom policies, neat things we are creating in class, updates from me, contact information, etc. This is such an efficient way to keep the parents updated on their child's educations without having to waste paper and send home letters multiple times a week.

Digital Story

What I liked:
I liked how easy it was to drag and drop the pictures into the project and also how easy it was to overlap text and sound onto the pictures. I thought it was very user friendly and easy to find the things that I needed to add to the movie. I also liked that you could move your cursor around on the movie and start it from whichever point you wanted. This allowed me to see the changes I made without having to play the movie from the beginning each time.

What I did not like:
I am not sure if it was the actual iMovie app or just a problem with my computer, but many times when I would add something, like text, my photos would disappear. I would have to close the program and reopen it in order to make the photos show back up so that I could determine whether or not my text was in a good location and was showing up. I also did not like that you do not have many options to edit your text. Sometimes if the text was hard to see on a dark background, I wanted to make the white banner more opaque but there was no option to do so. I also liked a text option that matched my intro and credit slide, but the banner was green and had font that was hard to read and there was no way to edit those things in order to make the movie more uniform looking.

What I would change:
I would make it to where when you added songs and text, you could edit the timing of them before you even add it to the movie. Dragging it onto the movie and then trying to find the beginning of the song and clicking on the gear to edit it and all of that took up a lot of time and I think it would be easier to just choose a song or text to add, type in how many seconds you want it to last, and THEN add it to the movie. I would also change the layout so that the actual project could be bigger to view instead of having it be a small box in the top left corner with a huge open empty space taking up the entire lower part of the screen.

Classroom Use:
I think this would be a difficult tool to use for young children in elementary school. I think it would be a fun project for the entire class to work on in a middle school or high school classroom, but I definitely think that the younger children would not be able to overlap music and text and edit the Ken Burs effect, etc. because it was confusing even for me at first and I think it would be much too difficult for them.

Google Forms

My classmates presented Google Forms and here is my artifact!

Flipchart

Below is an example of the flipchart that I created using ActivInspire. This is intended for a 2nd grade classroom when learning about money and how to count up to $1.00.

What I liked:
I loved the ability to create these flipcharts so that the children can interact with the material. I can see how my students would love the opportunity to come to the front of the class and do the various activities. I liked how many resources are available to use and also how many different options there are for each individual object on the pages.

What I did not like:
I did not like how I continuously had to keep clicking on the page to "reset" the pointer and avoid adding multiple text boxes or accidentally moving my objects that were already on the page.

What I would change:
I would make it so that anything you do in Design mode is automatically locked down. It would make it much easier than having to automatically lock down each individual item. For the parts that you want the students to be able to move, you could just individually make those moveable.


Classroom Use:
The main use for this flipchart in the classroom would be for students to be able to interact with the content during a lesson. They would be allowed to use the smart board and manipulate parts of the presentation in order to further their learning!

Inspiration Diagram

This is the diagram for Charlotte's Web that I created on the program Inspiration.

What I liked:

I really liked how easy it was to just click on the screen and start typing to create a new bubble. It was also very easy to resize all of them, and link them to other topics on the screen. I like how creative you can be and how many fun visuals you can incorporate into your diagrams.

What I did not like:

I did not like how you had to depend heavily on the options at the top to change things in your diagram. To change colors, fonts, layouts, notes, etc. you always had to figure out which button at the top it would be under and then go searching for whatever you needed to change. 

What I would change:

Instead of having the tool box on the side that only has pictures and animations to use, I would use that tool box as an all-encompassing tool. It would have all of the font options laid out, all color options, ways to upload your own pictures, etc. so that you did not have to search for so long just to find one simple button to change something on your diagram.

Classroom Use: 

Inspiration would be an awesome tool to use for any subject. It is especially helpful for projects like mine, when you are trying to show the students important aspects of a story that they read. It could also be used to map out important events in history for Social Studies, or even to show different strategies that can be used in Math! There is also a program called "Kidspiration" that the students could actually learn to use themselves and create their own diagrams.

Smilebox

My classmates presented Smilebox and here is my artifact!

ABC Scavenger Hunt

Picasa Web Album:



Google Presentation:



What went well:
It was a very easy and fun project to go out and find the pictures of the objects! I renamed the pictures very easily because I have a lot of experience with uploading pictures onto my computer at home and renaming them to put them into albums. Once the pictures were saved onto the computer, it was very simple to create a new album on Picasa and create a new presentation on Google and then upload the pictures into both.


What did not go well:
It took a long time for the pictures to download from my phone into dropbox. This left all of the group members sitting idle while we waited on the pictures. It was also hard at first to figure out how to resize the pictures and change the resolution on them in the Preview application because I have never had experience with this type of thing.

What I would change:
I would make embedding the web album and google presentation easier. On both websites, you have to make sure you are sharing it with the public and then go on a scavenger hunt just to find how to embed the code somewhere! I would also add new templates to the google presentation because the ones that are available to choose from are not any that I would personally choose. It might be helpful to be able to create your own.


Use in the classroom:
I think scavenger hunts are a great way to get students involved in the subject matter. If they have actual real-life experience with the information, they are much more likely to retain the information later on. I think creating the web album and the presentation would really depend on the grade level. For younger grades, it seems that it would be too hard for them to upload the pictures, add captions, share the album, embed the code, etc. With the younger kids I would probably allow them to go on the scavenger hunt and then just share what they find with the class instead of creating all of the complicated things online. For the older kids, however, I think this is a great project for them to do, with scaffolding from the teacher of course!