Interactive Whiteboards

After reading the article about interactive whiteboards, i think that we would all agree that they are a fantastic tool to use within the classroom. I think that interactive whiteboards would provide maximum engagament for any lesson and esepcially for your visual learners. However, in saying this i also think that like anything they would only be effective if used in a meangingful way for students. I dont think that this tool should be the be all and end all of every lesson, however when used in a meaningful context, i think they would be very beneficial.

Interactive whiteboards allow teachers to show students any thing which can be presented on a computer's desktop (educational software, web sites, and others).In addition, interactive whiteboards allow teachers to record their instruction and post the material for review by students at a later time. This can be a very effective instructional strategy for students who benefit from repetition, who need to see the material presented again, for students who are absent from school, for struggling learners, and for review for examinations. (Wikipedia 8/07)

There are a number of ways that interactive whiteboards could be used in the classroom, to support a number of lessons, such as the use of embedded resources such as maps to teach geography in a visual way, digital storytelling and to turn any worksheet into a virtual picture that can be highlighted, circled for english purposes etc.

I have not seen the use of an interactive whiteboard in action in a classroom yet, but if anyone has i would love to hear how it was used and whether or not it was an effective teaching tool.

Thanks Alice

References:

Wikipedia August, 2007.

PowerPoint

I just completed the tutorial on PowerPoint. I found the steps very basic and a little bit repetitive. I think this would be a great tool for the teacher to actually use with the students, because it works through step by step and it is very basic. I only heard the other day that we are meant to be teaching PowerPoint to students in year 1 now!!! This amazed me as i only recall learning about PowerPoint in year 6. I think that PowerPoint presentations are a great tool for students to use in schools. Both of my prac classes have used PowerPoint presentations as a digital portfolio tool, where everything they have learnt has been recorded from term 1 right through to term 4. I love this idea and think that PowerPoint is an easy, user friendly way to incorporate into any classroom. My year 2's are always updating their digital portfolio, and i have viewed them as a successful tool for the teacher, the student and the parents to track what the students have learnt throughout the year.

Thanks Alice

Voki's

I have just made my first voki and i think they are a fantastic tool, both inside the school and outside of the school. Vokis are a great tool that allow you to create pesonalized speaking avatars and use them on your blog profile, in email messages and even in powerpoint presentations. Vokis are a fun, easy tool that anyone can use to incorporate into a classroom setting. Personally i would use vokis for students to insert into their powerpoint presentations, as a fun, engaging tool. I would also see the benefit of using a voki for a retelling excercise, where even the shyest of students amongst the class can feel comfortable with using their voice embedded into a voki. I have only just begun finding my way through the voki site, however i hope to gain some more experience with these and hopefully become an expert on ways to embed them into my lessons (i'm sure there would be heaps) I also think they could be a good engagement tool for the teacher to use, to introduce a new unit of work to the class.Overall i think these are a great tool, and i will definately be using them in my class.

Authentic Assessment

Wikis

Hi,

I have had some experience with wikis and I have a slight idea of how they work, basically someone sets up a url to a wiki about a certain topic, there is information about the topic on the page, however this information does not need to be scholorally information and anyone(depending on the privacy settings) can add, alter or change the information??!!

Anyway thats my understanding of it. I think that a wiki in a school setting would be a great idea and if set up properly the students would love to interact with it. Of course the topic would have to have relvance to the unit of work and the inital set up would have to be done at school, however once set up , I think this is a great way to encourage students to research a topic and add their findings to a public space on the net such as this, where their thoughts are being shared and acknowledged by anyone. This type of ownership gives students the ability to showcase their knowledge and to further enhace and build upon others knowledge.

What an easy, free and non-time consuming tool for teachers to use to encourage their students to research and share ideas outside of school.

Thanks Alice

RSS Feeder maybe technology isn't so hard after all!!!

I was sitting in our lecture last week as everyone was talking about this thing called rss??? I sat there quietly and thought to myself what is rss and why do we need it.

I now feel a whole lot better about this rss 'thing' because i know what it stands for and I actually now realise that it is really useful.

Used to monitor other peoples blogs, it means that I don't have to endlessly search through my followers pages to see if anything new has been posted. Instead I can just visit my reader (which is google reader) and the job is done for me. It is then up to me to choose what i would like to or like not view.

How much easier and less time consuming is that!!! I am beginning realise that all of these technology tools aren't so scary after all and people have done the hard work for us! Yay

Thanks Alice

A totally new world! Exciting? Scary? Overwhelming???

Wow!!! This whole blog thing is a little bit scary and confronting to me, but I am actually kind of getting the hang of it. Being brought up with computers i have always thought i was pretty good at them, that is until now!!! I never knew that half of the things we have learnt about so far even existed, such as blogs, the word netiquette and moodle. I'm reassuring myself that there is another world out there and by the end of this course i will be apart of that other world.. Lets hope so anyway. Well i'm going to do some more exploring i will try to add to peoples blogs and i hope people will add to mine :)

Bye for now xo