Friday, March 15, 2013

Smartboards & ActivInspire


Hello everyone! Today I wanted to address interactive whiteboard and the program ActivInspire. These interactive whiteboards, or Smartboards or Promethean Boards are such a fun resource for the classroom. They leave traditional pencil and paper activites of the past behind and allow students to physically engage in a way they never could before. They involve the students in learning by allowing them to use different senses such as touching and hearing. I believe they allow teachers to save time by printing less and wasting less materials that can be found on the interactive whiteboard.
The program we have just recently been introduced to, ActivInspire, is such a fantastic tool to bring to the classroom. It allows teachers to bring real world experiences into the classroom, enhancing learning. This would definitely appeal to my kinesthetic learners who constantly feel the need to physically do the activity.

As a teacher, I have so many options of how to present information with ActivInspire. I feel like I will be producing well-rounded students who will hvae the capacity to work colloboratively and solve all kinds of different types of problems and scenarios based on their interactive learning. Overall, I really like the idea of using this helpful program, and can even see myself really enjoying putting the material together in a way that would meet the needs of a wide range of students.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Digital Images

Hello everyone! This past week we explired the wonderful world of digital images. I knew the basics about digital imaging, but never realized how indepth it went! So, I feel like I have really been exposed to a variety of concepts centering around digital imaging. I've have learned the importance of copyright and how to make sure certain images are fair to use while others are prohibited. I have always heard of different image types such as jpegs, gifs, tiffs, and pngs but never truly understood the sizes and differences between them. I enjoyed the group assignment to walk around Bailey Education Complex looking for photos. It was an engaging project, and also allowed me to work with people I didn't know as well. Our theme was "opposites" so we looked for opposites in all forms. We then were able to upload the pictures to google and create a presentation for our websites. It was useful to know how I could incorporate a presentation simply onto my own class website. I think it is useful to know the art of resizing and changing the resolution of photos, as well as understanding the laws behind images in general. This could be something fun and creative to use in my classroom.