Week 5

Wow, what a jam-packed class we had today! Lots of stuff to do and so little time to do it. I finished quite a few projects in this short 3 hour class. Have a look at my final products on the pages along the top of my blog. My Genius Hour Intro is complete, and it actually looks really good (not to brag, but I'm pretty proud of my work, since it was pretty confusing trying to figure out how to narrate and add music). So take a look at that, since I think it looks really good! I also finished my Genius Hour movie trailer (made using iMovie). It is kind of silly, but I made it and so I'm also proud of this project. I used all my own photos, except for a few and I think it's pretty cute. Also watch that if you have time! I figured out how to embed these videos on my blog, which actually didn't take too long. I'm feeling more confident about using technology and I think I'm getting much better at using it.

We also explored quite a few Learning Objects that we talked about in our Jigsaw groups. There were quite a few interesting new applications that I got to play around with and explore. I'll just briefly mention a few that I particularly enjoyed using, and hope to use in my own classroom. Thinglink is an interactive media that creates more engaging content by adding media links to photos and videos. You can make interactive bulletin boards, annotate maps and other images, create collages, and much more. Voki and Blabberize were very similar, you can create talking images or characters and have famous historical figures talk about their lives, define vocab words within a specific lesson/project, or have students choose their favourite book characters and record their favourite lines. I am using Wordle to create word clouds to add to this blog as my Learning Object (that will hopefully be up for you to see by the end of this week). 

I need to work on my TED talk, finish up my last two badges for my TPACK teacher quest, and finalize my Genius Hour project before this course is over, and I will have completed all my assignments for this class. So much to do and so little time! 

Wow, I can't believe it's the final class of my tech class. Before this course started I was nervous about what we would be learning, but now that it is over I am so glad I got to take this course. I learned so much about using technology in the classroom, and being able to use new technologies. I feel like such a tech savvy whiz (even though I know I could learn a lot more) and that I can use so many fun and interactive technologies in my classroom. I'm really happy that we had to take this course, because I learned a lot and had fun throughout this entire course. I hope to make my classroom just as enjoyable for my students as this course was for me. I will definitely be using the knowledge I gained in this course in my own classroom in order to make learning fun for my students. I personally believe that using technology for educational purposes in the classroom is extremely beneficial for students, especially in today's day and age.