Google Sites is a site creator, but not one I had ever used before, and my little experience in designing websites has shown me that there are several out there to choose from. While I found Sites to be a bit limited, it is simple to use, and free.
I decided that, since I am going into middle school education, I would choose a book to cover that I loved when I was in 8th grade, Flowers for Algernon. You can view the website here.
Using sites' interface, I selected a blank template to start with, and later changed the colors of the website to match some of the images I had put in there to make it look a little nicer. The image on the home page is that of the cover of the book. On the page titled "Characters," I listed a few of the major characters from the book, and a short description of who they are. Of the ones I could find a picture of, I searched Google for pictures of the characters as they are portrayed in the movie adaptation of the book, at least the ones I could find!
Finally, I created a page for external links that contain topics related to the themes of Flowers for Algernon, such as medically increasing IQ, and the treatment of mentally disabled people in society.
While Sites is a very simple-to-use and free tool to create a website with, it isn't quite as powerful or sleek as some of the ones I have used in the past. However, it is cheaper than most of those. The sites I have designed before have usually cost somewhere between $8-15 per month, especially if you want to register your own domain. So Google Sites is a free alternative if you're wanting to create a simple site free of charge.
It's easy to see how this could be used in a classroom to help students, or to teach students how to create their own simple websites. Just make sure that your students are old enough to use this tool, and that they aren't posting anything that could get you (or them) into trouble!
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Monday, May 18, 2015
GAIN - Google Forms
I, like many of you, had never used this software prior to this assignment. While I had previous experience with Documents and Sheets, Forms was something that until now I really never even knew existed, or what it even did. Now that I've seen how simple it is to use, and how it can make grading and quiz creating much quicker, it's something that I hope to take advantage of in the future!
I'm really glad we used Sheets before this, as reacquainting myself with the formulas in Sheets was very helpful in the grading portion of Forms. While I did view the tutorials showing me how to do it, most of it was very simple in comparison to what we were doing when we created our gradebooks in Sheets for the previous GAIN assignment.
When I went to create a form, I decided that I would do one on my favorite movies: Star Wars (the original trilogy). I'm a huge nerd, so they aren't the easiest questions for the uninitiated, but if you would like to take that quiz, you can do so here. When you are done, hopefully (if I did it right, anyway), you can view results here.
I do have to warn you, though, that if you pick Greedo for the question of "Who shot first," then it is an automatic fail. I'm mostly kidding.
While the assignment itself had us as teachers creating a quiz for our students to take, it was an idea in the Graham book that caught my attention as one of the coolest ways to use Forms in the classroom. It was mentioned that by allowing our students to create their own Forms and surveys, they can learn how to collect and use and interpret data for their own projects. I don't know why I didn't consider this myself, but this use would be a great way to meet a Common Core Standard, as well as assisting students in things like Science Fair projects, among other things. Taking a survey of their fellow students to see how many of them like different flavors of ice cream, and then using those percentages and numbers to create a pie chart or something similar would also be a cool project to do in class. There are tons of ways to use this software, but by using it this way, we are teaching our students to gather, prepare and interpret information in an easily accessible and simple-to-use way.
I'm really glad we used Sheets before this, as reacquainting myself with the formulas in Sheets was very helpful in the grading portion of Forms. While I did view the tutorials showing me how to do it, most of it was very simple in comparison to what we were doing when we created our gradebooks in Sheets for the previous GAIN assignment.
When I went to create a form, I decided that I would do one on my favorite movies: Star Wars (the original trilogy). I'm a huge nerd, so they aren't the easiest questions for the uninitiated, but if you would like to take that quiz, you can do so here. When you are done, hopefully (if I did it right, anyway), you can view results here.
I do have to warn you, though, that if you pick Greedo for the question of "Who shot first," then it is an automatic fail. I'm mostly kidding.
While the assignment itself had us as teachers creating a quiz for our students to take, it was an idea in the Graham book that caught my attention as one of the coolest ways to use Forms in the classroom. It was mentioned that by allowing our students to create their own Forms and surveys, they can learn how to collect and use and interpret data for their own projects. I don't know why I didn't consider this myself, but this use would be a great way to meet a Common Core Standard, as well as assisting students in things like Science Fair projects, among other things. Taking a survey of their fellow students to see how many of them like different flavors of ice cream, and then using those percentages and numbers to create a pie chart or something similar would also be a cool project to do in class. There are tons of ways to use this software, but by using it this way, we are teaching our students to gather, prepare and interpret information in an easily accessible and simple-to-use way.
TECH - iPad Disciplines
As I'm looking to get into the field of middle school teaching, in the realm of history (social studies), I figured I would choose three apps from the social studies section and review them. The three apps I chose to review are: This Day in History, Stack the States, and Your World.
App #1: This Day in History
I selected this app because I have always loved the little block of information on Wikipedia that is titled the same thing. Knowing what happened on this particular day hundreds to thousands of years ago is kind of fascinating. And while this app is very simplistic and basic in what it offers, that information can easily be used in the classroom. Loading up the app brings you a list of events that happened today throughout history. For example, as today is May 18, on this day in 1652, Rhode Island passed the very first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal. Also, on May 18, 1756, the Seven Years' War began when Britain declared war on France.
This is a neat bunch of info, and it literally gives you hundreds of events that happened on a specific day. One of the projects that I thought would be interesting for a classroom would be for every student to use this app to find out what happened throughout history on their birthday. Since you can use this app to find events for every single day, and not just the current day, I thought it would be a fun connection for the students to see how their special day lines up with events in history.
For example, my birthday is February 9. On February 9, 1895, the sport that would eventually become Volleyball was created. Also of extreme importance to me, and something I was unaware of until I found this app, is that The Beatles made their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on Feb 9, 1964, which was their first performance in America and broke American television records with an audience of 73 million viewers. I love the Beatles, but did not know this event was connected to my birthday!
There are other cool events that happened on my birthday, and that is just one of the project ideas we can employ that would use this app.
App #2: Stack the States
This is a game-like app in which the user is supposed to be able to identify the shapes of each state. The question comes up "Which one of these is Alaska?" And then it gives you a few options of state silhouettes to choose from. Selecting the right one allows you to place that state on a little platform, where your goal is to stack the states above a certain height line, which completes the level and allows you to progress further. It is similar to Tetris, in a way, but instead of trying to stack them in rows to make them disappear, you must stack them higher and higher to get above the line, while ensuring that you've stacked them evenly enough so that they do not fall over and off of the platform!
This is a fun little game that students can play that will help them to identify the 50 states better. There is also a country version of the game, as well, if you are doing world geography.
App #3: Your World
Your World is a neat little globe game in which you must go around the globe and place silhouettes of each country onto where it is located. One of the biggest issues I had with Your World is that it lets you place the initial 40 or so countries onto the globe, but then prompts you to upgrade to the "full version" for $3.99. So no, it isn't free. But it is fun, and I enjoyed the brief interaction I had with it on my home iPad.
One of the coolest things about Your World is that whenever you are placing a country, you can tap a button with a giant W at the top right of the screen and it will take you to the Wikipedia page for that country, which has loads of information. It does this for every country. And while some of the smaller nations of the world aren't included in this game (as they would be too hard to see on the global map), many of the large and medium sized countries are all there for the students to find and learn about. This would be a good game app for a world geography class to play. Just be aware that the game is not free.
App #1: This Day in History
I selected this app because I have always loved the little block of information on Wikipedia that is titled the same thing. Knowing what happened on this particular day hundreds to thousands of years ago is kind of fascinating. And while this app is very simplistic and basic in what it offers, that information can easily be used in the classroom. Loading up the app brings you a list of events that happened today throughout history. For example, as today is May 18, on this day in 1652, Rhode Island passed the very first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal. Also, on May 18, 1756, the Seven Years' War began when Britain declared war on France.
This is a neat bunch of info, and it literally gives you hundreds of events that happened on a specific day. One of the projects that I thought would be interesting for a classroom would be for every student to use this app to find out what happened throughout history on their birthday. Since you can use this app to find events for every single day, and not just the current day, I thought it would be a fun connection for the students to see how their special day lines up with events in history.
For example, my birthday is February 9. On February 9, 1895, the sport that would eventually become Volleyball was created. Also of extreme importance to me, and something I was unaware of until I found this app, is that The Beatles made their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on Feb 9, 1964, which was their first performance in America and broke American television records with an audience of 73 million viewers. I love the Beatles, but did not know this event was connected to my birthday!
There are other cool events that happened on my birthday, and that is just one of the project ideas we can employ that would use this app.
App #2: Stack the States
This is a game-like app in which the user is supposed to be able to identify the shapes of each state. The question comes up "Which one of these is Alaska?" And then it gives you a few options of state silhouettes to choose from. Selecting the right one allows you to place that state on a little platform, where your goal is to stack the states above a certain height line, which completes the level and allows you to progress further. It is similar to Tetris, in a way, but instead of trying to stack them in rows to make them disappear, you must stack them higher and higher to get above the line, while ensuring that you've stacked them evenly enough so that they do not fall over and off of the platform!
This is a fun little game that students can play that will help them to identify the 50 states better. There is also a country version of the game, as well, if you are doing world geography.
App #3: Your World
Your World is a neat little globe game in which you must go around the globe and place silhouettes of each country onto where it is located. One of the biggest issues I had with Your World is that it lets you place the initial 40 or so countries onto the globe, but then prompts you to upgrade to the "full version" for $3.99. So no, it isn't free. But it is fun, and I enjoyed the brief interaction I had with it on my home iPad.
One of the coolest things about Your World is that whenever you are placing a country, you can tap a button with a giant W at the top right of the screen and it will take you to the Wikipedia page for that country, which has loads of information. It does this for every country. And while some of the smaller nations of the world aren't included in this game (as they would be too hard to see on the global map), many of the large and medium sized countries are all there for the students to find and learn about. This would be a good game app for a world geography class to play. Just be aware that the game is not free.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
TECH - iPad Literacy
For the TECH assignment this week, I elected to review three iPad applications that I believe that we can use in the classroom to enhance our students' ability to learn and create. The apps I reviewed are Dictionary, Drawing Pad, and Strip Designer.
App #1: Dictionary
Dictionary is... well, it's a dictionary for the iPad. While it may seem basic and self-explanatory, Dictionary offers a search feature for hundreds of thousands of words. Once you select a word that you are searching for, Dictionary provides you with that word's meaning (or meanings, if there are several), the pronunciation of the word, and other information that is provided by standard, book dictionaries. One of the best things that Dictionary offers, however, is a thesaurus tool. Any word you have searched in Dictionary can be linked to a thesaurus as well, providing you and/or your students with a list of synonyms to use when writing papers! It is this option that most impressed me when I booted up the app.
With the thesaurus tool, the dictionary-like features, and the simple fact that it is just more easy to use than flipping through hundreds of pages in a physical dictionary, this is a must-own app. Considering that it is free to download, there is no excuse why every iPad in every school shouldn't have it.
App #2: Drawing Pad
Drawing Pad, at first, seems like a simplistic drawing tool with which you can create fun little images to share with friends. And while that is mostly true, there is a lot of depth if you're willing to play around with it a bit. Drawing Pad offers lots of drawing tools. Colored Pencils, markers, crayons, and more make up the basics, but there are also some really cool backdrops you can insert that are already made, as well as several of what I call "stickers" to import to your drawing. These "stickers" are premade images like cars and rocket ships that you can insert into your drawing. So even if you aren't skilled enough to draw your own detailed car, you have an image you can go ahead and put in there that doesn't rely on your artistic skills. Doing this, you can still draw around the image, adding all kinds of flair and fluff to it.
One of the coolest features for those old enough to use e-mail and social media is that you can share any drawing you create on Twitter and in an e-mail from an in-app button. So if you're really proud of that cat you drew, you can send it to your friends or share it with the world with an easy tap.
Drawing Pad is a great little tool that will allow students (and anyone else) to express their creativity, even if they aren't the most artistically talented person out there.
App #3: Strip Designer
Strip Designer is an app in which you can create your own comic-book-like pages using pictures or images you've drawn. While it's too simplistic and limited to use to create a real comic book experience, it is a fun tool to use to create humorous to memorable images and organize them in a comic book format. You can take photos of your friends and place them in the different panels on the page, and from there you can move them around, add speech bubbles, stickers, and classic 1960's Batman-like "sound effects." So if you want to use a picture of one of your friends smacking another friend in the face, you can add a "ZONK" effect to the page to give it a more humorous effect.
This would be a fun way to let students express themselves by taking photos of all kinds of things and letting them play around with the app to do all sorts of projects. While it isn't the best app of its kind that I've used, it does have some nice features, but I think I prefer Comic Life to this one, personally.
App #1: Dictionary
Dictionary is... well, it's a dictionary for the iPad. While it may seem basic and self-explanatory, Dictionary offers a search feature for hundreds of thousands of words. Once you select a word that you are searching for, Dictionary provides you with that word's meaning (or meanings, if there are several), the pronunciation of the word, and other information that is provided by standard, book dictionaries. One of the best things that Dictionary offers, however, is a thesaurus tool. Any word you have searched in Dictionary can be linked to a thesaurus as well, providing you and/or your students with a list of synonyms to use when writing papers! It is this option that most impressed me when I booted up the app.
With the thesaurus tool, the dictionary-like features, and the simple fact that it is just more easy to use than flipping through hundreds of pages in a physical dictionary, this is a must-own app. Considering that it is free to download, there is no excuse why every iPad in every school shouldn't have it.
App #2: Drawing Pad
Drawing Pad, at first, seems like a simplistic drawing tool with which you can create fun little images to share with friends. And while that is mostly true, there is a lot of depth if you're willing to play around with it a bit. Drawing Pad offers lots of drawing tools. Colored Pencils, markers, crayons, and more make up the basics, but there are also some really cool backdrops you can insert that are already made, as well as several of what I call "stickers" to import to your drawing. These "stickers" are premade images like cars and rocket ships that you can insert into your drawing. So even if you aren't skilled enough to draw your own detailed car, you have an image you can go ahead and put in there that doesn't rely on your artistic skills. Doing this, you can still draw around the image, adding all kinds of flair and fluff to it.
One of the coolest features for those old enough to use e-mail and social media is that you can share any drawing you create on Twitter and in an e-mail from an in-app button. So if you're really proud of that cat you drew, you can send it to your friends or share it with the world with an easy tap.
Drawing Pad is a great little tool that will allow students (and anyone else) to express their creativity, even if they aren't the most artistically talented person out there.
App #3: Strip Designer
Strip Designer is an app in which you can create your own comic-book-like pages using pictures or images you've drawn. While it's too simplistic and limited to use to create a real comic book experience, it is a fun tool to use to create humorous to memorable images and organize them in a comic book format. You can take photos of your friends and place them in the different panels on the page, and from there you can move them around, add speech bubbles, stickers, and classic 1960's Batman-like "sound effects." So if you want to use a picture of one of your friends smacking another friend in the face, you can add a "ZONK" effect to the page to give it a more humorous effect.
This would be a fun way to let students express themselves by taking photos of all kinds of things and letting them play around with the app to do all sorts of projects. While it isn't the best app of its kind that I've used, it does have some nice features, but I think I prefer Comic Life to this one, personally.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
GAIN - Google Sheets
When I was in middle school, I had a computer/keyboarding class where we learned how to use Excel during a 2 or 3 week lesson. It was my least favorite portion of that class. Excel, at the time, seemed obtuse, awkward and like a lot of math formulas that barely made sense to me. I was able to learn most of it, but figured I'd be unlikely to use it again because of how much I disliked it.
Yet, here I am. Using the Google version of Excel, Sheets. And since it has been over a decade since I last learned how to effectively use Excel, I had to start basically from scratch when dealing with Sheets. But I am very glad that I did, because even though there are still a few of the functions and formulas that I'm unclear on, and the overall math portion of the program still looms over me like a hazy cloud at times, I realized how useful this kind of software will be when recording grades in a classroom. It helps to organize, and if a mistake is made, it is easily correctable by simply deleting the former information and inserting the new. No extra math is required, because the program does it for you. That's incredibly convenient.
You can view my gradebook here. And in case you're wondering, yes... those are the names of the Avengers. If you're wondering why I failed the Hulk, it's because he was prone to disappearing for long stretches of time. I live in constant fear of being smashed for this.
Back on topic, I surprisingly ended up enjoying my time with Sheets. It's a program that I will definitely take advantage of in the future, now that I remember how to use it. I'm looking forward to reacquainting myself with what I once considered my nemesis.
In the Graham book, it was discussed about how Sheets can be used to help students with Math, especially, but it also can be used to help them digest and interpret information from images with the way that one can make charts and put them in the Sheets document, as well.
I hope everyone else was able to use Sheets effectively. Even if you found it confusing, it is definitely useful. I think it is worth learning and sticking with.
Yet, here I am. Using the Google version of Excel, Sheets. And since it has been over a decade since I last learned how to effectively use Excel, I had to start basically from scratch when dealing with Sheets. But I am very glad that I did, because even though there are still a few of the functions and formulas that I'm unclear on, and the overall math portion of the program still looms over me like a hazy cloud at times, I realized how useful this kind of software will be when recording grades in a classroom. It helps to organize, and if a mistake is made, it is easily correctable by simply deleting the former information and inserting the new. No extra math is required, because the program does it for you. That's incredibly convenient.
You can view my gradebook here. And in case you're wondering, yes... those are the names of the Avengers. If you're wondering why I failed the Hulk, it's because he was prone to disappearing for long stretches of time. I live in constant fear of being smashed for this.
Back on topic, I surprisingly ended up enjoying my time with Sheets. It's a program that I will definitely take advantage of in the future, now that I remember how to use it. I'm looking forward to reacquainting myself with what I once considered my nemesis.
In the Graham book, it was discussed about how Sheets can be used to help students with Math, especially, but it also can be used to help them digest and interpret information from images with the way that one can make charts and put them in the Sheets document, as well.
I hope everyone else was able to use Sheets effectively. Even if you found it confusing, it is definitely useful. I think it is worth learning and sticking with.
TECH - Safari vs Rover
While most of us have used Safari in one way or another (it's basically the Mac version of Internet Explorer, but a bit better), Rover was something I had never even heard of before. Once I had started to play around with it, I realized why I hadn't heard of it before: because it isn't very good, and because it isn't very free, either.
In comparison to Safari, Rover has several restrictions placed on it. This is because it was created as a browser that can be safe for kids to use. However, this is also its downfall, as it kept me from visiting a handful of sites that, in my opinion, were completely safe for kids to visit, like certain sports themed websites.
Rover also is not free, at least not if you want to take advantage of all of its features. There is a free version of Rover, but in order to use features like Flash and video streaming, you have to pay the one time fee of $9.99. Which is odd, because most web browsers offer services like this for free. I've never had to pay Firefox just to be able to use Flash. And while Safari and Flash may be incompatible, Rover's lack of ability to let you freely search the web without restriction makes that particular feature moot in some cases.
Overall, I doubt I'll ever consider purchasing Rover, or using it at all. While the Flash option might be nice, I don't like the restrictions or the fees involved.
That said, Rover probably would be a decent web browser to use in elementary schools, because of its restricted access to filtered websites. But for anyone in high school and above, its restrictions are more limiting than anything else.
In comparison to Safari, Rover has several restrictions placed on it. This is because it was created as a browser that can be safe for kids to use. However, this is also its downfall, as it kept me from visiting a handful of sites that, in my opinion, were completely safe for kids to visit, like certain sports themed websites.
Rover also is not free, at least not if you want to take advantage of all of its features. There is a free version of Rover, but in order to use features like Flash and video streaming, you have to pay the one time fee of $9.99. Which is odd, because most web browsers offer services like this for free. I've never had to pay Firefox just to be able to use Flash. And while Safari and Flash may be incompatible, Rover's lack of ability to let you freely search the web without restriction makes that particular feature moot in some cases.
Overall, I doubt I'll ever consider purchasing Rover, or using it at all. While the Flash option might be nice, I don't like the restrictions or the fees involved.
That said, Rover probably would be a decent web browser to use in elementary schools, because of its restricted access to filtered websites. But for anyone in high school and above, its restrictions are more limiting than anything else.
TECH - iThoughts
iThoughts is a unique piece of idea-webbing software. It allows one to create an idea-map (which my gradeschool teacher referred to as a web, because of its similarity in appearance to a spider web), and use text, pictures and links to map out ideas and information. The cool thing about iThoughts is that it is incredibly easy to use, offering touch based controls to allows you to place your thoughts all over the map with ease.
It's easy to see some places where one could use iThoughts in education. I mentioned above that in grade school, we learned about mapping our thoughts in this way, so designing a lesson on this technique while using iThoughts to teach it would be one way. Another is for mapping out ideas and information when students are learning how to effectively write stories, essays and research articles for class, or when they are working on big projects that require a lot of planning.
Not only would it be useful for students to learn how to use, but teachers can also use this powerful tool in lesson planning as well, allowing us to organize our thoughts and ideas for each lesson onto one map.
So there are just a few ways to use iThoughts in the classroom. It's an easy-to-use, helpful piece of software that I'm looking forward to using.
It's easy to see some places where one could use iThoughts in education. I mentioned above that in grade school, we learned about mapping our thoughts in this way, so designing a lesson on this technique while using iThoughts to teach it would be one way. Another is for mapping out ideas and information when students are learning how to effectively write stories, essays and research articles for class, or when they are working on big projects that require a lot of planning.
Not only would it be useful for students to learn how to use, but teachers can also use this powerful tool in lesson planning as well, allowing us to organize our thoughts and ideas for each lesson onto one map.
So there are just a few ways to use iThoughts in the classroom. It's an easy-to-use, helpful piece of software that I'm looking forward to using.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)