PLE week 8

I watched the following people's projects:
Becky Ferguson
Katherine Kerr
Brooke Stevenson

I learned a lot from my peers voicethreads. I think that using technology with teaching science makes the subject so much more interesting to the students. All of the hands-on activities (with the technology) will be able to help the children learn more from the lesson taught than if it were taught with just a lecture. Technology helps the children be able to connect what is being taught with their every day real world. Therefore, they will be able to automatically keep their newly gained knowledge in their long-term memory. All of the different ideas for the different types of technology make it fu nfor the students, and helps them to learn more about the subject than without using the technology.

week 8

This is my voicethread. I did it on the 2nd grade, standard 3, objective 2, indicator d for science. The students are supposed to be able to describe different weather patterns through drawing pictures of the different types of weather.

week 7

My voicethread will demonstrate to other elementary teachers and the administrators in a school district how the program Kidspiration can be used for a science project for kindergarteners. It will demonstrate how it can be fun and educational for the kindergarteners to learn about the seasons. I will specifically use the weather and the seasons activity in Kidspiration. This activity helps children organize what kind of weather each season has according to the state that they live in. This helps the children identify what seasons are and what each season is like. It has pictures on the left-hand side, which the children can drag the pictures of different types of weather to a square on the right-hand side, labled with the corresponding season.

The content that I will focus on for my science activity is the kindergarten Standard 3, objective 1 part a. This is learning to identify the seasons and to represent them by drawing pictures of the seasons.

I will be using 2 pedagogies, one is observing and the other is classifying. Both are a good fit with the content, because the children will have to observe and then classify types of weather conditions that coordinate with each season.

The technology I'll be using is Kidspiration. I think that this is a good fit with the content and the pedagogy, because of a few reasons. First, the students can go into the Science activities section and choose the "seasons" activity. This activity has different types of weather pictures and the students put the pictures into each group (each group is a different season.) This way, the students are able to observe the types of weather, and also classify them by putting them into the different seasons.

PLE week six

I commented on the following blogs:

http://techbrooke.blogspot.com/
http://betsy-elizabeth-rodriguez.blogspot.com/
http://julsosa.blogspot.com/

I think that there are a few upsides and a few downsides to virtual tours. I think that if we use them too often, the students will get bored and not learn what they are intended to learn. Also, I think that virtual tours can be too distracting. There are a lot of pictures and others things that the students can click on and get distracted with. And lastly, I think that if they are used, sometimes the kids learn more about the technology than about what the objective is. On the otherhand, if virtual tours are used correctly, I think that they can be beneficial. For instance, they could help students visualize the locations of events in history better than on a regular map. Also, they can "visit" places that most will never be able to visit, and thus get more out of the intended lesson. And lastly, the students could be more engaged through a virtual tour than in a lesson with just a regular map.

Week 6 assignments

My tour teaches one of the social studies standards. It teachers students how humans have effected the environment of Utah to meet their needs.

here's the virtual tour

and here's the link to the tour on my google site.
http://sites.google.com/site/mrssapsite/home/virtual-tour

Week 5 assignment (PLE is located in the 2 comments below the chart)

Location	Activity Description	Google Earth Content
1.Kennecott Copper Mine	Measure the length of the mine, and have students tell you how the mine has changed the environment, and how it has benefited people's lives.	use the ruler tool
2.Deer Creek Reservoir	Read the wikipedia page on the reservoir and have the students give reasons why the reservoir was made and what it is used for.	make sure the geographic web, wikipedia layer is turned on
3.UTA TRAX	Follow the lime green line that follows the length of the TRAX with the ruler tool. Why would people need to use public transportation for that distance?	use the curser to follow the lime green line, and make sure the geographic web, roads layer is turned on
4.Civilization	Look around Provo and find at least 4 different ways that humans have changed the environment to meet their needs or wants (i.e. neighborhoods, parks etc.)	make sure all of the geographic web layers are turned on.