Moodle Post 3

I decided to see if I could find some information about people who have used Moodle and if they liked using it. I found a website that talked about people who have used it. The website is http://www.earlham.edu/~markp/cms/evaluations/faculty_05/spring_survey.php if you want to check it out. It basically talks about some professors at Earlham that have used it and and they have to answer some questions about Moodle. Most of the professors that used it liked it and thought that it doesn't take much time to learn it and that it helped with teaching but that the students didn't learn anything new by using it. Most of the professors that used it would use it again the next semester. I could not find a review from a elementary teacher though. I am curious to find out if it would be easy for a elementary student to use or not. I would like to try using it in my classroom though. I think the only way that you are going to find out for sure if it is for your class or not is to try it. If I am going to use it I would want to play with it during the summer to make sure that I know all the ins and outs of it. I would also want to try using it with another teacher so that we can discuss things that we learned about it.
I feel that technology is a great thing to bring in to the classroom. There are so many different things that you can do with it. I think each year that I am teaching I want to try something new. I also will have to be educated in the new technology that is out there.

Lessons Outside the Classroom Part 2

I researched some about the website moodle.org. I found it to be a good site for a teacher to use for her students. It could be used at school or at home. I would like to use it for my students to use at home. There is an option to make lesson plans, quizzes, forums, surveys, wikis, and they can even chat with each other on the website. I did not sign up for it but I did read the features demo for teachers. There was a wealth of information on there and was a little confusing. I find that when it comes to computer programs, reading them is confusing but when I play around with the program and work on it as I am reading it it is easier to understand. I think it is an excellent way to teach children in a different way. I could use it as more practice for a lesson that we are working on. There was also a place where you could see some other teachers lessons and see what they have done with it. The website also has a community where you can have forums with other users of the site. I found this site to be very informative and interesting. I think it would be a great way to incorporate the use of technology inside and outside the classroom.

Lessons Outside the Classroom

The issue that I am reasearching is how I can use the computer to have the students learn more on their own outside of the classroom. I think it would be important for the students who are not challenged in the classroom to have some outside work that they could do to make the class more interesting for them. It could also be used for the students who are struggling in the classroom to have some extra practice in the subject. I want to look at the site called moodle.org. When I read it in our book I thought it looked quite interesting. I want to see if I can experiment with it and see if it is worth using in my future classroom. I also want to find out if it can be used for all grade levels. I am interested in teaching Kindergarten so I want to see if it would be accomodating to them as well.

My Second Assignment Blog

Well I have finally completed my website. It was a very time consuming assignment. There are so many things to do on a website. There is the choice of themes, or templates, and you could choose both. I went with the simple choice because the templates could be difficult to work with. I had enough trouble trying to keep the color of my font when I added a link. I had pink font and when I went to add a link the font changed to blue. It was so frustrating to figure out how to change it back to pink. I sat for hours just messing with it before it finally worked.

The website project could easily be used in a classroom. It is an excellent way for a teacher to inform the students, parents and other teachers what she is doing in the classroom. It is a great way to connect to the parents. Teachers can use it to help each other keep up with the latest lesson plans and technology.

The web page will improve students learning in many different ways. First the student gets hands on experience working with a computer. The student also sees how a web page works. The teacher could even have the students make their own website if they were teaching older students.

This technology is very effective compared to the older technology. The students, teachers, and parents can stay informed of what is going on in the classroom. There would be more information passed along between teacher, parent and student. I will use the website that I have made in my future classroom.

Assignment Blog

I had never heard of the word portaportal until I had to create on in class. When I first heard of the word I was like what in the world is that. Porta what? Once I was told what it was I thought that it was a useful tool for anyone who works on multiple computers. I will definitely use this site during my career as a teacher. The really nice thing about it is that you can have guests look at your portaportal.

I can use my portaportal in my classroom by having my fellow teachers be my guests on my portaportal so they can see some of the websites that I have on there. Also, I can have the other teachers I work with share with me some of the websites that they like to use, and I can add those on my portaportal. I can also use it at any computer I happen to be at in the school. So if I were to work on something at home, I could put that site on my portaportal and be able to have access to it at school.

The portaportal will improve students learning because I now have a way of keeping important websites for the students to use right at my fingertips. I could also have a portaportal that is just for the students and I could give them guest access to it so that they just stick with the sites that I have on there and they are not searching all over and using sites that aren't as important to their learing.

I think that technology has come a long way over the years. When I was in grade school I do not remember working on a computer at all. It wasn't until high school that I remember taking a typing class. I think with all the technology that we have now the students are at an advantage because they have a wealth of information available to them with a click of a mouse.

My second blog :)

I had an interesting time on Thursday in class. We learned how to make a website. I was very overwhelmed. There were so many templates to choose from and then you had the option of doing a theme. I looked at some of the websites that the others from previous classes have made and they are neat looking. I hope that I can get mine to look neat too. I have to do some more research on other teachers websites to see how they made theirs. I live in Williamson county and the teachers there don't seem to have theirs on the schools website. I will have to look up some other counties to see if I can pull up some of the teachers websites. It surprises me that Williamson doesn't have some listed. So far I think the easiest thing to do in this class is the discussions and the blogs. I thought I was pretty computer savvy until now. I did not have the first clue how to make a website and now I have the knowledge but it is going to take some time to create a well designed site. I am a pretty creative person so I think with some time I can come up with a website that will impress a future employer.

Eled 3300 Thoughts and Feelings

Well I have been in Eled 3300 for three weeks now. I can say that I have learned many interesting things in the class so far. Last class we learned how to save sound files and pictures so that we can use them in websites or a power point slide. I had no idea you could do that. My power point presentations are going to look a lot better now. I can use this information to make my slide for my biology class. I can also use that in my future classroom. I also that that google maps was pretty neat. The only thing that I didn't like about it was that I couldn't go down my street. I could only drop that little guy on the streets that were in blue and my street was not one of them and my old house in Wisconsin was the same way. I had a laugh when I looked up my parents house because my mom was in it watering her flowers and my brother was mowing the lawn. I thought that was neat and creepy all at the same time. When I got home I showed it to my husband and boys. My boys, who are 4 and 5, thought that it was pretty funny. They thought that was what Grandma was doing right at that time. I had to explain to them that it was a picture that was taken a long time ago. I can't wait to see what more I am going to learn in class tomorrow!