Final Thoughts...

As the month comes to a close, I am really excited about everything that I learned during the class. There were a lot more tools that I didn't know about than I originally thought. The Web 2.0 tools were especially fun to learn about. The most beneficial thing I thinik we did in the class was the classroom web page. I can really see the use for this in the future. TPTE was fun and I loved learning new things everyday...although, spending so much time on the computer did get a bit old.

A Blog about Blogging!

Blogger is a blogging site powered by Google. Blogging stands for Web-Log. It is basically an online journal. Once you create your posts it stores them in reverse chronological order, with our newest post being showed first. You can share videos, pictures, links and a lot more using a blog. They are also interactive so friends and family and follow and comment on your blog. I found blogging to be really fun and I think I will definitely continue it in the future. I think it would be a great way to communicate with parents and students in my classroom.

Wiki Wiki What!

Wikis are a tool used to make informational websites. It allows you to create and edit an unlimited number of interlinking websites. Wikipedia is the biggest known wiki. In class we used PB Works, which is a tool used to create wikis in a classroom type setting. This summer we created one wiki for music resources and another for Web 2.0 tool. I thought that they were a great way for teachers to share resources with eachother but it might get a little complicated for studentsto make. I would definitely use them as a way to share information with my students, though.

My movie...Starring....ME!

We learned how to make a movie in Windows Live Movie Maker this week! It was a lot of fun but it was very time consuming. It was hard to figure out how to save it and how to get the transitions and captions exactly how I wanted them. I really enjoyed making the video and think it was worth it, though. I can see it being a great tool for creating an end of the year video for your students; but not for everyday use.

Animoto!

Spreading the love...of Spreadsheets.

Google Forms

Smile! You're on Smilebox!

Photo collage customized with Smilebox

This is my Smilebox artifact. I was assigned to research and present this web 2.0 tool to the class. Smilebox is a photo sharing tool that allows the user to create slideshows, collages and scrapbooks along with many other thiings. It even allows you to add music. The free version limits you in what are able to do, but not a lot. I can really see the benefits of using it in the classroom. Smilebox offers a "school" section that would allow you or your students to create a collage of the year, a school newspaper or a classroom newsletters! I think that it would be a great way to share pictures of classroom fieldtrips and events with the parents. I really enjoyed this Web 2.0 tool.

Inpsiration

This is the diagram I created in Inspiration 9. Inspiration 9 is a digital diagramming program that can be downloaded to your computer from the internet. It can be used to make webs, diagrams and graphic organizers. The program was very easy to use and was a great way to create an easy-to-read graphic organizer. I made my diagram about rhythms, breaking the rhythms down in to their smaller, subdivided, units. I can really see this as a really beneficial tool for my classroom. It would be a great way to introduce new concepts. There is another part of inspiration called Kidspiration that would be great for students to use to make their own diagrams!

Glogster

Digital Scavenger Hunt

The digital scavnger hunt was definitely a challenge. Our scavenger hunt was directly related to music. We were given clues and had to go find the musical instrument related to the clue. It was really hard for us since we didn't have easy access to every instrument.We even had to go online and get a few. The time constraints made it even more difficult; our team didn't finsih in time. I could see this activity being useful in other content areas but it seemed to be a lot of trouble for us (I imagine it would be just as hard, or harder, for our students.) It did, however, help us learn about Picasa, resizing, renaming and changing file types on images, so it was a beneficial in that aspect. I'm just unsure of how practical it would be in my area.

Wordle

On a Quest...a WebQuest!

Today in class we were able to explore WebQuest. WebQuest is something I have never used before so it was very exciting to learn! WebQuest is a web inquiry that supplies all the resources a student and teacher would need in order to complete an activity. In class, we started with the "WebQuest on WebQuests;" this activity allowed us to use a simulated activity to explore all of the functions of the inquiry. My job in this quest was the Affiliator. My group used the HS Humanities section. Using the 5 WebQuest that were given to us in the simulation, it was my job to decide whether or not the lesson promoted group work. The other 3 people in the group had to decide whether it promoted higher level thinking, was efficient and made good use of technology. We then had to collaborate to decide which WebQuest was the best overall; that was definitely the hardest part. We decied the that "Television & The Nixon/Debates" was the best one for all of the best categories. Our least favorite was the Intolerance one. It had misspelling, dead links and was an overall boring page.

Since the simulation site didn't really apply to music it was hard to see how it applied to me until we were able to use the search garden to search for WebQuests on our own using the QuestGarden Search Page. The Search Garden allows you to type in an subject area or topic and it brings up all of the WebQuests that relate to that topic. Using QuestGarden search page, I was able to locate so many activities  relating to to music. I found one that I would love to use in my classroom called "Who's Who of Music History." This WebQuest had the students fill out a composer "job application" using research they found and then present the information to the class!

I found that this activity opened my eyes to a tool that I could use in my classroom. Generally, when I see sites like this I get discouraged pretty quickly and think that I could never use it in my music room; however, it was quite the opposite. After doing this activity, I could definitely see myself using something like this to help teach my students about composers, music history and many other things. I did, once again, learn the importance of evaluating a website before using it. Since, in doing this activity, we found many pages with dead links, misspellings and outdated use of technology, it became that much more obvious. I am really excited to explore them more and be able to use them in my class!

Music Tech Teacher Evaluation

We are all familiar with websites for math and science games...but what about music? I found that this website evaluation project not only helped me find websites for my music classroom but find good websites for my class. I've never really thought to evaluate a website before I used it and this evaluation opened my eyes to all that I need to look at before exposing something on the web to my students.

Music Tech Teacher was a very good website and I found it to be useful for teachers and students. The website evaluation caused me to look at things like what system the games on the site required. For this particular site the games were run using flash player so the students would need to have flash player in order play the games; since it is typically a free download I don't think it would be a problem. Another benefit that I was able to find through using this evaluation was that the "author" of the website is a music teacher and she gave her contact information on the website. It's never occured to me that people would or should put their contact info on their websites!

I've honestly always felt that doing website evaluations was a waste of time but now I really feel like using this tool would help me in my classroom. Since there aren't many music websites I would want to make sure I had ones of the best quality for my students.

iBlog?!

Welcome to my very first blog! I have always wanted to blog but never had anything to blog about. My name is Sarah and I am a senior obtaining my licensure in Music Education, K-12. I'm very excited about all there is to learn in this class even though it is all "crammed" into a month. A lot of the technology that we'll be using i'm already familiar with but I know that there are also many things that I have never used before. I am looking forward to learning things that will be useful when I begin student teaching in the fall and in my own personal classroom for years to come. I can't wait to see what this month has in store!