Prezi

I created a presentation using the website www.prezi.com. This Prezi will be used with a 4th grade Social Studies lesson. We study the regions of our country and one thing we talk about is New York City and the Empire State Building. I have included pictures and a video of the Empire State Building Run-Up in this presentation. 

 Link to Prezi Presentation

Presentation Software

I am choosing to review the presentation site called Prezi (www.prezi.com). This is a new online presentation program in which you can create a presentation from a blank canvas. This is what the site looks like when you first open it:

When you start a new presentation, you can click anywhere and begin typing words, phrases, or sentences.

You can add pictures and videos and change the size of your text. For the text, you can rotate it and create frames around a group of words/images.

When you are ready to create your show, you decide what order you want things to be in and then click on Show to watch the final presentation. I think this is a great tool because it's something different than Power Point and I think it will certainly get people's attention. I did find it a little hard to use at first. I had trouble saving my Prezi file and then viewing it. I also was disappointed in the fact that there weren't many styles and fonts to choose from. I think it would be more visually stunning and interesting if there were more styles to choose from. I also didn't like that you had to pay an extra fee to be able to create and edit your presentations offline. However, since this is a fairly new tool, I'm sure many improvements will be made in the future to make it even more exciting. One review on the site Tech Crunch gave the program rave reviews. All of the other reviews that I read gave it positive reviews as well.

Create a Podcast Assignment

For my podcasting activity, I created a podcast with my class of 4th graders. In school, we are currently discussing respect. Our school is having an event on Friday, October 22nd called the Respect Walk-and-Talk. The students will be walking with a variety of students in the school and discussing respect. To prepare for this event, I had the students create a podcast in which they discussed what respect meant to them. We recorded about 5-6 students at a time. The link below is to the first group's podcast. The students first wrote out a script of what they wanted to say and rehearsed before they recorded. I am hoping to put this on my class website and the school's website so that all can listen and learn about respect.To upload my podcast, I chose to use a different podcasting site than the one I originally reviewed. I originally reviewed Juice as a hosting site, but had difficulty uploading my podcast to the site. I found a new podcasting site called PodBean and I think this site works much better! Here is the link to the podcast:

http://aseaner.podbean.com/mf/web/rycgch/respect1.mp3

 

Podcasting Assignment

I chose to review the podcast called Teaching with Smart Boards.

http://teachingwithsmartboard.com/

This podcast was created by 2 teachers, Dave Sladkey and Scott Miller. This video podcast includes a lot of great ways that Smart Boards can be incorporated into the classroom. Virtual demonstrations are great and walk you through the activities step by step. The earlier episodes review some of the basic concepts of using a Smart Board, such as sliding and revealing an answer. Later episodes introduce more advanced concepts. For example, in episode #74 titled Smart Board Notebook Math Tools Part 1 of 2, they discuss and demonstrate the new math tools that are available with the Smart Board (these tools cost extra money). They show how to make a variety of shapes and measure them using their angles and side lengths. In episode #75 titled Smart Board Notebook Math Tools Part 2 of 2, they show some of the advanced graphing features. They demonstrate how to make a line plot, bar graph, and other types of tables. This video podcast would be beneficial to anyone who has a Smart Board. It’s free, so you can watch all of the episodes online or download them for later. I have the iPod Touch and was able to download them and watch them on the go!

Podcasting Site

Juice

http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/

I chose to evaluate and share the program called Juice. This is a free program that you can download onto your computer that you can use to download and save a variety of podcasts. When you know the name of the podcast you want to download, you type the URL in the search box. You can set the program to automatically download the latest episode of the podcast when you open up the program. Juice uses RSS feeds to download new episodes. When you click on the podcast, it opens up in iTunes or another default MP3 player. There are also suggestions of various podcasts for beginners who don’t know where to begin. I think this site is easy to use, but is somewhat limited. I like how it lets you keep all of your downloaded podcasts in one place. After reading reviews online, most people had positive things to say about Juice. Everyone commented on how easy it was to use and how it saved time by automatically downloading new podcasts. The only negative things I read were about its appearance and that it looked old and reminded people of the old Windows user face.

Develop a Blog Activity

I chose to create a blog to help with my students' writing. This blog is designed for fourth grade students. This blog will be used for students to post their writing project for others in the class to read and give positive feedback to. Students will be given instructions on how to post their work and guidelines to follow when they choose to comment on one another's written work. The students will be encouraged to post written work frequently, but it will be suggested that they limit their posting to once a week so that other students have an opportunity to have their work read by others. I'm hoping that this format will let students confer with more classmates than they would be able to face to face. The more feedback they receive, the better their final piece will be. 

I attached the materials needed for this project on the blog. The students will be beginning with a narrative piece. I have attached the rubric to show how it will be graded, as well as a handout to give suggestions on coming up with an idea for a narrative topic. The documents were added through Google Docs. 

I chose to use this blogging software, Blogger, because I was the most familiar with it. I have experimented with the formatting and I have found it very easy to use. I also thing it would be easy for the students to learn to use through a few simple lessons. The Blogger site is also very helpful because if you don't know how to do something, there's a forum you can post questions to and someone will answer it. For example, I didn't know at first how to post a document because there was no link for documents in the editing box. I found out through reading the forum that I needed to upload my document to a site like Google Docs and attach the link in my post.

Here's the link to my blog:
W.O.W.--- Wonders of Writing