Make a Movie or A Wild Thing!

Greg allowed us to explore many websites today which were so engaging and fun to use.  We made movies and even a portrait of ourselves as wild animal hybrids.  There are so many websites on the web which are fun activities for students to explore.  My favourite by far was the buildyourwildself.com where you can design your own vision of who you are as wild animal.  After the course today, I came home and showed my partner, Jason, as well as my best friend the website.  They both had a great time building their wildselves as I am positive most students would.  Not only was the wild self activity fun, after you have built yourself, you can find out about the animal parts you used and how they are important for the animals that possess them.

Another interesting website we visited today was Sketch Swap (sketchswap.com) where you sketch a picture, submit it, then receive someonelse's sketch from around the world.  This is an interesting way to view the world as globally connected as you can see how different people design, create and sketch what's on their minds.  As Greg stated, it is a little scary to bring something like this into a young classroom, as you never know what the swap will bring up, but still, an engaging activity.

My sketch

Swap sketch

Movie maker  (www.zimmertwins.com)

Movies using dfilm.com

M & M's & Mathematics/Dust Echoes Stories & English

Chocolate in the classroom, I really didn't think Greg could make these workshops any better, but alas he has this week!  Using M & M's as a mathematical tool in the classroom has to be one of the foremost motivators in any classroom in regards to learning maths.  I think each one of us had a little bit of a sugar high as we left the workshop class today. :)  Using Excel, we simply counted the colours of our M & M's and put them into a spreadsheet, which then allowed us to graph our findings--- easy as that Maths lesson!  Greg then gave us time to explore the M & M's website, where you are able to design your own M & M, which I did.  I then copied and pasted my photo in paint where I cropped it and placed it in Excel as a graphic, which spruced up my very simple graph.  

All with the click of a few buttons, I have learned that you can crop and paste any of the activities we do on the internet using Paint.  I have used this before, but never to the extent that Greg has shown us.  I am very thankful that Learning Technologies is incorporated into the Graduate Diploma of Education Primary program as the course and Greg as our instructor are filled with a plethora of tools for us to use. 

We also visited the website www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/ where we were able to watch the Dust Echoes dreamtime stories.  As I am an international student, I have been researching aboriginal culture and identity and dreamtime stories.  They are a multitude of beautiful stories teaching of love, friendship, family, war, country, law and customs which I have found to be very educational on a personal level.  The stories are beautifully illustrated and since they are short, they are so engaging for any age.  I chose to view The Mermaid, a story of personal growth, family, love and relationships.  It was a story of a man who felt worthless in his community and to his family who then embarked on a journey of self-discovery.  he encountered mermaids along his route who loved his company.  He stayed with the mermaids for quite sometime, but one day, he began thinking of the family he left behind.  The man began his journey back home and was greeted by the family that missed him so much while he was away.  I then used clips from the video using the print screen>paste to paint option to illustrate my story using Inspiration. 

Make Your Own Games Using QUIA- - - So Fun!

Playing games while learning something, what more could you ask for in a classroom?  Each week, Greg brings us some new and exciting opportunities on the internet to use in our own classrooms, which I have found to be absolutely engaging.  It was so easy to sign up for QUIA's (www.quia.com/web) 30-day trial, and to use their site to make games such as hangman, quizzes, matching games, flashcards and even word searches.  QUIA is a fun and interactive way for students to teach one another topics they are experts in, as we did in our workshop this week.  I chose to do famous Canadian figure skaters as my quiz, as I am the only Canadian in Group 2, I thought this would be a good topic to stump my peers with.  Surprisingly, with a little luck, some of my peers did quite well. 

It is so reassuring to know, that this course is not designed for our failure, but to make us the best teachers we possibly can be, by giving us tools we can use in our own classrooms, to make our classrooms the most engaging and fun, while actually teaching our students at every learning level, whether they are visual learners or hands on focused!  I find the learning technologies workshops extremely resourceful, as I am learning so many new things that I didn't think were possible, or easy.