Scratch

Today we looked at Scratch, it is an innovation that can be used to create interactive stories, animations, games, music and art.
When these projects have been created they can be saved and shared on the web for everyone to see by using links to access.

This innovation has its good points and bad points in my opinion. Visually it is very engaging for students, they will be hooked on the characters and movements and all its features.
My bad point however would be that it would be hard to link scratch into education. Although they have provided us with ideas I think that personally I would find it challenging to implement this innovation into the classroom.


I think that the time it took to create animations and how fiddly the program is that it wouldn't be something that I would use when teaching my students. The only way I think that i could use it was if i made my own project and let the students view it. getting them to create their own project would be too difficult, because of all the different functions that are needed in creating projects.

Twitter:
Today we also made twitter accounts and started to use them. I think twitter is a great tool that could be used in a classroom environment, students and teachers could communicate via twitter. I think there are a few limitations or problems with twitter in terms of security and keeping students safe, also I think that students using twitter could get distracted when on twitter and become off task. It is similar to face book in some ways that it allows you to talk to friends and write updates and notifications and personally I find it hard to concentrate when in class and face book is on, so this may be a problem with using twitter as well. I like the idea about teacher and parent communications for parents who cant come into the classroom and talk to the teacher face to face.
I think that visually twitter is a useful tool for keeping students involved and helps students in becoming part of our technological society.

I think that I may see myself using twitter in my classroom once I have spent some more time getting used to it.
Good presentation
Thanks :)

This is my scratch

Scratch

Scratch is like a comic type application, we made animations and use features of scratch to make characters in the pictures move. I liked using this application though like the 2 students presenting I think personally I would find it hard to implement this in a classroom.

Today we looked at Google Docs, I got so many great ideas from this presentation.
Google Docs is a place online where you can invite people to share your documents rather than having to send through microsofy word. This was great as Simon and Miriam showed us how we could edit and change aspects of the documents online and press save and it would change the document for everyone, and many people at different times can edit the documents.
This is a great tool that I can see myself using in my classroom for homework and communicating with parents and students.
Great presentation great innovation :)

My Bitstrips comic :)

Bitstrips

Today we looked at Bitstrips.
It was great, I found it very educational and it is something I will consider using when I become a teacher.
I liked how it gives the students an opportunity to create characters and comic strips, and it can be used in a number of learning areas. It is an active hands on approach to learning and we were able to see you tube videos of students using the program and they really enjoyed it.
I can see a class using it and having lots of fun creating different characters.
In terms of the technology it was easy to use and easy to explain how to use, and it can be simplified (just getting them to make one slide) or made harder (making 2 or 3 or 4 slides)
The presentation was great and the group presenting did a fabulous job.
This is something that we use everyday in a similar program of Facebook, and this program is one children can enjoy to.
Bye for now
Caris