Week 4. Retelling the Brolga story with pictures.

M & M's Graphs


The picture above is an aboriginal story of a boy seaching for the spirit of his fathers.
Retelling story with pictures is a very important way of teaching and learning. It helps children to comprehend and summarise stories. This is an activity that will reinforce sequencing in a story. I can mix the pictures up and ask students to rearrange them in order. I can cut sentence strips and ask students to put them in order. Also students can learn reading and vocabulary through this story. This type of story will allow students to learn how to organise and describe events which improves reading. It also helps students to analyse stories. Retelling stories in pictures enhances visual clue to remember the story. That is why Benjamin Franklin says, "Tell me and I will forget, Teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn".

The picture on the right is that of m & m graphs. It has a visual clue that enhaces learning. Students can use this activity to collect and analyse data. They can count the m&m's in colours, find out how many colours are in each bag and plot a graph with the number of colours in the bag of m&m's. Assuming different colours have different flavours, students will be able to tell how many flavours are in the graph. Students could be asked what colour has the highest number, discuss favourite colours and count how many colours are in each bag. What will happen if one colour goes in one bag and if some colours are fewer than others?

Using a spread sheet, abstract information can be represented in a conrete form showing the relationship between facts and concepts. This could be used to relate information to prior knowledge. Connections can be shown through lines, symbols, images, graphs etc. Students can engage in different activities with the spread sheet and their work can be displayed on the class wall.

WEEK 3, Frog Jump and Design Brief

Frog Jump activity

The workshop started with activity on designing a frog that can jump. We needed the cardboard, sticky tape and a rubber band. My partner and I started by sticking the frog on the cardboard paper. We folded the cardboard paper into two with one side longer than the other. We rapped the rubber around the folded line, the energy from the rubber band helped to lift the frog up when we flip it with a finger to make the frog jump. This is an engaging activity for the primary classroom.

Before starting the activity, the teacher will discuss safety issues with scissors and rubber bands. In this type of activity students use different skills and strategies to arrive at different answers.There is no right or wrong answer. If it did not work the first time, students could try different skills the second time. This helps children with problem solving and deep thinking skills. They can share what they created with the whole class. Pre-service teachers enjoyed this activity and I think students in the primary school will enjoy it more. Ativities with paper, scissors, sticky tapes is always good for engagement of students' learning. They can make paper planes, all sorts of paper crafts etc.

The second activity was game creation.
QUIA Mingling at a party (English exercise)
This exercise is very good to test students knowledge of words like two, too and to.

MATCHING GAME



I made this matching game which can be used to match world capitals. What a great way to teach children capitals and countries in the world. Quia website has got great fun activities for children. It could be used for making up a quiz in any subject area. The quia activities could be used to teach different aspects of litracy and numeracy-teaching vocabulary, spelling and multiplications. In geography- ordering the planets, surveys, evaluation etc. This website is mind blowing and is a great resource for teachers and students alike.

The two major influences that shape our lives are information and technology. Literacy and numeracy are so important for the future and so is technology. These subject areas are important for employment, enjoyment and life enhancement. If students are not competent in dealing with information technology, they will become less capable in operating in the future world. Technology is important in todays educational world. Some of the questions we need to ask ourselves are: Does the use of internet allow students to do something that can't be done another way? Does the use of technology allow students to do somethings in a better way?
What do the students need to learn and how can they learn it best? What can these tools do for the students?

Students can easily get bored by sitting and talking all the time. They need hands on activities such as information exchanges, data base creations, electronic publishing, information searching, peer feedback activities as we did in our webquest and problem solving activities that promotes deep critical thinking and collaborative learning. Teachers complain that there is no time to integrate technology but there are lots of sites that are free that can give teachers ideas of how to inco-operate technology into their curriculum and CyberBee is one of them.

http://www.gamemaker.nl/
http://gamedev.sourceforge.net/

Adventures of CyberBee.

Week 2, Gold Coast Holidays Flyer and E-portfolio

Technology is very important to equip learners for the 21st century.

Designing this flyer has helped to inspire my learning in computer technology. Engaging in a learning experience and seeing the outcome looking good and attractive could enhance motivation.

Learning technology is a very important subject for preservice teachers. It will help me to engage students learning in a very positive way. During my practical placement students always had free time on the computer doing whatever they want. When all the students are in the computer lab, they all had one computer each. The teacher still allowed the students to do whatever they want on the computer. The reason is that the teacher is not current with technology and for that reason, the computer lesson time was wasted. It is important that teachers update their knowledge in all subjects through professional development.

The teacher could use that time wisely by teaching the students how to design the flyers with microsoft publisher. They could plan a webquest on wiki or they could do something on blogger. The teacher could teach the students how to use a mind map to organise information. Students could even start learning about eportfolios in their computer lesson time.

Flyers could be used in science to make a flyer about zoo animals. It could be used to teach litracy. They could write about their holidays, showing all the fun activities involved and present it to the whole class. There are lots of templates for two fold and three fold cards as well as brochures. One can choose from different designs and add any images of thier choice. Students can put in their own drawings, photographs, pictures, clip art or personally designed logo. Microsoft publisher could be used to create different types of banners, brochures, labels, web pages etc. It will be exciting to use this technology in the classroom. Technology is great because it supports curriculum, learning objectives and outcomes.

members.shaw.ca/priscillatherourx/integratingtechnology.html