Reflection of my Semester Blogs

This past semester I was challenged to write many many many blogs on information I barely understood (hahaha). But through late night studying I think I finally grasped the concept of them all. Now how well I transferred that information was transferred to you, I rather you be the judge! But in this case you cant be because Mrs. Keesee wants me to be the judge....Thanks!

I have reread all of my blogs and I can honestly say I have seen the change of lazyness to being very intrigued in my assignments. Over a course of time I can tell that I have come out of my shell and began to explain what I was learning more in depth. I think sometimes I have overwritten things and said the same things twice and in different ways. One thing that I notice that I could have done was add more links or references. I think with written work, visuals are great no matter what your age may be. What I like the most about blogging is that through the blogs I can see how much I have learned. One way for me to prepare for test throughout high school and middle school was to write the information until I gained the understanding of each concept. This is what blogging has allowed me to do.
I would love to think that Reading is Essential was a post worth revisiting because I don't think a lot of people realize how important it is to encourage reading to children. Even if it is just looking at a picture and telling what one may think is going on. For the children that is reading!!!! Everytime I do a major transition in my class, my children are sitting with a book because I want their mind to think and put concepts together.
What suprised me most about my blogs was my grammar...I think you can tell I didn't do a great spell check (sorry!) Other then that I think you can feel the energy and my excitement about the topics I enjoyed writing about the most!

Technology in Early Childhood Family Education Classrooms

I attempted to embed this video but they have a block on the video so that no one can embed it. You guys can still check it out though!

I chose this video because it is a dream of mine to be able to use a smartboard in my classroom. I have said previously how I wanted to fill out the information to get a grant and get one but I am having problems getting the people over me to allow internet access in my classroom! Bummer, right?

Well, while I am waiting on that, I will still educate myself on ideas on how I can use them. I chose this video because it was preschool based and showed fun games for them to play. It showed how the teachers let the children play games that were appropriate for their age level and was still fun for the preschoolers. Circle time is critical in my opinion. Yes, while centers are important and you can have fun and learn in those too, what do you do when you have these new aged kids who do not have any interest in regular toys and are so technology based? I have some rather "fast paced" children in my room who attention is so hard to grab unless I pull my laptop out. I think the smartboard would be a great contribution to my room because I would be able to keep my children on the carpet for a longer period of time. The biggest obstacle I see with using youtube are all of the ads that pop up. You have ads that play for atleast fifteen seconds before your actual video starts, then you have an ad banner that pops up when the video comes on, you have ads on the side of the video, and then they list other videos that are related to the one you watch. I see a problem with that because you never know what someone will put as a title that may make the youtubers think it is a related video. I would hate for my kids to see any "racy", especially on my behalf. In some ways, I have already incorporated using youtube in my classroom. Now when you play a youtube video, they give you the option to download the video straight to your computer. I look up songs that are related to my topic or theme and then download them to my video library. I take my laptop and play the songs for my children at school. This has been an easier way for me to teach my children new songs instead of me just repeating it and them getting bored with my not so pleasant singing voice!

podcasting for dummies

Since Mrs. Keese wanted us to browse Youtube, I decided to find a podcast on the website. I chose the video , “Integrating Podcasting Into Your Classroom”. I used the rubric that was labeled “Podcasting Rubric”. If you follow it, it goes in order by Awesome Podcast, Cool Podcast, and L Podcast. I would label this podcast to be a “Cool Podcast”. It gave a great deal of information, utilized music transitions, cited other websites to use, and uses pop up information while she is speaking so that we may know the correct spelling for the information given. As you can see these may be great qualities to a podcast but it ended up being a “cool podcast” instead of an “awesome podcast”. Some things that I noticed throughout the podcast was that some of their music was too loud and I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Another major problem that irritated me was sometimes, two segments would overlap each other causing a commotion as well. In this podcast I learned about great software to use to create my own podcast, how and where to upload and download other podcast, as well as types of podcast to make and how they can be beneficial in my classroom. Over all it was a good podcast and full of information that showed us how to do things step by step as well as giving us great information!
Check It out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExkMeQfuLGc

Spreadsheets

As I have said before in my other blogs, I truly feel like spreadsheets and databases are too similar for me to explain to my group of preschoolers the difference. I just really try to stick to basic bar graphs. But a database shows comparison to things over time because you want to keep track on something as you go along. I chose for my database to do it daily on whether which one was more popular for that day but on my spreadsheet we will just choose which is our favorite over all. The children will only be able to pick one nursery rhyme to be their favorite. This will fit in the the NETS as creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, as well as critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making.

Databases

I teach a preschool class and I have been trying to think, how in the world can I create a database using nursery rhymes? I know this class is all about technology and doing things on the computer but to be able to show my children, we will make a paper database. Children at my age need to see what is happening and in large print. I am a big fan of making bar graphs in the classroom with my kids so I think I could set up a big paper that resembles a database to show on what days, how many children liked the nursery rhyme of the day. At the end of the week we can compare which day had the best nursery rhyme. The biggest disadvantage of this to me is that I have to use terms in my classroom for my children to understand. When I say " Ok guys we are going to create a database" I do not see anything about them that will make them excited. They may remember that we made a database and to know that is what it is called but will they truly understand the importance of it. Still to me it's just a fancier name and set up of a spreadsheet. I can still make the database colorful and exciting for them to look at though. Creativity and innovation is definitely one that can tie into this lesson plan with databases because  the way I can dress the wall database up can cause the children to be more intrigued. They will be communicating with me which ones they like most to me as well as their friends and explaining what they don't like about it. Giving me reasons why they do not like the particular nursery rhyme is causing them to have some decision making.

Word Processing

Word processing can be very fun for kindergarten kids. In kindergarten children will be learning cite words as they are beginning to read. A fun game that they could play on the word proccessor is matching rhyming words with pictures in the clip art.Advantages are that they can play with the keyboard and typing letters. They can play with the colors to change the font as well. This is a disadvantage for the kids are not computer savy and the ones who are struggling to read. That's why it is great that they have pictures.