TPTE - Overall

I was not sure what to expect with this class, I heard many horror stories. I didn't think that after this semester I was going to be turned on to Mac's because I have always said I would never use them. I haven't  used any of the different technology projects that we have used in here before. It was a great experience to learn different strategies for the classroom even if I didn't enjoy them all. 


I am really glad that we have to take this class, because I felt that I have actually learned. Usually with other classes I come away without anything that I will actually use. I have already taken all of this into the classroom with me at TSD and showed the kids what I have been working with. 


I do not say this much but I think that I have actually grown from this class and will continue to use what I have learned to make my classroom more exciting and involved in technology.

Classroom Website

This was a fun project for me. I feel that I will really use this in the classroom. The only thing that gets me is what happens if there are a lot of low income families that do not have a computer or easy access to a computer...how to I let them know its there without making them feel bad or that I am not trying to reach out to them? Do I only use it when I am in the classroom with the students and if I were at the deaf school the cottage staff (the kids live in cottages on campus if they are from far away and they have staff that act as guardians to the children) to use with the students when doing homework.


I feel that at first you look at this whole task and thought that it was going to be crazy hard, but once you got a few pages created and learned your way around the site it was easy!


I created a new classroom blog and added a bunch of pictures to my website, so that it was more interesting. I added all of the projects that I have created this semester, this way I will have them all for the future. I made a daily schedule and a reading list for parents to look at. There are also all the websites that we have found all semester that can help students and parents with different subjects. 


Overall this was a nice way to sum up all of our work this semester in one last project. 

Digital Story - Camp Koinonia

This was my FAVORITE project! I had a little bit of a problem at first picking what I wanted to make a project on. Then I thought about camp. This is something that is not only important to me...but also to my mom! 


My mom went to Camp Koinonia in 1980 with Doc (my same teacher) at Virginia Tech. Then when I moved to Tennessee I saw this class and signed up for it without knowing it was the same class. My mom and I were talking about my schedule and I said I was taking Camp K-Something...she pulled out her shirt and it was the same class! 


I have done camp two years in a row now and last year I was a head counselor for Me Hearties. I was the best experience of my life. I wish that I had time to do it this year, but since I am graduating in May there is no time. 


I really liked how easy it was to pull the pictures into iMovie and use iTunes to pick my songs. The only thing that bothered me was that we could only use 30 seconds of a song. I wish that we could have used them for a longer time. 


I cannot wait to use this in my classroom. I want to be able to make one for the first day of class, so that I can show my students who I am and then I can have them make one about themselves. I think that this is a great way to bring technology into the classroom. I love creative projects and this isn't very complicated so it would be easy for students to do. 


Once I got the hang of how to put the music it was easy. The hardest part was waiting for the video to export. I am not a patient person when it comes to that stuff! 


But I hope you enjoy and get a feeling about what this camp experience is like :) 

Spreedsheets- Excel

This has been my least favorite project yet. I don't think that I will ever use this in my classroom EVER. It was not fun to make, and I don't think that I would like to do a quiz like this in my class. It is an interesting idea to have them use the computers for this kind of test, but all it did was frustrate me.

 I used my idea with the planets again, to go along with what we are working on in the deaf school. I ran into the problem of having to double up on planets because you needed to have ten questions and there are only eight planets now. I think another thing that I would have to do for the kids that I work with would be adding a word bank. Spelling can be hard and not getting it perfect would cause them to get a wrong answer. I don't like the fact that the spreed sheet is only one page and it was hard to get a good picture on it that wasn't too small. 

Overall the instructions we easy to follow it was just a lot of going in a unlocking then locking and hiding and protecting and if something didn't work right you have to go back in again. I never knew that you could lock a spreadsheet so that the next person to look at it couldn't change it, but what is preventing a child that knows how to do that from unlocking it? I guess that would be where you would need the password. 

I hated having to merge the cells and then work on putting the writing up at the top and not the bottom, it was a lot more editing then I would like to use. I like tools that are easy and to the point. It is good that I know how to do this, but having to do this over and over along with all the other planning would drive me insane! It was a good learning experience. 

Inspiration Project- Inner Planets

This was my Inspiration Project- I am volunteering at Tennessee School for the Deaf this semester in a science classroom and we are working on the planets so I thought this was a great time for me to learn more and base this project on them. 

I really liked Inspiration but the one downfall is that you have to buy the program to work on it at home or away from the lab, which I don't like. I like to work on things at home- when I can really focus and not being able to do that really stressed me out. 

The program is not hard to navigate around, all the information that you need is at the top in the tool box. It took some time to figure out where to click to add a new bubble off of the one I wanted it off of. I also kept clicking on the arrange button thinking that it would arrange them close to what I wanted but it really moved them and I had to start all over so you could see all the linking words. Changing the font and colors were easy- I chose something that looked more like the night sky with all the planets in it. I also attached the last four planets that Trisha talked about. (there is a link to her blog later!) 

I was worried at first I was going to have to find all the different pictures of the planets but Inspiration had them under 'Science' and then 'Space.' This was really helpful, because they were all the sized right, and they didn't have a background that I would have to worry about. 

I like the notes, I was able to add extra information and then those could hid- but I left them up in the picture so that everyone can see what information I added. We also had to use a link, so my main title, "Inner Planets" links to a NASA site, that allows the students to read more about all the planets. There are questions and other facts about the planets in a kid friendly way. 

Trisha Wall and I split up the planets and she did the outer ones. This way if we were team teaching one of us could go through the first four and then the other would go through the last four. This is Trisha's Inspiration that would be  taught after we went through the inner planets. 

They show the connection to each other by having the planets that are next or the planets that were already covered. 

Deaf Ed Project

Interview Presentation on Prezi

I was using this to keep track of my project just incase it didn't work in class I had it on my blog! But I learned how to do this from this class...so I figured that I would keep it up here! This was my second time doing this and it keeps getting easier. I has some problems with how to get it started in class but that maybe because it was on a computer that I am not used to using?! 

Extra Credit - SmileBox

I decided to use SmileBox instead of Animoto, because I think 30 seconds is too short of a time for the movie. I want to work with elementary school kids and this would be a great activity to make about their family. This can help them develop family vocabulary. They can take pictures of everyone and then put the words with them when we print it out, we can also add pictures of the signs so they can see them over and over. We can make a classroom scrapbook with posts like this of different things that we have learned. This allows the students to be creative and use technology and learn.

Here is one of mine of random pictures from this summer, I have some of my dad and my mom and my friends and at the Capital back home!! Things that are important to me. That would also be a great introduction activity for the students to learn about each other and things that they like. This can help as an ice breaker and create new friendships for things they didn't know they had in common.  This can also be neat to show parents on back to school night as a collection of our work. We can make them for field trips and then type up different stories of what the children saw or experienced. That can help with writing.

This picture collage generated with Smilebox

Here is another one!! that I did on Camp Koinonia 2010! and my cabin group :) The Me Hearties!!! This shows about the different activities that we did and how we dressed up. I really LOVE LOVE LOVE this web 2.0 tool!! I am going to use this myself!! I think that I am going to ask my parents to pay for this for me so that I can print them or save them on a disk and take them to CVS and get them printed out and framed!! I think I am going to use this for Christmas cards this year too :) 


I really like how when you preview them off the blog, you can have music and then you can click on the individual pictures to in large them. 

ABC Scavenger Hunt- Prezi

I haven't ever done a Prezi so I decided this would be a good time to try one!!!

Our assignment was ABC Scavenger Hunt- we were looking around campus for the letters A-L. We first started to look for the actual letter, but then changed our photos to something that started with that letter. Here are what we found...

A- Amphitheater 

B- Bus

C- Car

D- Door 

E- Emergency 

F- Fire Hydrant

G- Gate

H- Hill

I- Intersection

J- Jeans

K- Khaki 

L- Leaves

After we collected them we came back and resized them in photo shop and then saved them onto our flash drives. Then we all made individual projects. Here is what mine looks like!

ABC Scavenger Hunt on Prezi

Since I am a deaf education major and will be working with students learning sign language I added the letters of the ASL alphabet. This way the students can see the letters, the picture and the signs.

I love this idea, I could really see me using this with my classroom! Having them go out and look for things around the school and take pictures of them. To be honest I won't use Prezi anymore because I had a problem getting the embeded link to work...When I would post in on here it would only show what I copy and pasted, not the actual show. I think that if I were going to be doing this with my students I will probably have Google Presentations or Power Point so that we don't have that problem. I do like all the different ways that Prezi can move around the board and its not boring...but it was hard figuring out all the sizing and where to place thing.

I had never used photo shop before today and it was actually really easy to resize the image but it took awhile to do all of the pictures. It would be nice if we could resize one of them and then they all do it.

Overall this was a fun different activity that involved us using many different technology aspects we have been learning this year. :) 

My Classroom Website

I was worried about doing this activity...I have never made a website or had any desire to do it, but as I have been working on it I feel like I am turning into a pro! I figured out how to do the background and add one from the website that Ginny showed us in class (http://backgrounds.mysitemyway.com/). I have been playing with the font colors and adding different pictures to make it interesting. I feel like now I am more comfortable I am personalizing it so that my students and parents could really get to know me! 

I wish that my teacher had this when I was in school because this is a great way to have the students look  at assignments and have all the resources located in one spot. I will use this in my classroom- I am going to save all the websites that we have found on the wiki and I will have special activities listed, extra practice, maybe even an extra credit project (something fun like a scavenger hunt...) I could have a section where I could have an about me for the students so they can each write something in class, then we can edit it together and take a picture and post it on the website. This way the students can feel like it is their website! 

I could see this being really helpful in a general education school for the group of teachers to communicate with all the students and parents or even just with each other. I know in my elementary school we worked as a team even though we were in different teachers classrooms. We did major activities together, like "west-ward-ho" where we all build wagons and then packed them with items that we needed on the trip. Then we all dressed up and walked around the field at school like we were traveling west. The teachers could have used the website to communicate with parents what was needed, provide pictures and even some extra reading assignments. 

Now that I understand how to make a website and can do it for my classes and even for other school projects that I have to do!! This was one of the most beneficial projects that we have done so far. 

Oh yea!!-- Here is the link to my classroom website (https://sites.google.com/site/meredithsdeafclassroom/home) 

Picasa- Web Albums- Maryland!

I really enjoyed doing this project! I like being able to have a choice and create something that shows who I am. I chose to do an album based off my home state, Maryland!!! I was born in D.C. but moved to Maryland when I was four, and lived there till I was 18 and moved to college. We had to find five images, one from a digital camera, one that we scanned in, one that we found from a free website, one screen shot, and one from the big box of art. This was my first time using Picasa, it was really easy. You just upload an image and then you can edit it and go to Picnik and it will save it back on the album for you. I only played with one of them in Picnik (the one that is the screen shot of my house I did a border).






I think that in a classroom I would use this at the beginning with the students and have them show me a few things about themselves. I don't think that I would make them find images from different places, I would let them bring in pictures and we could scan them in or I can bring in my camera and we can take pictures. This way they can introduce themselves and start to learn about their classmates. I could also use this with children that don't know many signs and take pictures of me doing the signs or from a book or even teach the kids the signs and take pictures of them doing it. This way they can have a reminder of the signs if they forget and can practice. I can also use this with different lesson plans, for example mine was on parasitism, mutualism and commensalism- I could take the pictures and make one to introduce the different topics, or with the activity instead of having them print out pictures they can make a slide show to put on the classroom website that shows the different symbiotic relationships. 


The only thing that I really had a hard time doing was picking what images I wanted! There were so many I wanted to choose and I had to limit that to the few that I did. I could go on and on about home especially in a creative way like this! 

Completed Lesson Plans

SO- I made a mistake and didn't do the lesson plan research based and had to start over. Starting over I went for the subject that I really wanted to teach - science! I want to be in elementary school and I have been working at the deaf school with fifth grade. In the fifth grade curriculum there are some really tough topics to cover. 


The lesson I chose to cover is under the fifth grade standard two, interdependence. Here are the standards that are listed on the Tennessee State Curriculum. 

Conceptual Strand 2

All life is interdependent and interacts with the environment.

Guiding Question 2

How do living things interact with one another and with the non-living elements of their environment?

Grade Level Expectations:

GLE 0507.2.2 Explain how organisms interact through symbiotic, commensal, and parasitic relationships.

Check for Understanding:

␣0507.2.2 Classify interspecific relationships within an ecosystem as mutualism, commensalism, or parasitism.

␣0507.2.3 Create a simple model illustrating the interspecific relationships within an ecosystem.

State Preformance Indicators:

SPI 0507.2.2 Distinguish among symbiotic, commensal, and parasitic relationships.

With this I talked about mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism. Mutualism is a symbiotic relationship between two organisms where they both benefit. Commensalism is a symbiotic relationship where one organism benefits and the other is unaffected. Parasitism is a symbiotic relationship where one (the parasite) benefits and one organism (the host) is harmed.

In my new activity I have the students go to Fact Monster- Science. They have to find the page I want them to read, but I give them directions on how to find it. This way they get used to using the search aspect on a website. They will then follow the worksheet and fill in the different information they have learned. Next the go to the National Geographic website and look at pictures. They should find one example of each of the three topics. Then as a class they will put them on the correct poster and explain what the picture is and then why it belongs in that category.

This was a hard activity for me because I guess I didn't understand that it had to be more research based then just an online activity. I don't know if that was because I wasn't listening or because the information got thrown off because of the change of teacher? Not sure :)

I am also used to doing lesson plans a different way so this was hard to break my old habit and change to this one. In the end I think this one is not as hard as the other one that I am used to, so it worked out in the end.

I wish there was a way with Google Docs to connect all the pages together...like if there was a "staple" button that you could click and it would "staple" all the pages you want together. I feel that would make me stress out less about someone not seeing all of the pages that I have going together and count me off or miss something.

I think that I like wiki better because you can keep things all in one place. I really do like how multiple people can edit on one document at one time and wish that could be done on wiki. There are good and bad on both.. if we could combine them it would be perfect!

Overall this wasn't one of my favorite activities that we have done but it wasn't too bad and helped me realize how to do research based lesson plans for my classroom.

Lesson Plans

This is my first time working with someone else on creating a lesson plan. It has been an interesting experience, I am lucky that I have a partner that I work well with. We are good at bouncing ideas off of each other and making our ideas better.


I haven't worked in google docs much before this class and I like the fact that you can view and edit at the same time. I was used to working in wiki and not wanting to be rude and steal peoples locks but this we were working at the same time and could watch the other changes being made. I liked being able to sit next to her in class and be able to talk and then do the work, not just hover over one computer. We could also work on other parts at the same time.


This is the first time that I have really used websites in my lesson plans, so it was hard to find some that really worked with what we wanted to do. As a deaf education teacher one of the problems that is common is learning English grammar. If the students were only exposed to American Sign Language they do not have grammar like be verbs and past or future tenses. When we are teaching English it can take time for the student to grasp the concept of AM, IS, ARE, WAS and WERE.


We decided to focus on this we found some game sites that used graphics and games to understand the different be verbs. We found a grammar and writing book in the textbook lab and found some pages that we want to use. We are still working on the rest of the details.


So far I think that this activity is giving me great insight on working collaboratively with another future teacher and find resources that I can use in my classroom! I hope that the rest of the activity goes as smoothly as this has! Fingers crossed! 

A screen shot of the Google Docs that we have started for this project! 

"Talk" With Me - WebQuest

It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to find a WebQuest that related to the Deaf Education field. The project that I thought was best, was "Talk" With Me. This WebQuest is geared towards deaf students and making a "welcome packet" for hearing students that have never used sign before. This not only helps to teach my students about the history of the Deaf culture but equips them with communication tools they need when interacting with hearing people! 

This project has the students working in groups to create a pamphlet or power point that has information about being deaf, about sign language and a copy of the manual alphabet. This site has many links and pictures (all the links work). Some of the links go to worksheets that the students print off and fill out so as they research they have all the information at the end to make the project. The second part of the project is for them to teach some signs to this "new hearing classroom." With this they have the option to create a video or a book with the signs they would teach. This is a great use of technology because all the links work and the students are using the internet to look up information. They are using a video camera to record their words, as well as power point to make a project. This project has them work in groups so they are using team work. They have to pick out the most important aspects and signs to share so this uses higher order thinking. This activity is a good use of time because they are learning what is important and not spending tons of time on the project. 


This went well on finding a WebQuest, but I had to use the "garden" search on the website because the word search is down. That took me more time than I wished to find something that is in my field. As a teacher I would have made sure that the links all worked when I told the class to use the search so that I wouldn't have them wasting time looking around. This was one of the first few that I found so it was not hard after I got to that point. 


I had never heard of WebQuest before so this activity introduced me to a new site that I can use. I think that this is very helpful because all the lessons are made, even if you do not like one you can change it so that it fits your classroom better. This can help with planning and new ideas to keep the classroom fun! 


I think that I am going to use this in my classroom even if it is not exactly what the lesson online says. I can use it to get my ideas and find a great activity that promotes higher order thinking, technology use, group work and is worth their time! 

Oh So Delicious!

I got assigned delicious for my wiki project. I had never heard of delicious before this assignment and at first I wasn't looking forward to working with this one. Once I started to explore and saw that it was a social bookmarking website I started to use it for all my personal websites. I have had that problem where my old computer died and I had all of my pages saved in the bookmarks on that computer and had to go and track down all the sites again. If I had a delicious account I wouldn't have had to do that! 

I think this site was very easy to use and nothing went wrong when I was learning how to use this. I went in and already had a yahoo account and then started to add the URL's for all of my favorite sites. 


This is super easy to use and I am going to set up another one for my classroom so that I can share things and they do not have access to things like my facebook or other social sites that I have linked on my personal delicious account. I really like the feature for sharing all my links with friends and I can click on their names and see everything that they have in their bookmarks. 


The tags are an interesting part of this website because all of my peers are tagging what they think a website is to them and I can go through and look for other great sites to use in my classroom based on those tags. I really like the popular list that shows all the favorites at that time. It would let me see sites that I would have never been introduced to. 


In my classroom I would give all the students and even maybe parents (depending on how much I want them involved) the link to my classroom delicious page. This way all the information that I want them to see and different websites that I want them to look at will be there. They can link to them from any computer as long as they have my URL name to my delicious page. I can make a classroom website and add it to my delicious and it can have the assignments and different contact information and anything else I want them to have. 


I can also have the students create their own delicious pages and all link to each other this way we can see everyone's websites that they recommend or want to share with us. I will have to be careful with this to make sure that the students do not link a nasty website or something offensive. This is where I would have to have a lesson on etiquette on what they should and shouldn't do on this site. 


I think this is a great website and I am going to start to tell my friends about it so that we can all network and see the websites we all look at. 

Glogster.edu

The web 2.0 tool that really caught my eye was the Gloster. I love being creative and I want to be able to use that in my classroom. I know from working with the students at Tennessee School for the Deaf that they love using technology and being able to post my different sites, including the one that I worked on for a web 2.0 tool (Delicious) and having it all there for them to access from one point would be really convenient. 

Have a look at my Gloster!

This was actually very easy to use once I got the hang of it. I wish that someone had told me that you have to just delete the original items the have on the page cannot be changed so just delete them and add new ones. I must have spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to write my name in front of classroom. After I got that all cleared I went through all the different backgrounds and there were so many fun ones but I tried to stick more to an educational looking background that wouldn't be super distracting to children. 

Adding links was very easy! I had all the web sites and clicked on the link button and then bam! they were all connected! I really like when you are looking at the glog after and it puts a pink circle around the "post it" where there is a link! This way everyone knows if you click on it, it will take it to the site. 

I learned all about this site, I had no idea that this existed before this web 2.0 task. I am glad that I got introduced to all these different tools and I have gotten some great new ideas to bring technology into my classroom. I learned that this is an easy task and you get a great looking clean result. I am a very organized person and would rather have this all on the computer then print out and have pages everywhere. This way I also know all the students will have the information that they needed and they cannot use the excuse 'I lost it' or 'I didn't know'. 

Next time I think that I will maybe get a little more creative and add pictures or more links to different sites that I am using in the classroom. I would even try to theme it to my classroom or the seasons or something that we are doing in class during that time. This way the kids are still interested and they want to look at the different changes I made. I may even add some fun links to it like a game site (educational of course) Maybe add one of those sites that they can make a crossword or puzzle with their spelling words and then give it to another classmate. 

I can also give this website to parents so they can check on what assignments are due, some tips for helping with homework or other useful sites for the parents. I can include my contact information on here too so that the parents have everything they need if there is a question. 

Overall I think this was fun to be introduced to a new site that can help me organize and get information out to my students, parents and even some other teachers! 

Exploration of The Exploratorium

I have been working in a third, fourth and fifth grade science class at Tennessee School for the Deaf this semester. This made me want to look at a web site that has to do with science. I fell in LOVE with The Exploratorium. It is FANTASTIC! There is so much information all packed into one website, they have different categories and within those categories there are different activities. 

This is a shot of some of the different activities the students can use in the "Human Body" section. Aren't the pictures FANTASTIC!! They just make you want to explore :)

This is one of the sections in 'Everyday Science.' It is so colorful and interactive! In this you can click on a flower and it will pull it up so you can see it close. There is also a part that you can see the different parts.  

I knew that there were such things and appropriate web sites and inappropriate ones but I never realized how many different criteria there are. I think overall this activity went very well, it was upfront with what was wanted but there was still some need for clarifications. I don't think there was anything that didn't 'go well' maybe if there was more time to do this in class or if we were told before hand to look at the websites or have a few in mind. Though I wouldn't have the one that I picked then because it was recommended to me in class so there are ups and downs. I don't think that I would do anything different next time with this activity, I went through all the questions and was playing with the website as I was filling them in. 

With using this in my classroom I don't know how much time I will have to go through every website that we use but I will keep all these things in mind to look for the authors and well known sources and make sure there is no bias. I know that I will use this website 100% in my classroom if I am teaching science and if I am not I will let the science teacher know about this website. I think this activity reenforced information we have been taught about using websites since we have been using internet in school! It went deeper into the things that we need to look for. I have heard horror stories from other teachers talking about how they were using Google Images and then something nasty came up on the screen and they panic and couldn't get it down fast enough. I know to always look at a site before you pull it up in front of the class but took it to a new level. I think its important to look at the websites so you know that you are giving the students the right information. This activity helped to show me what to look for. 

Wiki WHAT?!

This was my first time every creating a wiki, I can remember working at summer camp a few years ago and someone was talking about how they made a wiki page on themselves (to make themselves famous) and it got deleted because they were not really famous. I had never had a need to make one. I think that it was very easy to do. I went thought all the different websites that the teacher listed because this was something new to me. I think that overall it was very self explanatory; you made your page and wrote about yourself.



I had a few problems with my picture because I tried to put that in last and it didn’t want to move to where I wanted it. I ended up cutting all the information that I typed and put the picture in first and then added my words and shaped them around the picture. Other than that I was able to play with the fonts (which I wish they had a few more-but I understand not having as many because they would be too hard to read) and playing with the colors.


This whole experience was something new to me so I learned everything from how to sign up to one and then how to make my page and help edit others. I think that next time I will start with my picture first and then put in the words. I would love to try adding more than one picture and see how the spacing works and if I have to use them on one side or if I can put them in the middle and write around them.


I think that using this in my classroom will be interesting. I was in the classroom today at Tennessee School for the Deaf and we were working on learning parts of the body. The teacher had made a power point on the smart board and they were going through all the slides. I was thinking that we could have had the students come up and find the vocabulary words in Google images (but I would go through all the words first to make sure nothing nasty will come up on the board!) We could use this to paste onto the classroom wiki and then make links to other pages so as we learned about new parts of the body we can move through the pages. When we have pictures the kids and each write the labels for the item and a sentence about what they learned to practice English. Then we can share this with another grade or other teachers to showcase all our work. The kids love using the internet and computers and this is a way that we can incorporate learning into the computers. Some of the students that I would work with need more help so maybe I can pair them with a higher achieving student and monitor to make sure they are both sharing the work and getting what they need to succeed.


I think this was an interesting experience because I would have never used this if I wasn’t in the class and I would have never thought about the different ways I can incorporate this into my classrooms.

Screen Shot of my Organization!