Picasa

Manipulated Picassa #1

Manipulated Picassa #2

Original Picassa #1

Original Picassa #2


Picasa is an incredible photo tool. It allows you to edit pictures in a variety of ways. You can change the size, look, color, shadowing, and more! Picasa can be used to add pictures to the web such as adding them to a blog, a facebook. or any website. It provides a link with every picture. You can add your new and improved manipulated photos from it, or just the original copies to wherever you want them. There are a lot of different ways to use picasa in the classroom. You could use it to add photos into a powerpoint. You could use it to take pictures and add them to a classroom website. You could use it to order prints online. You could use it for group project to have your students use it and edit their own pictures. I have always had a hard time when my photos won't fit into a document or powerpoint or when they don't look just right. Picasa offers a solution to my problem! I am so excited to be able to have it and download it for free! I am definately going to edit my own pictures with it to put on facebook and it will be a great tool to use in class. I am also going to teach my students how to use it because it is the easiest photo editor I've ever used!

Digital Cameras

Digital cameras have many pros in classroom use. There are hundreds of ways to use them. Some of my favorite ideas are:

1. Create a Birthday Book. Add a photo to a page that the child has written about birthday plans. Print one for the book and one to send home.

2. Take a photo of an object zoomed in. Have students guess what it is.

3. Create a game for matching student photos and student names.

4. Create a video book report complete with costumes and action.

5. Create "It's My Turn" name cards with student pictures for choosing who gets the next turn.

Digital cameras are easy to use and you can edit the pictures you take. They are a fun way to use technology in the classroom and allow your students to learn how to use them. I think it would be fun to have your students find creative ideas to use the pictures they take in a group presentation for the class. We are using the pictures we took to teach a certain subject. It would be a lot of fun for kids to do the same. Digital cameras can be used to teach any subject in the classroom, even math!! There are tons of resources online with thousands of ideas to use digital cameras in the classroom and it is a great way for kids to show their creativity. Some pros of using digital cameras are that pictures are immediately available, pictures are saved in graphic format, and they are easily transferred from the camera to the computer. I never even thought of using digital cameras in a classroom until this assignment and now I have so many great ideas and lesson plans to teach and use them in my own classroom! I'm so excited to have this new resource!

VIDEO BLOG

I really like the "Top Things You Do Not Learn About Teaching in College" video. Teaching truly takes time to become good at and you don't go into it knowing everything. It takes time and practice to learn what works and what doesn't work. It takes time to learn what lesson plans are best and how students are all different and what different ways you need to teach certain students. It was a very commical video for me. The mashup was interesting. I hope I watched the right video of a whole bunch of people around the world playing chords on musical instruments to make it into a song...But from that video I learned that using digital cameras to record things for a video is an awesome idea! And putting those songs together from different parts of the world is brilliant! If I could get my students to do something like that in a classroom, it would be so much fun and such a great way to learn how to put a whole bunch of different parts of video together. We could create a video together as a class even and send it to a different part of the world showing what our day was like in an American classroom and then to receive one back from another classroom in a different part of the world would be such a learning tool for students and we'd have a blast doing it! The videos this week were lots of fun! I enjoyed them a lot.

Reflection #5

INTERNET SAFETY

The internet is vital in education. It contains endless information that students can learn from. It gives children a chance to learn at home and to participate in interactive teaching games and activities. It gives answers to the many questions that curious children yearn to know. The internet also contains many different ways of teaching such as interaction by games, videos, learning by reading, learning by listening, etc. So many children are adjusted to the internet and technology in this day in time that it would be crazy not to allow children to use the internet for learning.

But along with how wonderful the internet is, teacher must evaluate the websites their students are using because not everything that comes from the internet is good or true. Many websites are not credible and are full of junk. As teachers, it is our job to know each website and make sure that it is full of learning before our students look at it.

The questions I'd ask myself to evaluate a website are:

1. Is it safe? Meaning it contains nothing inappropriate for children.

2. What is the purpose of the website?

3. Does it contain any biases?

4. Who is the author? Is he/she credible?

5. Are there useful links?

6. Do the pictures help teach and not detract from the purpose?

7. What is the date?

8. 5 w's (who, what, when, where, why?)

9. Is there something else better than this site to teach with?

10. Is it interractive?

School filters, supervision, and evaluation of many websites can help keep my students safe while surfing the web. It is important to walk around during time on computers and make sure the students are on websites they should be on. It is also very important to tell children that if they run across anything uncomfortable, no matter how embarassing it is, that they need to raise their hand and make sure they tell me. Its important for your students to trust you so that they feel they can share any problems they run in to.


The internet is such a great creation, but it must be used for good and kept safe in the classroom. Although it is more work as a teacher, it is vital to study websites and use question to evaluate them for classroom use. It is important to teach kids internet safety not only in the classroom, but for home use also. I think that parents need to be made more aware of the internet and how scary it can truly be because teachers can do all they can, but that is no guarantee for internet safety. The internet is huge and is only going to become more used in school and at home. In becoming a teacher, we need to inform ourselves and those around us on internet safety so that it may be used for good.

Video Reflection

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oui0IcNpvmQ

There are thousands of stories where children get in trouble by giving out personal information on the internet. Children do not understand how dangerous the internet can be so it is so important that we teach them in our classrooms because a lot of time parents are overlooking the danger of the internet too. This video is one I would definately show in my own classroom to help kids understand the right from the wrong and how dangerous it is to give information out online. I would also use netsmartz videos to show some real life situations and the stories of real kids giving out too much information online. It is a serious matter and helping kids become more aware will also help parents become more aware. The more who are aware, the less incidents that will occur. The internet is so good, but also very dangerous so it is important for kids to know that there are people out there who do misuse the internet and will take advantage of them. Hopefully showing this video would not make kids afraid to use the internet, but know how to use it correctly.