Just When I Thought it Was Over.

Well earlier this evening I was wrapping up my e-portfolio and quickly realized I had missed a learning opportunity. I quickly learned how to use Windows Movie Maker, something I'd had on my laptop all this time. What a fun opportunity, and now I will have the know-how to create family DVDs for special events or even classroom events. Wanted to share this on my blog because it's a work in progress but I fell I'm off to a great start.

Well That's All Folks!

There is light at the end of the tunnel!

Well the final week of class has been full of exceptional knowledge. I have always thought of myself as a technical savvy person, but this class has opened my eyes to many great products and taught me new skills that will be very resourceful in my future classroom.

For my instruction PowerPoint I chose to use a Sharpie Tie Dye activity. This could be a great reading/science activity for any classroom. I was able to embed the videos into my slideshow, something I have never attempted before. I have since used my new ability to embed an author's interview into my PowerPoint used for a lesson demonstration during an interview this week. This will in no way be the last time I will use video in a slideshow or flipchart.

Interested in learning how to do Sharpie Tie Dye? Check out this great tutorial .

Graphic Organizers

Working in a classroom I have had the opportunity to use graphic organizers. I have sat in on a few Thinking Maps in-services as well. For this project I chose my favorite fourth grade unit, Where the Red Fern Grows. The book is about a boy and his two Redbone Coonhounds, Old Dan and Little Ann. I created a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the two hounds which could be used in a writing assignment. I used PowerPoint to create my Venn Diagram however, I have also Activision to create a flipchart that could be used with the Promethean board.Students could actually use the smart board to write in the details (They love to write with the stylus).

This was my first time to work with Freemind. The product was simple to use. I created a mind map reflecting the team teaching duties of our fourth grade teachers and their class sections.

Animoto and Animal Teeth

Well I was never able to view David's tutorial on the Animoto project, but overall I thought the product was simple to use.


I created a video that could be used for a Fourth grade science lesson on animal teeth & diet. Animoto offers a free 30-second video so it may be difficult to get the entire point across using the topic I had chose. However, I thought the video process provided a pretty neat twist to the lesson. Check out my lesson Animal Teeth and Diet.


Once I completed the project I decided Animoto (the Pro version) would be a great project to use to post class pictures and field trips to a classroom website. A slide show with some added Justin Bieber might just be the hook to get students to log on and possibly utilize some of the additional resources provided.

I'm loving all these new and fun technologies that will help make my classroom one that belongs in the 21st Century.

"Dressing up"

I love to dress up an assignment with pictures or clipart. This could be due to the fact that I'm a visual learner and pictures often help me make sense of the context (like any good storybook). Nothing bores me more than to watch a plain presentation. I like to see colors, fun fonts, and lots of pictures. Can a person have too many pictures, sure a person can overdue it and take away from the main purpose. So be careful not to overload a presentation with too much of anything because more than likely someone's brain will be on overload along with the presentation.

I think back to Kindergarten (many, many years ago) and learning the alphabet. Students come to school singing the alphabet therefore parents assume they know the alphabet. This is not true, you will find that many Kinders will not be able to identify the letter with its name. Often they believe LMNOP is one letter, as it runs together in the song. I can't imagine not learning my alphabet without the alphabet people. They were big balloon people that hung in our classroom on a big clothes line. The image (visual) helps me as a student relate my letters to their appropriate names. While I don't see alphabet people in the classrooms today the concept can still be used, especially when working with technology.

As for sound clips, this is something I have done before but not to the extent of my Day in History, April 9th, assignment. While I'm happy to look at pictures as I watch the presentation the sound really brought a new depth and spark to my final presentation.

I think back to my students and all the special effects their video games and cell phones offer, so why shouldn't my lessons? Simple steps can create a presentation that is sure to engage the visual and auditory learners.

What will my webpage say about me?

One on my pet peeves is an outdated website. I have often been frustrated by old information or old forms when referring back to some of my daughter's past teachers’ pages. Often parents don't have time during the day to contact teachers due to their own work schedule, and a webpage is a great way to help parents and students stay current. There has been a time or two that my daughter has left her spelling list in her desk at school, sure we could just skip a night of spelling practice but I prefer to have access to those weekly lists via the teacher's website.

While I'm new to creating a webpage I have been planning for a while now what type of information I will provide and use on my webpage for parents and students.  Webpages can serve to be a constant reminder of things happening at school such as the collection of Box Tops to help their school earn additional money, field trips, and upcoming events.

Webpages aren't created to just keep parents informed, but students can refer to a teacher's webpage as well. My daughter's 4th grade Math teacher had a weekly secret message that students could access via her webpage. Once a student answered the question they were awarded bonus points. My daughter had learned the previous year that her teachers often put educational websites on their webpages for additional resources. She has accessed many of those sites and continues to use some of them today for additional math practice.

Check out my classroom webpage: Mrs. Bundy's Classroom

Wiki this, Wiki that!

Well no doubt the hardest thing about my wiki was deciding what to do it on. I'm familiar with Wikipedia and the sorts of information found there and after viewing the PBworks tutorial on the camping trip I felt that I had a good idea what type of information should be used on a wiki. As I explored each of my ideas I felt the direction I was needing to go was more of a website rather than a wiki. I finally chose to do a wiki on recommended reading for fourth grade. I added a few novels and provided links to other books written by their authors. I thought in a classroom I could have my students add additional books that they would like to recommend to the rest of their grade level. I created a separate page labeled "Book Review" for students to share and summarize the book. This is where I came across issues. I had a generic page, Book Review, linked to each story title. However when I added my own review under Where the Red Fern Grows it feeds to all the books because it was a linked page. I could go back and create separate pages for every single book title (all four of them), but had I added 20 books on my wiki it would seem very time consuming, so I left as is. If any of you can offer me a solution to my issue I welcome your help.

I'm still pondering whether or not what I have done tonight is a true "wiki". I have created pages in which could be edited to provide additional information to others, but I can't help feeling like my assignment was better suited for a website.

The four titles I listed on my wiki are some of my favorite titles that I have read while working in fourth grade. Where the Red Fern Grows was actually one of my favorite childhood stories. Please share any titles via my wiki that you would recommend to a fourth grade class. 

As for PBworks wiki I didn’t like all the information off to the right side of the page. This area seems very “busy” to me and takes my attention away from the main idea of the wiki. One item in particular was the recent activity tracking. It appears that we can’t hide this information from other users. Just sharing my thoughts & concerns with all my classmates.

Well it’s been a long day, peace out girl scouts (as my daughter would say).

“One day soon the Gillette company will announce the development of a razor that, thanks to a computer microchip, can actually travel ahead in time and shave beard hairs that don't even exist yet” ~ Dave Barry

Web searching just got easier and "Delicious".

My Manual "Bookmarking" Mess!

OMG! There I said. If you only had any idea of how often I've had problems with bookmarking my favorite web pages. Working as a long-term substitute I'm often "traveling" from classroom to classroom, often leaving my bookmarks behind on the computer last used. As all educators know, teachers do a lot of work from home too, so bookmarking on my home computer does me no good when I'm at school. I have actually resorted to writing URLs in a planner, when my planner wasn't handy I would write them in my journal, and when my journal wasn't handy I would write them in my password book (I know, shake your head). Do you see where I'm going with this? The social bookmarking site, Delicious, offers me access to my sites no matter where I'm at!

Sharing my bookmarks with a social network opens the door to many more sites similar to those I have chose. I can see where this can be addicting because I could just go on and on exploring various related sites!

Delicious could have some down-sides to it as well. Depending on how someone tags a site might have me searching sites that aren't particularly what I needed. However, I think everyone would agree that we often find this to be true anytime we search the web. We  often come across websites that were designed with exactly everything we had in mind while we will also come across those that we ponder how they made it within our search results.

Delicious offers a tab for the "Fresh" bookmarks. These are the bookmarks as they would say are flying like hotcakes on their site. There is also the "Hotlist" tab which provides users the most popular bookmarks on their site.

Maybe just maybe I will overcome my desire for reality TV and become a social networking and bookmarking junkie instead.