Week 4

Story Retells

This week we used the program Inspiration again to create a story retell. The stories used were aboriginal dreamtime videos form Dust Echoes (http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes). The story I chose was Mermaid Story. Using the video found on Dust Echoes, I took a series of screen shots and copied them into Inspiration to retell the story. This could be a very useful tool for students to retell any story, I think this is even a good method to retell the story of thier school activites such as camp, they could use the photos they took on camp to do this.

Microsoft Excel

This week we also used Microsoft Excel to input data and using this data to create graphs. This graph represents the number of different colour m&ms found in a packet (the results are not accurate). You can customise the graphs anyway you choose, I made the bars of the graph the same colour as the m&m it represents. I also added a picture by copy and pasting an image from the official website. This seems to be a fantastic lesson for students as it learning focus features both ICT (using excel) and maths (data and graphing), not to mention the kids will love to eat the m&ms!

Week 3

 Design


Our task in learning technologies in week 3 was to design a frog that jumps using the following materials;

• 1 frog cut out
• 1 rubber band
• sticky tape
• small piece of cardboard

We also used a Design Brief to record our design, resources and results. The design brief was split into the following sections; Problem to be solved, Resources, Investigate/Design, Produce, and Analyse/Evaluate. I think this layout is very effective and efficient for students as it will help them layout and structure their ideas.


The activity was very engaging and involved a lot of trial and error to come up with an effective design. What was interesting about the activity was when each pair shared their finished design they were all very different. Everyone managed to get their frogs to jump using the same small numbers of materials but each design used different unique ideas. I think that students would enjoy this task, it promotes creativity and encourages students to think for themselves and outside of the box.


Here is our design, we made a frog launcher to launch the little fella across the room. Success!

Games

This week we also looked at an internet resource named Quia (www.quia.com/web). Quia is a great resource for students and teachers to create quizzes, games, surveys, and a lot more. It requires a subscription but it does have a 30 day free trial.

Here are a few samples I made:

Essendon Bombers Quiz!

You can access the quiz here: http://www.quia.com/quiz/2513961.html

Guess the Sport Hangman!

You can play hangman here: http://www.quia.com/hm/668211.html

I think Quia is an excellent resource that can be used for not only teaching purposes (creating quizzes, etc.), but also as a reward for students to create their own games and quizzes. They can share these with other students. I think students would really enjoy this and creating games such as these can really demonstrate a student's knowledge on a particular subject.

Week 2

Microsoft Publisher

This week we examined a few features of Microsoft Publisher. Publisher is a good program for schools to use as it comes with most Windows packages. One feature of Publisher allows you to create brochures or pamphlets. There are so many templates to choose from. It is easy to place your own pictures and text in the template to create something that looks very professional.

Here is my brochure created using Microsoft Publisher. It is a trourism brochure for China:

Front page.

Back page.

This is a wonderful program for students to create a brochure for just about anything! However I do like the idea of choosing a destination somewhere in the world and creating a brocher to try attract tourists. Students would learn about the countries' people, places, food, history, weather etc. For the purposes of my sample, the information and pictures used to create my brochure was copied and pasted for a number of different websites. This process can be examined in a classroom, students will need to learn about copyright in this digital age. Discourage students from simply copy and pasting information and encourage students to write information in their own words.

Publisher is also very effective for creating websites. Again there are numerous templates to use, or you can start from scratch. We looked at using Publisher to create our e-portfolios to enhance our job interviews, I will definitely consider using Publisher now and in the future.