Motivation

How do you motivate students to do something they don't want to do? My summer school classes are full of kids who "hate" to type. Some of them can literally stare at their fingers for 45 minutes instead of typing. NO amount of prodding, helping, etc gets them moving. I want to light a fire under their tushes to get them moving. Right now I'm watching one student. He has typed seven words in THIRTY MINUTES. SEVEN for gods sake. How can you just sit there and stare off into space for THIRTY DARN MINUTES. I'm so frustrated with this group. I love to do my part to help struggling kids in summer school, but this year may be the straw that broke the camel's back..no more summer teaching for me!

Blog This!

This week's work got me really excited about blogging! I want to fill my head with as much knowledge and experience as much as I can before school starts so I can hit the ground running with a classroom blog next year. I am exploring different blogging tools to figure out what is right for me and my students. In my search I found this great website about blogging in schools. I am exploring EduBlogs as a possiblity for creating my blog. Here's my blog so far, with nothing on it =P but it's a start, right?!

I'm also excited to learn more about Wikis. I have a wiki that I use with my students that needs to be improved greatly! I can't wait to make this more useful for me and my students.

Week 5: Pecha Kucha - Gesundheit

So sorry that this is late. My mom had an accident and I've been dealing with that. She's fine, just lost two teeth and got three stitches to put her lip back together.

Anyways, about this week. I'm having trouble getting my Pecha Kucha to a low enough file size to upload it to the Angel site. I've tried three different formats and various settings within each. I'm going to try to upload to voicethread and see if that helps.

I still need to finish up my multimedia rubric. I'm using a project that I already have a rubric for and updating it. I use Rubistar to make my rubrics and then download them to Excel to clean them up and do the final editing.

I enjoyed working with my group to look at pocket camcorders. I like this technology and think it is very useful and affordable for schools.

Week 4: The plot thickens

I am really excited about using Prezi. I am in love with the functionality of this tool! I am a little flustered by the Pecha Kucha. I want to make it something I'm enthusiastic about, so I chose my cats (I'm such a crazy cat lady!)

I really wish we had made a great digital story from start to end throughout this class. I think that would have helped me to use digital storytelling in my classroom next year.

I loved looking at the sample presentations in Pres. Zen. They were helpful for getting a big picture idea of what a good presentation looks like. Then, watching the Ted videos gave me a full circle look at what it LOOKS like to be a good presenter.

I am feeling more confident in my ability to create and give a great presentation. I am still not so sure about my ability to create a great digital story, much less teach a student how to do so. I'm guessing this will come with research and practice.

Week 3: Digital Storytelling

I learned a lot this week. I got to view a lot of really great PowerPoint presentations and that has helped me to make my own really great PPT. I am now more confident that I can get my point across when giving a presentation, rather than putting my audience to sleep. I am also a little more likely to use PPT in the classroom and hopefully my new found skills will rub off on my coworkers who have atrocious ppts!

I now feel confident that I can make a digital story. I am worried about the whole design piece of it, as I sometimes don't feel very artsy. I found this website and it has given me even more resources for my own digital stories as well as ideas for the classroom.

I'm thinking about making some family story digital stories this summer. Especially ones to remember my deceased grandparents, to share with my family. I am going to research more about their lives before I knew them (my grandpa was in the Navy during the Korean war). I think this will be a great summer project!

Digital Storytelling: Week 2

I enjoyed this weeks class work. I especially liked the reading from Presentation Zen and how it is helping me to create better presentations. I have already revised a PowerPoint presentation that I use for second grade to talk about plant adaptations. I have them create their own plant for a specific habitat and show me how it has adapted to that specific environment.


I have found a lot of lessons that I can use to incorporate digital storytelling into my curriculum. I can do at least one with each grade level 2-5(I chose grade level activities based on what we teach at different grade levels in our district.

Second Grade: Habitats
Third Grade: Japan Story (instead of Japan book I do now)
Fourth Grade: Grandparent Tea or similar family story
Fifth Grade: Name Meaning Autobiography

Digital Storytelling Week 1

This is the first week of Digital Storytelling. All of the other tech teachers in my district just took a digital storytelling class through the district so I am excited to learn more about this.

I really like telling stories. I would like to learn how to tell stories better and how to teach my students how to share their stories. I think this course is going to provide me with the tools I need to incorporate digital storytelling at all of my grade levels.

I am excited to learn about software that I use to share stories and to hear what my classmates stories are. Everyone in the cohort is unique and I hope to learn more about each of them during this class.