Final Post, Farewell TPTE

I have learned so much from this class. At the beginning of the this summer, I had not even heard of more than half of the tools that we used in this class. My favorites have been Pixlr, Google sites, and digital storytelling. I have never taken a class before where I felt that everything I was learning was directly applicable. This class has been a great balance of challenging and fun! 

Websites

I am so happy with the way that my website turned out! I'll admit, I was a bit intimidated by the task of designing my own website. However, the task was not quite as difficult as I had originally thought. The rubric along with instructions from class equipped me well for finishing the website. I feel that knowing how to create my own class website will be very beneficial in the future. A classroom website is a great way to introduce yourself to the class and keep parents updated and informed. 

Blogger

Blogging has been a love hate relationship for me. Although writing is not my strongest suit, this blog has been a great way for me to reflect on each project. Blogging has helped me process what I thought about the process of learning all of the tools. 

iMovie

The digital storytelling project has to be one of my favorites from this summer. I chose to do my video about Spanish speaking artists. I had so much fun researching them and their artwork. After I had found all of the artists, I put them in alphabetical order. Then I found a song called Sonata in D by John Williams that had Spanish guitar, which I thought was fitting. I studied Spanish for almost eight years. One of my favorite things about Spanish class was the culture section when we would get to study art and Spanish culture. This project was a great opportunity to combine two loves of mine. 

Glogster

Glogster is such a cool tool! This tool allows you to create interactive, graphic blogs. With Glogster you can insert audio, video, images, and text boxes. This would make for a fun projects for students to create a glog about a subject the class is studying. Students could also create a glog for a certain person in history that they are learning about. Glogster gives students and teachers the freedom to be creative and express their personality. I look forward to using it in my classroom one day!

Storybird

Storybird is such a fun site for students and teachers! I love the idea of coming up with a story to go along with the incredible artwork they provide that correlates with the current lesson in the class. This site is also great for students to learn the art of storytelling. I would love to one day have my students use this site as a creative outlet to come up with their own silly stories.

Inspiration

The picture above is a screen shot of my Inspiration project. I did this project on the different types of clouds and the type of weather they are associated with. Inspiration 9 is a great tool for teachers and students. Teachers can use this when they are presenting new information or they could give a diagram, outline, or map to their students as a study tool. Also, students can use this software to create their own diagrams, outlines, or maps as a project.