Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Reflection on Voice thread & the science challenge

I looked at Natalie, Ashley G., and Ashley P.'s voice threads. Also, I commented on their actual video, not their post, I hope that's right.

I thought this activity was much less stressful. I used Kidspiration and honestly, I loved it. I thought this is something I can really use and it has so many great activities already set up that apply wonderfully with so many state standards. I also thought Stellarium was pretty dang cool and I bet 1st or 2nd graders would have a ball with that. As for the thermometers and microscopes, that all depends on what your school can afford- so that's a little tough, but anything you can download onto your computer for free is awesome.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Science Challenge

For my science activity I have the following planned:

A 2nd grade activity that discusses the importance of a balanced diet and they will then create a balanced diet on kidspiration.

A more detailed version of the activity: The intro to our Health Unit will include an open large-group discussion of the importance of a balanced diet. I will ask what the students understand of a balanced diet, what types of food make up a balanced, etc. We will discuss the seven food groups. I will then ask the students to pull up their Kidspiration program where I will direct them to click on the science section. After clicking on science, I will have them scroll down to the Balanced Diet activity. Before they begin, I will explain that this activity is to see if they know what foods go under certain balanced diet categories. I will show them an example on my own computer which is hooked up to a screen for everyone to see. I will drag the wheat bread over into the grains section and show that this type of food satisfies the grains need. They will then finish by putting 10 different foods into food categories.

Content: 2nd grade Science: Standard 1: Students will develop a sense of self.
Objective 1
: Describe and adopt behaviors for health and safety.
A. Explain the importance of balance in a diet.

Pedagogy: Inferring, Classifying, Organizing, Analyzing Data

Technology: Kidspiration

The representation of this content is considered interactive because the students are using the technology and creating their own balanced diet. ( I will look more at this, I apologize for lateness, I got held up at work and got home right around midnight)

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Virtual Tours...

I posted on Ashley, Tammy, and Natalie's blogs.

This by far was the most stressful assignment for me. I think getting to know Google Earth was a great thing because that application in itself is really fun and would be a good asset to the classroom. However, making an actually virtual tour is a lot of work. If I had more practice at it, it would probably be easier. And if we all just had the google earth app on our computers, then I could just have them download directly on to that instead of embedding it onto my blog or website. That didn't seem to work quite as well. I see the perks of a virtual tour, but again it goes back to do I have time to do this?