Photoshop

This is my beautiful photoshop creation! It has 7 different layers in it...each flower is a layer as well as the bird and the text. While this photo is far fetched, it was so much fun stretching my imagination and learning how to crop, edit and create brand new images. This would be a really fun teaching tool in making documents and worksheets more fun, creative, interactive and useful for students. Say I make up a test, I can put images on it for my visual learners to better understand the question. 

I found photoshop to be a very challenging program to use. It gets very confusing with all of the layers and there are so many different tools that it is often hard to keep track. Today's students are very technology savvy and could probably master photoshop, but I would probably feel more comfortable just using it myself to make things for my students, like handouts, or for my parents, like notices or newsletters or progress reports to send home.

Winston Stanley

This is a photo of my kitty cat Winston Stanley. He enjoys sleeping, playing with his cousins, Smudge and Arnold, and lounging in the fridge. I used Picnik to add a little something extra to his photo.

Tableau vivant

I really enjoyed the Tableau vivant exercise we did in class last week. My group did the story about the ant and the grasshopper...

I think this was a great tool for us to learn. When it comes to teaching, this would be a wonderful and interactive tool especially for visual learners. It makes any material more fun and hands on for any student and it is really a great way of simplifying material that may be complicated or confusing for students. I also think it will be great to have students take the photos and then talk the class through what they did. This helps them to verbalize what they have learned and to help everyone else understand what they have learned. I would definitely use this project as I think it greatly aids many different types of learners.

Blog Evaluation

For my blog evaluation I chose to look at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis. While I was reading through Vicki's posts, what I absolutely loved about this blog was its variety. She really incorporates every aspect of her life into her blog and it is both inspirational and informative. Topics vary from tips on how to eliminate small stresses in your life, to the qualities of a great leader, to informational articles about the latest teaching technologies. She combines all of her roles-mother, teacher, blogger, woman-and creates an extremely relatable and informative site. I just love the idea that it is so real. Vicki writes about her mistakes, her stresses and her failures and turns them into real life lessons for teachers or anyone really who strives to excel in their careers.

Learning Standard

For my standard of focus this semester I decided to use Special Education based on the Connecticut's  Common Core of Teaching. Special education encompasses a wide variety of students with a wide range of disabilities and needs. Each student has a different IEP and therefore there are many different ways that Special Education students learn. Some students are non-verbal and may learn best visually, others may be blind and learn best through listening to a lesson played on an Ipod. Others may not be able to write, but can type on an Ipad or word processor. In my opinion Special Education is the area where learning styles really need to be the biggest focus.

Teddy Bears Go Blogging.

The idea of "pen pals" has been around for so long and has been a really great tool for students. It is such an influential experience for young students to be able to learn about other cultures from students their own age, and it is nice to see this program develop with and benefit from the evolution of technology. I love the idea of students learning to blog their experiences. Not only does it familiarize them with safe use of the internet, but it hones their writing skills and allows them great interaction with many different students. I think that this idea could really take off as far as young students go. The possibilities are endless as far as the number of students participating, where these students are from and what they can blog about. With the language technology available on the internet today, this may not even be a barrier at this point, which can involve all students from every nation. The cultures and ideas that children could share with each other are absolutely endless and it would benefit everyone involved. This article really proves how much the internet can connect the world.

Reflection of MP-3 Article

There are many positive and negative aspects to this article. First, I really like and support the idea of advancing the ways in which children learn. It's important to realize that technology is such a large part of the younger generation, that we must almost mold the way schools teach to fit their lifestyles. It may seem a lot more interesting and fun to a student that they can use their Ipods or MP3's to learn instead of a book. I believe this may be an excellent options for auditory learners as well. As we know, every student learns differently and it is great for teachers to have the option to give their students another resource. It is also a method that works among all age groups since it requires no reading or language skills to listen. As far as the subjects being taught digitally, I feel at this point some are more beneficiary than others. Foreign languages for instance are a great subject to teach digitally since it really helps to be as immersed in the language as possible. It also helps students to really learn how to speak the language rather than just read and write it.


On the negative end, these devices are expensive, which can definitely isolate certain students from having the opportunity to learn this way. There is also the issue of students losing or weakening their study skills. Students are able to multi-task while using their MP-3 devices to the greatest extent of the word. This takes away from students sitting down and only focusing on their work. I personally learn best with a book. It keeps me in one place and it keeps me focused, because I am not going to walk around the house carrying a book I am reading. There are already so many distractions and reasons for students to multi-task today that this just perpetuates the problem.


While I definitely support education and technology moving forward, I think we should proceed with caution and make sure we are still taking the needs of each individual student into consideration.