My class has been studying biographies of famous Americans. Just recently we finished reading about Helen Keller using our reading anthology as well as some grade level appropriate books. The kids were very interested in learning more about her and her life. For my final project I made a presentation on Helen Keller. The presentation that I prepared is something that I feel would be doable with my some of my students. I would be a great way to include reading, writing, speaking and research skills while at the same time working on their digital literacy skills.

I used the Powerpoint program to develop my slideshow. One of the questions that came up for me is whether it is possible to have the bulleted points come up one at a time during the presentation without having to created separate slides for each one. I wasn't able to figure out a way so perhaps someone with more knowledge can help me with that. I would  like to add some historical pictures of Helen Keller and possibly a timeline or other graphics to aid in the visual appeal of the presentation. To find what I am looking for is just going to take me some more time to research and put it together. I am confident that with time I will be able to accomplish what I am envisioning.

The OETS that this addresses are: 1(a,c); 2(b,c,); 3(a,b,c,d); 4(a,b); 5(b)

I tried creating an online survey using the tool Survey Monkey. For my example, I created a lunch menu survey that kids could complete about the hot lunches provided at school. I was able to write my own questions for the survey, but they also had menus of already created questions that you could choose from. I think that this tool would be helpful for kids to get practice in writing questions, conducting research and analyzing results from their survey. At the end, it looks like you can generate a report with graphs that show the results of your survey. I am still working on how to link my survey to my blog so that I could send it to all of my web tech classmates. It would be fun to see what the different possibilities are for looking at data.

There are multiple OETS that this would help meet. Some of the most prominent are: 2 (a,b,c); 3 (a,b,c,d), and 4 (a,b,c,d)


http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZLXYYXJ

One of my personal goals for this class has been to learn about technology and to find ways that I could apply the technology in a classroom setting with my second graders. As I read through the chapter on social networking tools, I thought that it would be fun to create an avatar using Voki. I'm sure that there are many ways that people have found to use avatars, but one of the ways that I thought I could apply avatars with my students is by letting them create characters for stories that they've written in class. Once the avatars are created, then the students can type their stories into the computer. They can choose to record their voice as they read their stories or they can choose to have one of the computerized voices read the text for you. I could see how this format would be beneficial to students because they'd be able to playback their story as many times as they needed. They could hear what they've typed and then go back to make corrections as needed. I think that my second graders would be less resistant to editing their work if they were able to use this tool to help them. I think the kids would also find the avatars highly engaging and not threatening. When I tried this with my daughter she was having such a good time that she was motivated to keep on writing so that she'd be able to see her avatar talk even more!

The standards that this tool addresses are: 1(a,c); 2(a,b,d); 3(a,b,c,d); 5(a,b,c)