As an aspiring science teacher to elementary students, I rarely know everything about the subjects I have yet to teach. While text books are a great source of information, sometimes the best learning comes from ones peers.
We are finding out in school now how important academic conversations are having on students abilities with content. So in learning myself, I asked an open-ended question to my colleagues that may not be answered with a simple yes or no from a google search. I asked, Could cancer cells adapt to the point where it infects bacteria and therefore become an airborne agent?
Cancer is a very important issue as it is taken the lives of many in my family, including my father. Growing up not knowing how hereditary it is has made me lean towards science in my youth for answers.
After discussing with my colleagues and professor I have realized that a healthy persons immune system would be strong enough to attack any bacterial cell invaders. This idea that a healthy person could fight it off is reassuring, but it led to deeper questions from my colleagues who asked, "What about the exploding number of people who are not considered unhealthy and have compromised immune systems?"
These hypothetical questions really help develop our critical-thinking and is something very important for our youth to develop. Some colleagues even developed thick plot lines for movies based on this idea. I like knowing that all it takes is to be around the right person when ideas are being shared for something remarkable to happen; whether it is finding the answer, or simple making a movie to entertain. When questions are asked, things are put into motion.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Thursday, January 9, 2014
The United States History - Using "Prezi" as a Medium
Prezi is a new generational platform that uses the cloud to save your powerful looking presentations. Instead of creating hundreds of slides in PowerPoint, Prezi uses one large canvas that lets the user zoom in and out, almost infinitely. This lets people tell a story across a landscape of infinite space.
While fonts are limited and it takes some time getting used to, the benefit of using google image search to easily input any picture desired makes this program a goldmine. There is no copying or pasting in this program, just simply drag the image from the toolbar and you can have your way with it.
Many videos show a wheel that is used to help guide your editing. However, in the program I could never get this magical icon to pop up. I had to use everything manually, and with some time, was able to produce the same results without it.
Creating my first presentation, I was not able to use all the features Prezie offers, yet, I was still able to create a spectacular and captivating presentation that I believe is an accurate description of how the Americas became populated. The idea stemmed from questions my students had during a history lesson.
What the program did best was to allow me to use a map to tell a story. Often this is difficult when students have limited experience with the geographical references. Prezi becomes even more powerful in describing things in relation to each other. It is hard to describe a molecule or how infinite space is. This platform would be excellent at showing the planet and then zooming out to see the sun, solar system, milky way, next galaxies and so on. Working backwards one could show a human, then zoom in to the fingernails and show organ systems, organs, tissues, cells, molecules and then finally atoms. This process would really help students visualize how small/big things can be.
I truly think Prezie is a highly engaging tool that could be used in a wide variety to teach all kinds of concepts as well as have students make their own masterpieces. With the use of cloud technology, these student presentations can be shared more easily than a PowerPoint on a flash drive.
Lastly, I am using blogs in the classroom, and this format allows my students to create Prezies and post them to our class blog. I am really excited to see how this works out in the class. If you have any experience with this please let me know, I would love to hear your experiences and ideas!
The United States History - shortly told to explain the overall picture to my 4th / 5th grade combo class
While fonts are limited and it takes some time getting used to, the benefit of using google image search to easily input any picture desired makes this program a goldmine. There is no copying or pasting in this program, just simply drag the image from the toolbar and you can have your way with it.
Many videos show a wheel that is used to help guide your editing. However, in the program I could never get this magical icon to pop up. I had to use everything manually, and with some time, was able to produce the same results without it.
Creating my first presentation, I was not able to use all the features Prezie offers, yet, I was still able to create a spectacular and captivating presentation that I believe is an accurate description of how the Americas became populated. The idea stemmed from questions my students had during a history lesson.
What the program did best was to allow me to use a map to tell a story. Often this is difficult when students have limited experience with the geographical references. Prezi becomes even more powerful in describing things in relation to each other. It is hard to describe a molecule or how infinite space is. This platform would be excellent at showing the planet and then zooming out to see the sun, solar system, milky way, next galaxies and so on. Working backwards one could show a human, then zoom in to the fingernails and show organ systems, organs, tissues, cells, molecules and then finally atoms. This process would really help students visualize how small/big things can be.
I truly think Prezie is a highly engaging tool that could be used in a wide variety to teach all kinds of concepts as well as have students make their own masterpieces. With the use of cloud technology, these student presentations can be shared more easily than a PowerPoint on a flash drive.
Lastly, I am using blogs in the classroom, and this format allows my students to create Prezies and post them to our class blog. I am really excited to see how this works out in the class. If you have any experience with this please let me know, I would love to hear your experiences and ideas!
The United States History - shortly told to explain the overall picture to my 4th / 5th grade combo class
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