My Classroom Website

I had a lot fun designing my classroom website. I changed the content and template of my website several times, and, each time, it was exciting imagining how the final product was going to look. There are still a lot of features I would like to add to my website. However, I do not have enough time to do this because the end of the semester is quickly approaching, which means finals and therefore a lot of work for these last days of school. Nevertheless, I did add one extra page to my website, which is a page that I am going use to post practice tests for my students. In this way, I feel pretty satisfied with my classroom website as it is for now. No doubt, I am going to use my classroom website in my future classrooms. Just as I said on the homepage of my website, I am going to use this site to inform and communicate with my students and their parents. In this way, the main purpose of this website will be to help my future students and their parents as well as myself have a better experience throughout the school year. Therefore, even though I am happy with what I have done so far on this website, I will continue improving my classroom website as much as I can, adding new pages and features.

Digital Story



This is a movie or digital story I created using Windows Live Movie Maker. This is the first time I have ever made a digital story. I started this project using iMovie, but, after discovering that Movie Maker is a lot of easier to use than iMovie, I changed to Movie Maker with which I finish my project. I am really proud of this work and definitely going to use it in my future classroom. I think it is an excellent educational work to be used, not only in a math classroom, but in any classroom. However, I am disappointed of Google Blogger because, as you can see, it displays a poor quality video. That is, the original video I have on my computer has much better quality than what my blog shows here. Therefore, whenever I use this video in my classroom, I am going to use one of the media players on my computer to show it and not my blog. In addition, as I have been expressing in this blog, I believe that visuals really enhance learning. Therefore, this is not the only video of this kind I will be using in my classroom. Since now I know how to use Movie Maker to create videos like this one, I will create different videos of this kind for each of my classes.

Interactive Spreadsheets

This is a screenshot of an interactive spreadsheet I created using Excel. It allows the user to answer the given questions, and then it provides feedback about whether or not the user’s answer is correct. In particular, this spreadsheet is a quiz that any student with access to the file can take. It was fun working on this activity, except the part about putting my chosen state standard in footer in the spreadsheet. Now, even though I think students would have fun using an interactive spreadsheet like this to learn school material or be tested, this is not something I will be using much in my future classroom. However, I will sometimes use interactive spreadsheets like this one to tests students on math vocabulary. In this way, for now, I see the use of interactive spreadsheets not very useful in a math classroom.

Inspiration

I love this tool, and I’m going to definitely use it in my math classroom. It’s a lot of fun using this tool, and a teacher can really do great things using this tool to improve instruction and enhance learning. I believe that images and pictures can highly improve teaching and learning. Therefore, a diagram created with Inspiration can help a teacher enhance learning because in Inspiration one can create diagrams that include all kinds of images and different ways to incorporate text for example. In this way, a diagram created in Inspiration can make much easier for a teacher to explain and illustrate ideas, processes, and patterns along with connections between ideas, concepts, and processes. For instance, in my TPTE project for this tool, I created a diagram that explains and illustrates the connections and relations between the fundamental theorem of calculus and the two main branches of calculus, integral and differential calculus. In this way, from this diagram, one can learn one of the fundamental facts in calculus and therefore in mathematics, which is that integration and diffentiation are inverse operations. From this diagram, one can also learn that this fundamental theorem relates to area of a region plane and that it’s what connects integral calculus to this kind of area. Fantastic!!!! Therefore, I see myself using this tool in my future classroom in most of my lessons!!

Web 2.0 Tools

Some of the last Web 2.0 tools we learned how to use were Smilebox, Voicethreat, and Animoto. I think all of these tools are fun to use, but I do not see myself using them much in my future classroom. For now, I do not see how I could use smilebox to improve my math instruction and therefore to enhance learning in math classes. Thus far, I see that a teacher may use smilebox to create photo albums of field trip pictures and slideshows for lessons, but I do not see how these could help me improve my teaching. I think Voicethreat can be useful in the classroom. For example, as a math teacher, I could assign groups to work on different problems. This would be very beneficial for most students; the students with high math skills could start the problem and give hints to the rest of the students. By doing this, they would surely benefit from thinking how to begin a problem, without actually solving it, and help others understand the process of solving the problem. Similarly, students having trouble with math would definitely benefit from the assistance of other students to solve math problems. However, I would not use this tool much in my classroom because I think wikis are better for this kind of activities of having students collaborate. Now, I think Animoto could be very useful in the classroom. However, I would not use it much in my future classroom because thus far it’s not totally free to use and has several downsides; I think a teacher could do big thinks with this tool to enhance learning if it were not this limited to use.

Google Forms

For this Web 2.0 tool, I worked in a project with one of my classmates. I learned how to use it pretty well, and I’m going to definitely use it in the classroom. Moreover, this is one of my favorite Web 2.0 tools thus far, and I believe it’s going to be one of my favorite tools in my future classroom. This could be very useful in the classroom. One of the uses in the classroom for this tool is giving homework and tests/quizzes online in and/or outside the classroom in form format. You just need to make your form with questions you would use in a regular test/quiz and email it to the students. Each of them will receive it and have the opportunity to fill it out and submit it online. The questions can be a multiple choice question, true/false, text paragraph, or a mixture of all these types of tests/quizzes questions. You then obtain each of the results with each of the responses, where you can see each answer and the question.

Another use for this tool would be to collect students’ information. For example, you can create a form with questions asking students for name, email, address, phone number, and so on. More importantly, you can create a form to evaluate instruction. For instance, you can create a form to use weekly with questions asking students about the class and instruction up to that particular point in the semester. This form could include questions what went well during this week in class? What needs to be improved? What helped you learn the most? What did not help you? Also, we can use a form to get to know our class. This could include questions about likes and dislikes and a little bit about their background.

Inspiration Diagram