Final Post!! :) :(

It is our last class today and this is my last post for my blog! Time has flew by so quicky this term and I am feeling really nervous about going into my second placement! I hoping and praying everything goes ok, as mt CT and FS have warned me that the class contains a lot of behaviours. I appreciate they are warning me and giving me a heads up, but it is also building up a bunch of nerves! I hope I can connect with my students and build strong relationships with them.

Besides that, I have truly enjoyed my time in ICT. In the beginning I was worried about the work we would have to do, but Mike made it so fun and the amount of work given was very fair! Over my placement and summer I hope to learn more and more about the things we have learned in this course, and also other developments in the world of technology. The teacher website and ePortfolio's were the best resources for me that came out of this class. I will probably keep building my ePortfolio more then my actual hard copy portfolio!

Now, I can't wait to show my students the neat features that are available on the internet! Mike has taught me the fun and easy side to the internet and technology and I would just like to say, thanks! Also, I have created a little Animoto video of ICT 2013, about the things that popped into my head when I thought of ICT!
http://animoto.com/play/B010rv5i0VAAmVN4GCbC7Q

Enjoy and take care!!

Shelli Flett

Time is flying

Our group presentations were very informational, I was able to gather a lot of information on the topics that were presented. Now that I am going to be doing my second placement in a classroom here in Brandon, I hope to implement some of the ideas sometime. On Friday I went to visit my CT and the students. It was very brief, but I can already tell that I am probably going to have a great learning experience. My CT told me that there are a lot of behaviours in the class and within the first 5 minutes I could already tell who one of the boys were haha. I hope that I can gain their respect and I know it will be challenging, but I am confident that it will all work out. In the Kindergarten class that I went to read in, there was a smartboard and it was nice and low where the students were able to reach it, so that was nice to see.
However, this week I was also surprised by all the information about implementing technology in physical education we gathered! It was really useful and I only hope to try some of these out one day! ICT thus far has been such a wonderful, enjoyable course and I have learned so much about how to use technology and what the internet has to offer. I love the ePortfolio, even though mine is not really full, I plan on filling that up during my service teaching experiences. I have to say, the most fun I have had in this course so far was making the video on amnito, it was so fun! I was also introduced to story bird, (I think that's the name) and that's cute too. I have to figure out how to use symbaloo and all those icon, bookmark things...I am still blurry on what they are supposed to be used for and how to use it. This is something I will probably try to figure out over spring break! Ahh Spring break, come faster!

Videos!

ICT just got even more fun! In highschool I was apart of a video but didn't really get the chance to make one myself. This time around, our group shot one video and we are splitting into two groups and editing the same video. Which should work out cool, being able to see the different outcomes of each video, that is. I missed Monday's class so I did not get the chance to decide on which group I would be in so I joined the a few of the girls from class on Tuesday, and we had a great time shooting! In the classroom this would be such a great tool for students to be interactive and get the chance to develop their understanding and skills with media technology! I only wish I had the chance to do such projects in high school! Being able to incorporate this type of work early in life can perhaps set a student up to make an early career choice, if they are really interested in media technology. I know of a young man who takes beautiful photo's, started without any experience just pure talent and went to College out of highshool for Photography. His name is Tyson Anderson, from Churchill, MB and his work mostly consists of model shots, which are very stunning! Check him out on facebook +Tyson Anderson.
Photography and video making is something I hope to be able to enhance my knowledge and skills in throughout my life for educational and personal enjoyment! I really want to invest in a professional camera and lighting and make a little studio in my home, as a teacher, this is something I plan on doing as a side job...maybe mainly during summer months. With the knowledge of how to make a website and get myself out there, I am confident I can make myself known, hopefully my work will be appealing! I am also on Instagram, I enjoy it.

It was a good week!

I honestly find it a little difficult to get into the loop with technology, however, the things we are learning so far are cool! I will be student teaching in a grade 3/4 multi-age classroom at King George School, and I am looking forward to it! I may have to do a math unit so I am looking into the math games with the smart board and such, I also might do a social studies unit so I have to look into how to use skype, maybe I can somehow reach a classroom overseas and the students can look at how things might be different or similar on the other side of the world. This week I will make a list of ideas and organize the all the things I have learned in this class and make a nice little list, maybe somehow make it on the web if I find a good site. This weeks class highlight was the Animoto site, I really enjoyed that and I think I might subscribe to it! This website will be a great tool to use in the classroom as well and I really want to try in out this placement, for as assignment of some sort. I have to put more thought into it but I think grade 3/4's can definately handle this. I was also thinking of making a time capsule with them, I think it would be a great project.

ICT Blogger Blog

This week our group began working on our presentation, our topic is "Using Technology in Physical Education". So far it looks good and I am learning new things about how to use and implement it in a physical education setting. There are a few Apps I know of that a teacher may use on the iPad, such as the Coaches Book, I believe. We also have on our list that we can use a smartboard in physical education, but I don't know how well that would work in a gymnasium, I guess when you actually get out into your career these are the things that you find out, what works and what doesn't. In this class, I made my teacher website based on a Physical Education layout, and this week I just found out that I will now be staying in Brandon for my practicum working with a grade 3/4 teacher at King George School! I am actually really excited about this, because I was set to work with a Physical Education teacher in Norway House and just learned that he had been suspended and I would now be working with a beginning teacher (with zero phys. ed. background) I thought that I would be getting a not so good experience, again. So....grade 3/4 classroom sounds great to me! I can try my best to implement the cool stuff I have learned in the ICT course, this makes me happy!

So many cool things I didn't know, but now I know :)

So far in the ICT course I am enjoying learning about the new things, like how to create a website, symbaloo, wiki's, blogs, and how we can implement these technologies into the classroom. Before this course I honestly was not aware of how much technology is actually used in classrooms today. When I was in schoo, smartboards were just coming out I think, and now it's like some parents are actually buying them for their home! I am also learning more about the ipads and gadgets similar to those, and how they can be used in classrooms. By allowing students to use them, it opens more doors for learning in new ways, heck I wish I could have skyped with others over seas, one time in grade 8 we send a teddy bear over that way with letters, and it never came back. Things change so fast, with myself, the last music device I owned was a discman...I got so behind with things! Then I got a blackberry pearl which I kept for 3 years, now I am a new owner to the iPhone5 smart phone and I love it. I still think it is capable of doing more then what I actually know what to do with it, but eventually I will take the time to figure it out, just too busy right now. Another thing with technology, I have owned one laptop in my life, had it since 2007, it does it's job, probably loaded with viruses but whatever, I am scared to go out and buy a new one now because I might now know how to navigate through it! I would like to get into a macbook, but then I would have to learn the apple software, hmm. For the project that is due, myself and two other classmates are focusing on Technology in Physical Education and how to implement it into Physical Education, I'm looking forward to this project because it will educate myself more on how to use in in the phys ed environment. Oh and this week I also fell in love with Jing, and I hate how fast technology changes. I wish I could see the plans for everything. We see movies now and they have screens in the air or something, I wonder if that will ever happen. I don't know much about technology but that would be cool if it could. Sometimes I feel a little overwhelemed with it all. #technologyproblems!

This ICT course seems to be going ok these days, however, I have a love, hate relationship with creating websites! Sometime I want to rip my hair out, ha! I love the idea of a website, but I am finding it hard to be satisfied with it, eventually I will be I hope. I have so far a wide range of subject areas on my classroom website, but I think over the weekend I am just going to narrow it down to Physical Education, because that is the area I would like to teach. I have so many questions that I haven't been able to ask in class, like how to put the wordle on the website? How to put a calander, how to put a "hit" box, and all that cool, engaging stuff that a child would find attractive. The goal for my site is for it to be clean, sleek and easy, not over loaded with a bunch of information. I am also questioning my design, it's darker with a little color, not really "child friendly" if you will, but I kind of like it. This weekend I hope to complete my teacher website, and get a lot done on my ePortfolio, I love the e Portfolio!
Next week in ICT, what is the group presentation about? Hmm...and I am excited for the smartboard since I never really did get to have a look at what it can really do. Also, blogging is actually nice, I want to focus a little more on making my blog page better as well, I have looked at other blog sites and they are awesome! That is all for now, soon I will be going into technology overload lol!

First two weeks in ICT

Coming into the ICT course which is offered at Brandon University I was excited and still am! Although I do not get along very well with technology I am going to try my very best to learn what Mike will be teaching us this term. The first week was basically an introduction and also showing the class cool things on the internet, like wordle. It was very neat to see that there are very neat sites available online to make great use of in your life! Wuth wordle, you could make posters, a word splash...things that we are able to take into our future classrooms. I am a little late in creating my blog, and I don't even know if I am doing it right but I am trying and that's what counts. I was always interested in creating a blog after I was visiting some sites and came across a blogger (she uses wordpress), her son died from a form of childhood cancer and she is soooo raw! Her blog is called "ROCKSTAR RONAN". It also caught the attention of country music super star, Taylor Swift, to write a song about her little boy, Ronan, who also used parts of writing from her blog posts and she was named "co-writer" of the song. The song is titled, "Ronan" and it is such a sweet song. This just goes to show how with technology, we are so connected!
Well, I am looking forward to this term in ICT really, at first I wasn't...but the e-portfolio sounds like a good idea, I never really thought of that until coming into the course. I like how we go over as a class of what types of content we should include in our projects, it really helps me with direction. This week we also had a presentation by Andy and Darren on "What Really Matters" in technology and education. This was a very nice little P.D. sesh, if you will. With the knowledge I gained today and if I didn't have so much work to do, I would make posters or pictures with writing and quotes! Also, I need to start a flicker account.
Sorry for starting up my blog two weeks into the course, but I look forward to blogging each week about the fun and challenging activities that have yet to come, throughout the ICT course!