Unit Plan

Here is the unit plan I developed for 3rd grade history class.  The topic is timelines and how they affect you?

Digial Storytelling

   What is Digital Storytelling you ask?  Digital storytelling is using digital tools to tell a story. It can be interactive, use of digital cameras, movie maker, and other technology tools.
Digital story telling can include still images,Video clips,Voice over narration,Soundtrack Sound effects,titles, and Transitions.

   There are three types of digital storytelling that are used.  They are personal narratives, historical events, and stories that inform or teach.

   Teachers can use digital storytelling to enhance lessons and to make content more understandable through the use of technology which can also help the students retain knowledge presented and aids in comprehension. They can create their own stories, research topics, and give their ideas and opinions through digital literacy.  Global literacy, technology, visual, and information are some of the full compliment of literacy skills students develop that help to  research, write, and organize through the use of  technology.  They also learn to use presentation, interview, interpersonal, problem solving, and assessment skills.  
   Some problems can be that bad stories developed will lead to bad digital stories, also copyright issues, students being able to formulate sound arguments of educational material presented.
     Digital Storytelling is a valuable resource that will help teachers in the class present topics through the use of powerpoints, video, voice threads, and cell phones, pda, and other technology.  I know I have and will embrace technology to tell a story to the students and thus reach them on levels that they can relate to.

Internet Resources and uses in the class.

I would like to share with you some information over internet resources and uses in the classroom. In these days and times anything and everything is online. There is an app for this and an app for that and can you hear me now over this network with 4G technology and LTE. What? There are ways that teachers can use all this techie stuff to our advantage and use the internet and all its resources to capture the minds of the children we are teaching. Having the ability to incorporate many of these new found resources into my lesson plan can make my day more interesting and not as bland and boring to the students. I have seen many blogs online of other teachers and educators that share their activities online. You will find that almost every educators ideas are recylced and reused.  I have found other blogs for instance that talk of Social Skills

Blogs and the uses in the classroom environment

I have enjoyed learning on how to use blogs and being able to incorporate them in my teaching strategies. I would like to use my blog to inform parents of the students about the daily activities we are doing in the classroom. I feel it is important to have transparency with parents who deserve to know what is going on in the class. Creating a daily blog can be a resource that parents can voice their concerns or questions they may be have about my lesson and childrens progress. Another use for the blog is to allow the students to log in and work on some activities. Giving the students the links that I have provided and ability to work with technology!

Blooms Taxonomy and Howard Gardners

The use of Blooms Taxonomy has greatly influenced how I look at structure in the classroom and the levels of teaching I will be doing from lesson to lesson. This is what I found about Blooms Taxonomy and what I learned. I also have integrated Howard Gardener's theory of multiple intelligences into my blog. Gardner explains how humans learn and what the process for that learning in each individual.
Here are some of the lessons plans my group and I collaborated on .

IBL/PBL

Hello everyone, today I would like to talk about new forms of learning that will definitely help out in my classroom. Inquiry and Project Based Learning to be very helpful in this whole process. Inquiry-Based Learning is the way children learn through the process of involvement. I believe this is true because the best way that anyone can learn something is by hands-on activities that allows you to better understand the meaning and remember it as time passes by. This is also where the art of questioning comes into play, Why? What?... etc. These types of questions motivate the students to want to learn more about the certain topic at hand. Project-Based Learning is having the students placed in the middle of the learning process and them interacting with their surroundings in order to learn more. This type of learning, personally, I think is great because what better way to motivate students than placing them in the middle of the situation? It is known that we will remember 90% of what we do verses the 10% we do remember of what we hear. These stategies are great forms to teach students who should be shown these types of learning processes, and I strongly believe that Inquiry and Project based learning can greatly assist students learing. Every teacher should be able to include these learning processes into their daily lesson.

Timeline Movie

please follow link to view my movie on Youtube..



thanks and enjoy..