How creative and instructive we are!

I think Mrs. Mislevy had a great idea of changing the regular classroom presentation of our notebook projects to on-line presentations. It was amazing, much more interesting and interactive, as I could leave some comments on my classmates’ blog.

 I really loved this Notebook presentation project: as Joe said, it really showed how diverse we are, but at the same time how creative and instructive we surely are. I learned a lot reading, watching and listening to the presentations. Ryan Marie video about cyber bullying was very informative and she did a great job editing it. Both Mike’s and Julie’s glogster were very informative, easy to read and get the information using their links to the articles or videos. Josh’s mp3 file was incredible, his music was very catchy and informative as well. Judy’s video was very creative with the use of Mr. Moose and Mr. Bear, but also I learned a lot about the help of technology used with reading disabilities. Sarah’s prezi presentation was the one that surprised me the most: it’s easy to ready, very catchy and informative with all the videos, but at the same time, it was very clean, without so many distractive colors and pictures. I’m sure I’ll use glogster and prezi to prepare some interactive classes or to present some of my researches in the future, as Mike, Julie and Sarah showed, they are great tools to make a regular article very interesting and interactive. I’m very proud to be part of such creative and smart class. Great job, everyone!

The "magic" whiteboard

The first time I saw an interactive whiteboard was in my graduate course. I used to hate the regular whiteboards, even though they were an advance from the chalk blackboard. They are difficult to clean, they can be damaged easily and they are usually not very big.

But, with the INTERACTIVE whiteboard, it’s different. I loved to work with it in class. We can’t say that there aren’t any problems, but what you can do with it overhaul any of those.

What I thought about preparing lessons using it was that we have to get used to it and as my professor said, we must use it, train on it. It takes time until you discover all the resources in it, so I’m sure that preparing the next lesson will be easier that the previous and so on.

I’d really love to have one in my classroom to teach at daily bases, especially because I usually teach foreign languages to adults that could really appreciate all its potential with the games, and the possibility to watch videos and to write on it when you are giving an explanation. It’s for sure far more interesting and interactive than a powerpoint presentation.

I’m sure not only adults, but students of any age will be engaged in a class that uses it as a tool to make the subject more interesting and easier to visualize. All students would appreciate the teacher’s effort to prepare a lesson using it, giving them the sign that the teacher is also engaged in the course and wants to make it more fascinating and interesting to them.