Movie Night!

Tonight in IT 486 we mostly worked on dealing with the frighteningly frustrating entity that is editing photos into a slide show on iMovie. This program made my computer crash twice and deleted my project three times before I finally sprinted through the entire thing and called it done. It doesn't look bad, if I do say so myself. If you feel so inclined you can watch it here. It's a slide show of photos of major Shakespearean landmarks in England that I took over my study abroad this past summer.

After that we worked with the seemingly endless beast that is our websites. Mine now has... well, a lot of stuff on it. It's here if you're interested. Keep in mind, however, that it is ever changing.




In other news, I got new glasses!

Web-It!

Today in IT 486 we worked on creating an web outline to use in our classrooms. I chose to do a web helping illustrate the various terms used when labeling a poem's meter and rhythm. It was a fairly fun activity. I posted it to my website, if you'd like to take a look. It's under "My Tech Projects". We used Inspiration 8 to create it but here's a link with an image if you don't have the program.

We also had our mid-term exam tonight *dum dum DUUUMMMM*. It was pen book so it wasn't anything I couldn't handle, and I actually did pretty well on it, hooray!

This week John and I also passed in our final draft of our Curriculum Connection. I think it came out pretty well. I've been talking about how we've been working on inter-curriculum lesson plans in a few of my other Education classes and I've determined that I've actually gained a very valuable skill by working with John, which is super cool.

Anyway, more next week!

Fun with Webs

So in our last IT 486 class we started working on using computer generated webbing software to create graphic organizers for our lessons. As soon as I found out the assignment I was pretty excited because for the longest time I've been trying to figure out the best way to explain titling poetic rhythm and meter. Kids never understand the differences between iambic, anapestic, dactylic, and so forth, I know this because I never was able to remember the differences. Also there are the overwhelming terms like hectameter and octameter when dealing with the meter portion of the equation. So that's what my web is going to be all about as well as having examples of the various poetic forms. I'll post a little picture of the completed project once I get it done.

That's all we did, the rest of the class was spent doing housekeeping regaurding our curriculum connections. That's right, ladys and gents, my buddy John and I are back together again attempting to create a lesson plan that bridges French and English curriculums. Admitedly, we did come up with our assignment fairly quickly since we just took one aspect of our previous lesson plan for this lesson plan. Still, a daunting task was presented to us once again. We haven't finished it, but it's looking pretty good.

Next class is going to be pretty relaxing... I hope.

Oh, THOSE Kinds of Photos...

Today in my IT 486 class we focused on digital images. The most important thing I got out of this lesson were resources where I can get free, uncopyrighted photos for anything thing I need them for. This was exciting because I know I'm not supposed to use Google Images, but I do... all the time. We also got to do a really fun activity where we looked for certain aspects of language around campus. I was paired up with my IT buddy John as well as an Art teacher, Meghann. We got to take some really fun photos and we all got really in to it.

One of our items was a picture book, thank goodness for the Children's Literature section of Hodges. I will say, though, some of these books are far too complicated for children.





I love this photo of Meghann demonstrating a verb














This one of John showing an antonym for "open" cracks me up.








I felt a little rushed towards the end of class, and in a week of mid-terms making me feel rushed non-stop I didn't respond well to that. We were just trying to fit a lot of stuff into a short amount of time. But the scavenger hunt was a lot of fun, especially because it was a GORGEOUS day outside.

Bad Week= Unresponsive, Confrontational Me

So this week in my TPTE 486 class we started by going over what needed to be edited on our WebQuest pages. John and I were pretty tight, just a few very quick fixes and that all we needed. Other students in our class, however, were not so lucky. This resulted in John and I having not much to do for a while, which was fine with me. I helped John update his UT website since he was a little behind so I guess the free time was beneficial.

After this we began working on setting up our Google Docs accounts. This is actually a really great thing for me to learn because I edit my friends' papers all the time and I always get annoyed either haveing to instant message them step by step changes or having attatchments fail. I'm already planning to use Google Docs for a cooperative lesson plan I'm working on in my Introduction to Secondary Schools class.

Lastly we talked about correctly writing course objectives in a lesson plan. Hooray! The reason I say hooray is because I'm writing two lesson plans for two other classes right now and neither class has really gone over exactly what an objective is, so this was helpful. Dr. Obannon actually has an entire site dedicated to helping students through creating lesson plans.

With the last bit of class John and I talked about our lesson plan that is due next week. We're doing an introductory lesson on existentialism. My number one irritant is that bridging his French and my English curriculums is a bit of a pain, but we get it done.

February 23rd

WHEW!!!

After extensive research, editing, blood, sweat and tears John and I presented our WebQuest to our class today. It was actually really relaxing activity while at work. If you don't know, I work as a Student Assistant for OIT on the UT campus. My job mostly consists of sitting quietly at a computer and doing my homework while waiting to be asked questions. This assignment was perfect for my job and I got my half of the assignment done fairly quickly. I was really pleased with the outcome and actually hope that I can use this lesson when I enter the field.

If you're curious, you can visit the website here.

February 16th

Yeah, I know, I'm back-tracking, but life has been crazy lately. On February 17th in my 486 class we began working on WebQuests using pbwiki. I was paired with John (hooray!). For our WebQuest we needed to come up with a topic and create a Wiki for it with instructions and websites for the students to visit that would help them finish the product. When John and I first began talking we were a little scared. You see, John is a Franch teacher and I am an English teacher. We had no idea how we were going to manage to create a lesson that spanned both curriculums. Suddenly, BOOM, there it was: expatriate Engish-language authors in Paris in the 1920s. We both got really excited about the topic and were ready to sink our teeth into it. See above entry for details on what happened next.

The Website, Growing Like a Sloth on a Hot Day

So in my class we payed around more with setting up our websites. Most of the concern was over setting up links to our emails and blogs as well as inserting a picture. I know, revolutionary, extremely complicated materials. However, there was the discovery that if your materials were not saved properly the website cannot locate and apply files. This wasn't an issue for me because, as my first entry stated, I'm organized.



As well as the website fun we began working on our wikis. Each one of us have been added to a wiki that regards our content area. In these wikis we will be posting resource sites that will help facilitate online learning for our students. The most complicated aspect of a large classroom of students all trying to edit a wiki site, however, is that only one person can edit at a time. This was perfectly alright for John and I, being the only two Language arts people in the class, but we have multiple Special Education students who were all trying to do the same thing at the same time. Also, there was a lot of confusion as far as formatting was concerned.

All in all it was a slightly trying night.

Hello, My Name is Margaret Morris, and this is a Website

So tonight in my IT 486 class after posting my amazing example of my newly acquired organization skillz we worked on my class website. This was my first time using Dreamweaver since I was in middle school and I can't say that it's like riding a bicycle. We worked on creating a table, a heading, and links as well as working on the color scheme. Lastly we uploaded our work onto out UTK website. The link, if you want to keep up with it (I promise that it wont look like the photo in this entry forever) is here. That's all for now!

I'm Organized!

Here's the proof! This is a picture of my file organization on my jump drive for my IT 486 class. The way I took this picture was to open up my 486 folder, hit (shift)+(apple symbol)+3. When the cross-hairs came up I created a square over my folder organization. Once I un-clicked from that it saved the picture to my desktop. Then I went into Photoshop Elements and opened the picture from my desktop and resized the image. Then I saved the file to my 486 folder on my jump drive. This sort of organization is important because it enables me to find exactly what I'm looking for quickly and efficiently. By doing this I will be better prepared for my IT 486 class whenever I go to lecture.