Summary of attendance

I learned about several different apps to entertain children during the holidays. However, several of these apps could be utilized in my future classroom. We discussed the apps Zen Studio, Sock Puppets, Khan Academy, Civilisations AR, and Haiku Desk. My personal favorites, since I am an Early Childhood Education major, were the Zen Studio and Sock Puppets. I could use these now during my classroom placements or with my 3-year-old nephew. My nephew would love to play with these during Thanksgiving because he could create different shapes and drawings in Zen Studio and I could imagine him having a lot of fun making different movies with the Sock Puppets app, as well. However, I could definitely utilize both of these apps in my future classroom, as well. I think that the Zen Studio app could be a very beneficial calm down tool. In Early Childhood, we talk a lot about calm down corners. This is a safe area of the classroom where students can go when they are feeling overwhelmed or upset. I believe that having this app available for them could be useful because it could allow them something to channel their excess energy into and calm them down. I also believe that the Sock Puppets app could be beneficial. This could be used as a retelling tool in literacy work stations. If students are learning the skill of retelling stories, this could be used as a more fun and interactive way for them to work on developing that skill.

This was a webinar about apps that we could use after Thanksgiving dinner. We learned how to use five different apps: Zen Studio, Kahn Academy, Sock Puppets, BBC Civilsations, and Huiku Deck. While I am glad that I learned how to use each one of them, I could really see myself use Kahn Academy, BBC, and Huiku in my classrooms. I am really excited to have these three apps as resources for my students and to provide them with new and creative ways to do exit tickets from my classroom.

In the Webinar, we learned about the app Anchor, which is a free app that can be used to create podcasts, and share them via anchor's platform. The knowledge of how to use this app could be useful as a future teacher to utilize to create a class podcast, or a podcast students can listen to when they're at home, or at centers. 

I was unaware that the app Anchor even existed. It was really interesting to learn how easy it is for people to create a podcast. The app allowed people to send in messages or questions and you could even add people to join the podcast. I believe that I could use it in a kindergarten classroom by creating a podcast to let the parents know what is happening in the classroom (a newsletter) and even involve the children in it. I could also use it as a way to leave instructions for different centers. 

I learned how to create a podcast using Anchor for my future class. This can be used to connect with parents, students that are absent, and using assistive technology for students with disabilities. This gives people the opportunity to listen to a lesson, instructions, or even news.

For this workshop I learned about how to create a classroom podcast and how it can be helpful. We used the app Anchor which makes it easy to create a podcast using a iPad. I really like the iPad of using a podcast in the classroom but not always for a newsletter, I think it would work great for projects. Especially as a final presentation project so that students don’t have present out loud to the class. I do think it would work well for a classroom newsletter because it would be a short listening video for parents to listen to and see what their kids are doing. I think classroom podcasts would be great!

Through this webinar, I learned how to use Google Keep. I had never heard of Google Keep before but I really enjoyed taking this professional development. I learned that the app is basically a note taking tool that has reminders, voice notes, and other amenities. I was able to explore the app and go through each feature while the webinar was going on and afterwards. I added a picture to my note, I added a voice recording, I was able to draw on some of my notes, and I got the text from a picture and pulled it into my note. The more that I used the app the more that I liked it. It is engaging and I feel like it is better than using notes on the iPhone. 

In this webinar we learned about google keep and how to use it in our future classrooms. We were shown how to take a picture of printed text and turn it into typed text. We also learned that it will transcribe your voice as you speak and it records. He also taught us that you can transport items in google keep to google docs and explained how it might be beneficial. Finally we learned to use the checkbox, text, and drawing tools. 

During this workshop I learned how you can use Google Keeps as a place for sticky notes.  You can also use it to send you reminders.  You can use it for your lesson plans and to record over things. You can also use it for checklists.

 I would use this as a teacher to send myself reminders.  I would also use this for to-do checklists or other checklists. One person in the webinar mentioned how you could use it during fire drills or emergency procedures to have your class roster easily. Mr. Kalinski also mentioned that he would input his lesson plans and reflect by recording on them which I think is also a great idea. 

In this Webinar, Chris showed us the ins and outs of Google Keep - an app that can be used on a desktop, iPad, or phone, making it very versatile (there is also an Android option - meaning all students would likely be able to use it somehow). We learned how to annotate notes using the drawing feature, draw diagrams or pictures using different tools, add photos to notes, organize notes by labeling them, change the colors of notes and pin them to the top, and share notes. This is an appealing way of organizing notes, though my one complaint is - when comparing this app to Notability - I don't like that you are unable to easily see the date each note was created. However, it allows you to organize your notes almost as if they were sticky notes on a bulletin board, which is ideal for some. 

I could use Google Keep in my future classroom for group projects, instructions for word problems or step-by-step help, and assigning projects and homework by pinning important notes to the top. I describe in more detail how I would use this in the reflection. 

I learned that this technology is a hit or miss. When it was working, it was great! However, it kept freezing in the beginning and going in and out of the call on everyone’s account. I learned how to use the BlueJeans app. It is user friendly and easy to use. I like that you don’t necessarily have to use the microphone and talk. I was currently babysitting, so I muted myself so they couldn’t hear children in the background. Even though I was muted I was still able to hear the instructor and know what to do. 

I enjoyed this experience once everything was going smoothly. I think this app would be good to use for staff/team meetings. It could also be used for group work with middle schoolers, or even a pen pal type experience with students all around the world from different cultures! Oh, I think I could do so much with this feature in my future classroom. 

This workshop showed us how to use iMovie and work with its features. We were shown just how easy it was to use a green screen and place a background image over it using the features of iMovie. We were also taught how to add our own recordings and images in through iMovie through some of the recent updates to iMovie. 

I will use what I learned in this workshop as a student ASAP as I need to create my extra credit video for my time at Arthur Elementary and I think that using iMovie will be easy and super useful in doing that. As far as using it in my practices as a teacher, I think that on a basic level, I could get students to create videos where they are solving word problems or creating mathematical scenarios and having them edit their videos with iMovie. There are probably some more creative ways to use iMovie but I’m still trying to process and unpack all the features and function of iMovie and how best I could use it in a high school mathematics course.