Technology In the Classroom: Prezi and Clip Art
I recently was even the opportunity to sub for four days in a 5th grade classroom. I was really struggling to get the talking and side chatter under control. So on the second day of feeling like I didn't get anything taught I told myself that I needed to change my tactics. After about an hour on Pinterest and revisiting several of my textbooks and consulting the Holy Scripture in discipline. "Teaching with Love and Logic" book. I worked frantically to get everything together for the next day.
In college I discovered a website that completely reinvigorated my presentations. Prezi.com goes beyond the normal power point slide presentation by allowing you to either pick from premade templates or to create your own. The thing I like the most is that all your presentation is on one page, you can then set the order the slides are shown and then it almost litterly hops from point to point. You can incorporate things like video's from YouTube or even music that you may have downloaded on your computer. Also if you get stuck they have short instructional videos that you can view to help you with your presentation. This is an AMAZING resource for college, business, presentations, and teaching.
After much thought I decided that I didn't want to necessarily say talking is not allowed in a classroom, but that there is a time and place for talking ( CK this is the situational appropriateness that was discussed at training). SO I made sure to incorporate talking/ brain breaks throughout the scheduled day. In addition to this work I knew how much this class and vocalized a dislike for history, the number one thing I heard was that they didn't learn anything from just reading and then answering a question in the book it was boring and the soon forgot what they read. So I decided to split up what we were suppose to read and created a jigsaw activity (each group is given a part of the reading and then becomes experts on that part and tells the other classmates about it). I spent the rest of the night making sure I was going to have the materials.
Now I know you may be thinking OMG that is WAYYYYY too much work! In all actuality it took me maybe an hour to do all of the above. In the morning students arrived to the screen down and the entry task on the screen in readable inviting colors. After we checked in I clicked to the next activity we were doing. I had placed the entire days activities in their own spot and directions. This is what it looked like: http://prezi.com/plzlex1kehfd/daily-schedule-5th-grade-cv/?kw=view-plzlex1kehfd&rc=ref-33949889 . Then the Jigsaw activity was just getting paper for each group, markers and then making sure their was an accountability sheet for the students to record the other groups information. The accountability sheet was simple with the name of the group and then they had to record two things they learned from the presentation.
This day went excellent!!! I had less talking and they were listening when it was instruction time. So the next day I decided to do this same kind of setup with the Prezi schedule again. It worked amazingly well the whole day went smoother.
This isn't a post focused on celebrating my achievements, I really wanted you all to see some of the ways you can include technology in the classroom. While the Prezi is what I used for structure, you could use it for your class to do presentations on a subject, you could use it as a time line piece, to show a food chain, or even the course salmon take in life cycle. The website is free with a basic subscription but I know that they allow educators and classrooms to work in the website for free as well. There are several other resources that you can use with your classes and I will try to post a Technology resource once a month. The field of technology is continuing to expand everyday and we can continue to learn as teacher by incorporating a little technology at a time, or even a little here a little there.
"Educations's Purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."- Malcolm S. Forbes
Coug Teacher
Clip art from http://www.mycutegraphics.com/graphics/graphics.html
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