Insect Body Parts: A diagram made with Inspiration

Using the inspiration program was a lot of fun. The program was fairly easy to navigate and offered many options for personalizing each project completed on it. I chose to do my Inspiration project on insect body parts. I felt that this was a good topic to do on Inspiration because it offered easy linking between topics, such as the three specific parts of an insect. I do not believe it would be appropriate for the children to use this in a preschool classroom but the children in a Kindergarten classroom could possibly use it. As the teacher, I could use Inspiration program to map out and explain specific topics in a new and interesting ways. I could incorporate these diagrams into lessons and activities in almost any subject.

Color Scavenger Hunt

Create a free picture slideshow The color scavenger hunt is something that I will definitely be using in my future classroom. I was absent from class the day that this assignment was assigned. Originally, we were to work in groups in order to complete the assignment. I wish I had the opportunity to work with a group on this and share ideas about how to present and use this type of thing in the classroom. I completed the assignment on my own and did not have any problems. I am sure that young children would be capable of capturing digital images for a scavenger hunt.  I will be working with young children who would benefit greatly from this type of assignment, whether it is about colors, shapes, or even bugs. It would give them the opportunity to work with digital images while learning basic skills. It is an active lesson where they children would have the freedom to move around the room or school. This is a project that could be done as a class, in small groups, or individually. I completed my color scavenger hunt and proceeded to put the pictures into a Smilebox presentation.  Smilebox was easy and fun to use. They offer many themes and blank presentations as well. I’m not sure that young children would be able to navigate this image site but there are many other options for displaying the images online, or printed out.

My first shot at an Animoto video

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

This Animoto video was so much fun to make!  When our professor gave this assignment to us as extra credit my first reaction was to shy away from it. I was a little scared of navigating a new program. I thought it was going to be difficult. It ended up being very simple to use. I chose my photos, and through the program chose a background for my video slideshow. Many of the backgrounds were for paying users and were really cool. It almost made me want to pay for it! There were some nice ones for free though. I uploaded the photos and then picked music to go along with it. I had the perfect song to go along with my video but did not have access to it on the computer I was on. I ended up picking a song from the choices that Animoto offered. The finished product was the video above.

Digital Collection

The digital collection was an interesting assignment for me. As I have said before I am not great with computers and that includes digital images. I have used digital images for a while on social networking sites but I previously had my best friend resize or crop any photos that needed to be fixed. This was my first experience resizing and changing the dpi on digital photos. I am glad to know that it is not as hard as I once believed it to be. I explored programs such as photoshop and picnik in order to resize my photos.  Screenshots and scanning were also new me. I have used screenshots since this assignment in other classes. I learned a lot from this assignment and will absolutely be using these new skills in my future classroom.