Reflections on TPTE

Before I took this class I believed that I average when it came to technology. Growing up in this time you have to know your basics like using word, and powerpoints etc. I had no clue what we would be doing in this class, I didn't even realize how many different programs there were that a teacher could use in the classroom. Prior to taking this class, I had never created a website of my own, used Google Presentations, Google Drive, Google Docs, PBworks, Picasa, ActivInspire, Inspiration, Blogger,and or iMovie.

Through this course I learned how to use each of these programs, some better than others. I would  have to say that my most challenging program to work with was ActivInspire, this program made me want to pull my hair out. I just had so many problems with it, I do not think it is worth the amount of time that I had to spend on it. I would probably not use this in the classroom because I think that it is too time consuming, and it is too particular. If you don't have something set up right than it won't work. I really do like the other programs though, and I'm planning on using them in the classroom. I believe that my favorite programs would have to be Google website, Google Presentations, Google Docs, Inspiration, and finally iMovie. I want to be able to create my orchestra website and have these tools on the website just like what we created in class!

I changed because I feel confident in using most of these programs. I feel as if I won't need help to complete a project on these programs. I really feel like I've grown as a person because I'm getting closer and closer to my student teaching and earning the final tools that I will need to be a successful teacher.   

Digital Diagrams and Inspiration

Before we learned how to use digital diagrams in the classroom I have had no previous knowledge of the subject. I have had a few teachers that have hand drawn web diagrams but I have never seen or used digital diagrams. So this experience was completely new for me!

In class I learned how to navigate and use Inspiration software to create a digital diagram. Through our classroom I was able to discover how to customize a digital diagram through uploading photos, adding a hyperlink, creating the bubbles, and even changing colors and the overall layout of the diagram. Other than just simply creating the digital diagram I learned about the importance of using this technology in the classroom. These charts are easy for students to study and understand how contents are interrelated to one another.


Through our lesson on how to create digital diagrams I will be able to use this program to show the instrument families in the orchestra so students can understand how each instrument is categorized. I believe that using digital diagrams to show different facts about composers would also be helpful, so that students have a study aid for every composer. I really like digital diagrams and will definitely use them in my classroom!

Interactive whiteboards and flipcharts

Although I haven't had any experience I leaned a lot over the past few classes on how to create interactive flipcharts. I also learned that promethean planet is a resource open for teacher to use that has cool interactive activities and downloadable flipcharts for different classroom lessons. I really liked searching around on the promethean planet website and seeing all the cool things that I could download for free! I learned that there is different modes in Activinspire like authoring mode and at the board, which contain different tools that I can use. I also learned how to change the background, and how to use special interactive tools that I downloaded from the website.

Before working with Activinspire and IWB in this classroom I have had no prior experience of working with this equipment. We never used whiteboards in our school, because our teachers hated them because they constantly shut down and so they did take away a lot of time in the classroom. The second high school I attended wanted nothing to do with them so they did not put them in our school. So I've never really seen one being used properly. So it was really exciting to be able to see that we were going to learn how to use them for my future classroom.


I think that this lesson about using IWB and Activinspire is critical for my future classroom, because more and more technology is being integrated in the classroom through IWBs. I will use the board to put up important information such as which standards that we are covering in class, and also important dates that students should know that are arriving soon. I will also use the board to teach musicology and show important technique videos.  

Interactive Whiteboards Research Article

Before I read this article on Interactive whiteboard research I did not know much about IWB. I had never used this technology or have observed any teacher using this technology, so I have not had any experience what so ever.

After I read this article I found a few facts that were interesting about the IWB article. I thought that it was interesting that student achievement increased in the classroom when using the board with a successful teacher, and that if the teacher was not as successful in using the board that student achievement lowered. I feel that certain lessons are more useful than others when using an IWB.  Different types of learning tools will be helpful to making students feel more engaged in the classroom.

For example teaching through modeling how to shift would be more helpful than using the board, while learning about composers and history would be more useful to use the board. I believe that I will use IWB for teaching musicology and music theory, so that students can take notes, and learn from using helpful tools that the IWB provides.

  

Classroom Website

My prior experience to working on a website only includes when we first began working on websites at the beginning of this fall semester. We learned how to select our templates, edit, hyperlink our pages, and even upload photos onto our website. Other than this learning experience I had never worked with google sites before.

For my updated website I was easily able to navigate around my website as far as editing goes. I did forget for a moment how to hyperlink my page, but quickly remembered because of how many times I had done it before. This time though our instrument scavenger hunt I was able to learn how to easily add my google slides, saved under my drive, and add it to my website. At fist I thought that it would take a long time to make the transfer, because I believed it was such a large file but I quickly found out how easy it really was!


This assignment is extremely important for every teacher! My orchestra website needs to constantly stay up-to-date for my students, so that it is easy and convenient to navigate. I will definitely use my website in my classroom. When I use this for my class I will add other important materials that they might need and have a concert countdown on our main page. I also want to make my website more personal for my students by adding pictures and videos of them.   

Digital Images

I have a lot of experience with digital images in both my social life and through my work. In my social life I like to download images onto my computer to save them, even if I don't have the time to print them out. I upload pictures onto Facebook. I like taking pictures because I like going back and remembering what I've done, and to see how much I, my family, and friends have grown. I work at CVS/Pharmacy as a photo technician, so I work with photos more than most people. I am also trained to develop, print, and cut film. I've taught customers how to use our Kodak Kiosk app so that they can send pictures from their smartphone to our kiosk without a chord or a mini sd card. I knew most of what was taught in class yesterday because I've been working with CVS for the past 5 years, so I've had to constantly keep up with our ever changing photo clientele and learning new technologies to upload or download photos.

In class I did learn how to properly download and resize photos using preview on my macbook. I also learned how upload photos onto google presentation. And finally I learned that resizing the photo works way better than dragging the corners of the photo. The next thing that we did was go to the music building and find all of the instruments for our scavenger hunt and download and share them through dropbox! I had never done this before, and I still was not sure how dropbox worked because I had heard of the software but never have used it, so it was really exciting to learn how to work it.

In my future classroom I can see me using this information to create slideshows for my students with picture that are properly sized and are at 72 resolution. I'm excited to be able to start finding good pictures of composers and artists to show to my students.    

Resources

This week we worked on our our resource list for helpful websites that we would use in our future music classrooms. Although I have now have had prior experience with wikis and how to properly upload a file, I've never had the experience using google doc where all members can type and edit our own page. I've never done an assignment where we used a google doc to upload a resource list for a group.

For the resource assignment I was able to discover good resources that I can use in my classroom that I had never thought about using. I really liked learning how to use a google doc! It was very easy and I was able to see what each website was like in the description. I also learned how to paraphrase my website to help make it short and sweet so that the student may get an idea of what the website is like.

Finally I would use this in my classroom for group projects. I think it would be a good idea to have students research websites and put them up on a google doc to help them do research on an important time era in music. Other than this I'm not really sure how to use this in my classroom because unfortunately and honestly there is not enough time for students to do projects like this because students have to reach a certain level in their playing in such a short period of time. There really isn't any time for any of these kinds of projects. I'm hoping that this will change to help enrich student's experiences but I've never seen a music classroom that has time for things of this nature which is very sad.