Lesson 3: Desktop Publishing

This week was BUSY, to say the least.  My school just started March Madness, in the classroom, and in the gym.  Each class has been practicing their basketball skills.  This week, each grade level will compete against other classes in the same grade.  In the classroom, each student is preparing for dreaded K-Prep.  In the gym, they are preparing for BASKETBALL!! I had to create a flyer to hang around the school informing students of when March Madness (in the gym) would begin.  The first one I created was boring.  It was just typed in black letters, same font in a boring word document.  There really wasn't anything visually appealing about this flyer.  Just a boring piece of paper hanging on a school hallway, not attracting anyone's attention.  I believe the boring-ness of the flyer distracted from the message because who would stop to read it?  It had no flare, no special features, it was boring.  I re-created it to make it a little more visually appealing.  

 

I feel like this flyer will catch students' eyes.  There is color on this flyer and I used different fonts and sizes.  It was difficult for me at first to come up with this flyer because I don't have much experience in this area.  I was lucky because the principal didn't want any more information on the flyer since it was just hanging in the hallways of an elementary school; it is just supposed to get the students ready for the games.  

Visual images are important because it attracts the person to look at what ever the visual image is on.  It helps people put a picture to what they are reading.  Visual images help people understand and connect to what they are reading, whether it be in a flyer or book.  

Now, on to the tech explorations! There were many this week that I really enjoyed learning about, and I feel like I can use many of these websites (or at least pass them along to the right teachers at my school).  There were other websites that I did not particularly enjoy, and I found them difficult to look at.  
     Zoho is a free site, any one can sign up for an account.  You can use zoho for many things.  They have different applications to assist many different people and activities.  They have collaboration applications, and these can be used in the classroom.  Students can use these for projects.  Productivity applications can be used for keeping up with calendars or grades.  I feel like this site is like google (gmail).  It provides e-mail and a way to save things on the browser so you can access it from any internet friendly computer.  This website was a little hard to understand what all it could offer.  I wouldn't recommend this to teachers because it was a bit overwhelming for me.  
     GPAT is a website that helped me learn a lot about assistive technology.  Though this website is for the Georgia Department of Education, it has many links regarding assistive technology.  This site is completely free, but as far as I could tell, it would only be helpful if you are looking for ways to gain assistive technology in your district.  In a school setting I would use this website as a resource.  There are many pages regarding legal mandates and how to implement the program in the school district.  
     The next website is called 4teachers.  I loved this site! On this website there were links that connects you to many different websites, I explored three.  
          Quizstar is a free web based quiz maker.  It allows you to administer and grade quizzes online.  With the quiz, you can attach multimedia files, put it in multiple languages, and access the quiz from any computer.  I would totally use this in the classroom!  Teachers at the school I work at already utilize this great site.  From what I have heard from them, and the website, making the quiz is easy.  Students login and click on the class and the quiz is right there! This would be good for little pop-quizzes or long multiple choice tests.  I would recommend this to teachers because it's easy to use and it's FREE!!  Quizstar is great because it also can keep track of the grades and report student progress if you use it on a regular basis.  
          Trackstar is a free website.  It has online lessons and activities.  Teachers can create their own tracks.  Tracks are a collection of websites and information regarding a particular lesson/subject.  Teachers can make their own or they can browse others.  This site is easy to use.  It allows you to search by grade, subject, or theme.  There are also fun lessons made for everyday of the year.  If I was a teacher, I would try to utilize this website by having an interactive lesson during morning work.  They could get on the computer and complete a lesson using trackstar.  The students would kinda be in charge of their own learning with each lesson.  I would recommend this to other teachers because it is free and easy to use. 
          Arcademicskillbuilders is a website that has educational video games, arcade style.  You can get online and play for free, but it does talk about terms of service, 3% of the proceeds go to the Boys and Girls Club.  The games are separated by skill level and grade.  You can pick the games relating to what you are working on in class.  The games focused on math, at least the ones I was interested in.  I actually did recommend this website to one of the teachers at my school because she was having a time teaching fractions.  Students were just not grasping the concept.  I would use this website in the classroom during centers, to give students a choice between dreambox or this.  Both have math games, but it would be something different.  
     Dimio was a website that I did not particularly enjoy.  Powertalk is a free website that tries to explain how to install text to speech programs on the computer.  I think the site was difficult to figure out.  I could not find a price for any of the programs, but it does attempt to explain several.  The program allows you to select different voices and combine them to create dialogue.  They could also be translated in to different languages.  You could use this in the classroom if you have students with seeing disabilities or major problems reading.  Instead of having paras read tests to students maybe they could use a program like this.  I would not recommend this site to colleagues because as I said it was difficult to figure out.  I didn't even like looking at the layout of it.  
     Fullmeasure-powertalk is a free website.  It can speak any presentation or slide show running on Microsoft Powepoint for Windows.  It can speak text as it appears on the screen and hidden text attached to images.  It has directions on how to use/install right on the web page, so I think this site is pretty user friendly.  I think you could use this in a classroom in elementary school or high school.  Imagine losing your voice, but have an important topic to teach before a test.  This program would allow the teacher to still get their point across with out straining their voice.  It could also be useful for students who, again, are visually impaired.  I would recommend this site to other teachers because it is free and all you have to do it download it.  The instructions are right on the website, and I feel like it would be a fairly easy program to use in the classroom.  
     Webquest- I have never heard of this site, but there is a bunch of information about it on the webpage.  This is an inquiry oriented lesson format- the information comes from the internet.  This is a good use of internet while engaging students.  It allows the use of google and other search sites that yield the most appropriate search results.  Students could use this on research projects and group projects.  I would recommend this site to other teachers.  I believe it is free, I couldn't find anything that stated otherwise.  It was also fairly easy to navigate and learn about.  
     Readthewords is a site that can convert any document in to a speech recording.  You can do some things for free, but if you want to do anything elaborate, you may need to purchase a package.  They have 3 different packages and a teacher package.  They all include different things like number of hours you can record, save, broadcast, and so on.  I don't know that I would recommend this particular website because I feel like there are other websites that can do the same thing for free.  This can be used to teach pronunciation to students, specifically younger students.  If teachers purchase the teacher package, they could use this site to document events that happened in their room through out the year.  You could also send students/parents pre-recorded messages via phone.