Monday, June 6, 2011

Thing 18

I like the way there have been so many options presented for us to look through and then decide what we might want to use. A looked through Slideshare, Faculte, and Prezi. I had actually looked over Prezi earlier in the course at Skip's suggestion. I think it is interesting and a creative new way for kids to make presentations. I need to become more familiar with it myself before turning it over to the students. Maybe not, though. They will probably pick it up quickly and run with it! To me, it is all over the place with the zooming in and out, but I think the kids would like it because it has more "energy" than a typical PowerPoint presentation.

Speaking of PowerPoint presentations, I found that SlideShare had plenty of presentations to offer and some will be useful in the classroom. I did find a couple to share. We do a quick unit on Electricity and Magnetism (jammed in there between Genetics and Amusement Park Physics) This slide show reviews many of the things we cover ( with a good mix of text and illustrations - a bit long though).


Earlier in the year, we do a unit on Bridges and study bridge types, design, and the forces acting on them before building toothpick bridges. The next slide show is set to music and just shows some beautiful examples of bridge architecture.


It is nice to find some presentations already made to share with students, and have them accessible from home if they miss it in class.

2 comments:

  1. I think your way of looking at this is the more fun way. You look at tools and file them away until you find a use for them.

    In some cases like Prezi and Weebly they were recommended by students, in these cases my nephew Tom. Who knows, what is hot now might not be in six months. Remember MySpace?

    The biggest concept that we, and I say that thinking that Matt probably agrees with me but I hate to put words in his mouth, hope you take away from this besides knowledge in new tools is the sense of being open to explore new things and, if you find value, add them to your repertoire.

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  2. I hate it when Skip is spot on. One of the major points of the course, is to understand that Skip and I don't know everything. We learn new things every day and we try to update this class as things become obsolete, or no longer free, or as we find new tools. We never expect you to learn our use everything, but we do expect you to expand your thinking, and hopefully, your curiosity. I applaud your attitude as well.

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