Post #2

As we head into the seventh week of class, we have expanded our uses of different technologies for educational purposes. I think what I am more drawn to with this technology class is what turns most teachers off to technology: figuring it out. I get excited each week to be presented with a challenge of a different program or forum to try to figure out and make something useful out of it. Since my last post we have worked with two other resources. The first one was the production of a graphic organizer using the program Inspiration. Using this program, I was able to make a graphic organizer of the Writing Process, which is a key part of my teaching Language Arts. I really enjoyed exploring the different graphics and charts that were available to me through this program in order to create this visual for my students to use when they are in my classroom. I also think it would be a great tool for students to use for collaborative or individual projects as well.  Below is the image of the graphic organizer that I created using this program.

The other resource that we used was Spreadsheets through Google Documents. With the spreadsheet, we created an online grade book for three different classes. I was very interested in this project because this is a type of technology that I deal with every day for work. I use spreadsheets in excel as well as in IBM SPSS Statistic programs to generate different percentages for data that is collected in the research projects that I am involved in. I found this particular resource not challenging to figure out, however I did become frustrated because of technical difficulties. By this I mean timing out issues due to the program being on the internet rather than based out of my actual computer. I really enjoyed plugging in the formulas and designing the layout of the spreadsheet. It was probably helpful to have some background knowledge in this particular field.