This weeks articles on Feedly have exposed me to the many technology instructional websites and ways of blogging. The thousands of resources available online is a bit intimidating when trying to seek a specific subject or area of interest. As I looked thru the many choices of adding to my Feedly, I came across an eye catching website: Free Technology for Teachers. As I viewed the contents I found that there many connections that I could be able to integrate in the classroom for example the creative page of Pixton. In this webpage you can create a comic strip or even a small book by customizing your images from what is available. This program takes you step by step in creating a comic scenery with backgrounds and scenery's and one of a kind individual that you custom make to your specifications. This would be a great hands on tool to have students create their own storyline and getting them interested in writing. Students can display their creativity and own writing they can then share with their fellow students. Pixton is free for the very basic creations but is a paid website to upgrade to the more complex features. This program is worth trying in the classroom to see if students would be interested in this form of writing. Although anything revolving around technology will surely engage the students into producing quality work.
As I continued to surf thru my selected sources of information I came across the Leadership-Getting Smart article. The article within about Project Based Learning (PBL) which is about teaching students to learn thru hands on high quality projects that reflect their academic ideas and express their findings thru projects. The students projects contain attributes that involve college and career readiness which many experts advise we should be directing our students towards. The PBL produce lifelong learners and teaches students to think critically and solve complex problems. This is an aspect I have been trying to find out more about to try to integrate in the my classroom. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be enough time thru out the day to try to integrate something new, but it is worth the time to take a very closer look at PBL's.
This experience with Feedly has been a very positive learning experience for me. I know that I will continue to use the sites to research the articles contained and learn more about the different sites I selected.
Feedly made it a lot easier for me to organize the sites i need to visit for resources to help my students understand technology better. I also like how it has a notification system to let me know when their is a new article of a website. The think that is also helpful about feedly is that it shows you more websites similar to the one you like to visit. Great post i enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteI also read that article about Pixton for creating comic strips and motivate students to write. I think it is a great idea to use Pixton for the students to become engaged in the writing process. This way students can choose their scenario, and create their own story. Students sometimes have a hard time writing and using their imagination but I think that this is a great tool that could help those students.
ReplyDeleteBertha,
ReplyDeleteI too read the Pixton article and thought it was a great tool to use! What I liked about it was that even if the student was not good at drawing, it did not matter because it already came with graphics the student could edit and use. It did not seem like there were any limitations at all. As far as your second article, PBL does seem challenging to incorporate into daily lesson plans but it can be effective since they are "doing".
Hi Bertha,
ReplyDeleteI like the Project Base Learning concept (PBL). I have always been a fan of how to integrate learning, knowing and doing at the same time. Educators enjoy their teaching when they see the kids showing what they learn as they journey through the unit, not just at the end, besides kids collaborate with each other, and assess themselves and each other. They don't just take a test or produce a product at the end to show their learning.
Jorge Villarreal