Week 2
Posted by Shelley Rogers on Friday, March 9, 2012
In this tutorial we signed up to Gmail- google's email system. I had never considered getting a Gmail account, I have always been happy with Hotmail. Jenni is introducing us to new technology each week - which I think is really great as she has alot to do with technology and seems to really enjoy it which is so encouraging that I want to learn about differnt products available. So our weekly plan is available to us thru Gmail and Google docs. This is really helpful to me because I often forget websites and information Jenni has said and now I can have a look over this document and make sure Im up to date on where I should be.
I have been having a play on my Gmail account and Im really liking it, there are alot of links to different areas that could be very useful - and its all in one place!
Some of the applications I have found useful on the site are: Calander, weather, news, map, Picasa(photo storage) and search facility. I think this would be extremly useful for anybody travelling and they had limited time to access the internet. All there stuff is in one place and they can look for places on the map facility, check the weather forecast and local/internation news. I have had a play on Picasa and throughly enjoyed it. I think it would be a fantastic place to store and share photos that you can access anywhere in the world that you can get onto the internet.
Jenni has also introduced us to The Learning Federation, an online teaching resource for teacher. We were shown this website in conjuction with the Smartboard in the tutorial room. I am so impressed with this technology! I had no idea this sort of thing was currently being used in Western Australian schools. What an amazing product available to our students and teachers. I had an absolutely amazing time using the Smartboard and can not wait to use it when I get out into the schools.
The Learning Federation website is really great too, very interative and I think it would be wonderful in classrooms. I think having this technology in class would keep the students attention as it is very colourful and interactive. I think they would all want a turn to play on it, therefore helping there knowledge grow without them knowing it and keeping the activites fun.
I think both these technologies used together could really help in boosting childrens confidence aswell as learning the required information. I feel the students would be talking and answering questions without realising as they would be so focused on the screen that they would not realise they were talking. As the students got the information right their confidence would grow and grow.
We wer divided into groups to look at and explore the software and group 1 was first, in this group there was Jodie Burrage, Chris Pickering and myself. The 'game' we played was a maths one and very enjoyable. There were interlocking cirlces on the screen with numbers in only some of the areas which we had to add other numbers to (they were on the side of the screen) to make 0. This was harder than first though and really got us thinking. I think it would be great for children as it is another way to work out math problems in a non-standard way.
I have been having a play on my Gmail account and Im really liking it, there are alot of links to different areas that could be very useful - and its all in one place!
Some of the applications I have found useful on the site are: Calander, weather, news, map, Picasa(photo storage) and search facility. I think this would be extremly useful for anybody travelling and they had limited time to access the internet. All there stuff is in one place and they can look for places on the map facility, check the weather forecast and local/internation news. I have had a play on Picasa and throughly enjoyed it. I think it would be a fantastic place to store and share photos that you can access anywhere in the world that you can get onto the internet.
Jenni has also introduced us to The Learning Federation, an online teaching resource for teacher. We were shown this website in conjuction with the Smartboard in the tutorial room. I am so impressed with this technology! I had no idea this sort of thing was currently being used in Western Australian schools. What an amazing product available to our students and teachers. I had an absolutely amazing time using the Smartboard and can not wait to use it when I get out into the schools.
The Learning Federation website is really great too, very interative and I think it would be wonderful in classrooms. I think having this technology in class would keep the students attention as it is very colourful and interactive. I think they would all want a turn to play on it, therefore helping there knowledge grow without them knowing it and keeping the activites fun.
I think both these technologies used together could really help in boosting childrens confidence aswell as learning the required information. I feel the students would be talking and answering questions without realising as they would be so focused on the screen that they would not realise they were talking. As the students got the information right their confidence would grow and grow.
We wer divided into groups to look at and explore the software and group 1 was first, in this group there was Jodie Burrage, Chris Pickering and myself. The 'game' we played was a maths one and very enjoyable. There were interlocking cirlces on the screen with numbers in only some of the areas which we had to add other numbers to (they were on the side of the screen) to make 0. This was harder than first though and really got us thinking. I think it would be great for children as it is another way to work out math problems in a non-standard way.