Author: Josie Matz

What an interesting semester in Ed tech! Going into this class for the semester I was a little bit nervous as I am not the most confident when it comes to using technology, let alone to teach others. But I can say overall this class was a really good learning experience and I feel much more confident know using technology hopefully in my future classroom. I think considering our current situation with the Corona virus pandemic this is an especially relevant class to us as future teachers as well as current students. I know personally classes online have been easier having taken this class, and not knowing the future of education I have many more tools and skills I am comfortable using. Learning to use many different platforms to put out content for not only students but parents and families as well has been a really good learning experience. Being able to now, more confidently incorporate technology in my classroom will help to stay current with how students learn and what is going on in the world around.

These links following are some of my favorite examples of work I created throughout this semester.

First day Survey

Sink or Float

All about shapes!

For my final project I decided to use Book Creator to create an introduction activity for the beginning of the year. I wanted this to be a type of get to know you activity for students to share whatever information about themselves they wanted with me. My example was designed for lower level elementary, most likely grades 2-3 but for my specific class I would have done it in second grade. I would do this activity in class, showing my book as an example and then walking the students through how I made my book and how the website works.

More specifically wanted to use this platform because I think that it gives students a way to really personalize their books with pictures, colors, different text and other graphics. I really liked how easy it is to import pictures from your own computer, and to choose different options to really personalize their books. I decided not to create any required things they have to put in there, but rather let them choose what they felt was most necessary to share and what they wanted me to know the most. I would give the students a list of different ideas as well as a limit of 8 pages. I really like how easy it is to use this website and the many options it has.

I really liked using this website to create short stories! For this assignment I did a basic lesson for a kindergarten level class all about shapes. I think this website can be used to teach simple lessons like this one, or more detailed ones. Either way I think it would work well for any type of lesson or story. I can see myself using this in the future for many different things in the classroom. It was very easy to use.

For this assignment I compared the apps Padlet and Bubbl.us by creating a timeline and web to give an introduction to the five W’s. Using Padlet i chose the the timeline feature to show which ones come first, second, etc. I think this app was very easy to use overall. I liked how the timeline was right there and you could just type in what you needed to say. Everything in this app was very user friendly! The other app I used was Bubbl.us overall I liked this app as well and was relatively easy to use. I liked how when using the web there was different formats to use. It was a bit harder to navigate the text but still was not too bad. I like how the web has different colors and texts to use to personalize it a bit more. It was easy to share the embed code which was nice! Both of these apps proved to be useful and easy to use, i can see myself using both in the future.

This lesson on penguins could be used for grades 1-4. This would be used as a brief introduction to penguins, with lessons following being more in depth and detailed. I think that this lesson does a good job of giving simple details and examples. The questions asked are mostly to make sure students are engaged, and comprehending the information being shared.

I used this screen recording to look at a few different websites that talk about various weathers. One of my lessons I was supposed to teach was about weather and the various facts that come with each. I liked using the screen recording and how easy it was to demonstrate what I was looking at.

I made this video to talk about the basic reasons we wash our hands. I liked this app in the way it is interactive and pretty easy to use. The characters on screen make it more fun and entertaining.

I really enjoyed using this website. I can see me and my class using this a lot in the future for different ways for them to tell stories and express themselves!

This website is designed for a kindergarten class to teach a simple basic science lesson on density, sinking and floating. This would be a part of a bigger unit lesson that meets the health and sciences standards. This website includes a fun video for students to learn why objects sink or float. A simple quiz to ensure they’re understanding and some fun resources at the end!

1. This lesson could most effectively used for 1st-3rd grade. It could be used in the beginning of the year in any school/course.
2. This would be used an introduction lesson. Something you give out on one of the first days of school to get to know your students. You could even send this out prior to the first day of the school so parents can help students fill it out if they need it.
3. I think this would mostly be an independent thing or a whole class time to work. Of the students are olenough and capable of completing it on their own then it would be independent for. If they were younger would do it as a whole class activity where the teacher demonstrates it and completes it with them.
4. The teacher would going feedback about their students which would help build relationships. It would also help them learn how to help their students learn best.
5. Google forms will be used for the survey so they can complete it on there.

This post is a map of all the different schools in the West Coast Conference. These are all schools that we as a basketball team travel to in order to play these schools. This was helpful in learning how to use a map to demonstrate different places for different things!

by Liz Frick, Josie Matz, Ellie Cordova

Polygon Practice with color sheets.  For this activity, students will be practicing their knowledge of the shapes vocabulary by creating a color coded mosaic based on shapes and polygons. Students will have to pick a shape name, for example a pentagon, and chose the color to fill in all the pentagons in the following mosaic. This activity is intended for middle school students, but can be altered to other grade levels depend on what shapes are included.