Comic Life and My Showcase..whoop whoop!

I never knew how much I would learn from my own team members.  I normally don’t like doing group work however this past group experience has been a good one. I am an elementary generalist and during my practicum I had a hard time teaching mathematics mainly because my teacher was glued to math worksheets. I also didn’t have a SmartBoard that functioned in my classroom so I felt like I missed out huge. This Showcase taught me a lot about a subject that I didn’t really get to teach my way plus I learned about the SmartBoard that I didn’t know before. I will most definitely use what I learned from my group members in my own classroom one day.

Comic Life is a wicked program that I REALLY want to use in my classroom. Newspapers  and comics are great to create in the classroom because these are items that are in our everyday lives---great way to bring 21^st century learning into the classroom

Webcam---take a pic of yourself and make it into a comic picture! ---this is great and engaging. I had no idea that you could do this in Comic Life.

A lot of children can’t express themselves using pen and paper. Comic Life is wondrous and will be a new world to particular students that feel the need to express them selves in such a way.

Picasa….finds pics and organizes nicely…I’m addicted to iphoto. Perhaps I will have to change it up and experience this new photo program and learn something new! Maybe I will even like this photo program more!

Reflection on Great Task

I enjoyed doing this Great Task assignment mainly because it was a topic that I was extremely interested in:  Print Ads and the messages that they share with the world. I have to admit that it took a while to choose a specific ad because there was a massive amount of ads and campaigns that I found to be offensive. I had fun playing around with the one that I chose because there was a lot of different ways to approach the ad and send out MY message to the world.
I thought that this task was great because it showed the importance of choosing something engaging to do in the classroom. If I wasn't interested in the media world, I know that the end result of my project wouldn't have been the same and it definitely wouldn't have showed a deep understanding of the task.
If i was a teacher and assigned this great task to my group of students I think that it would be interesting to see all of the different outcomes and ideas of my students.
I overall thought that the feedback from our peers was for the most part extremely positive. However, I think that I would add in more guidelines to the assignment. After some time has past since i completed the Great Task, I now see that there should be more guidance when it comes to expectations for the assignment. My directions are too broad. I think that more guidance and strict guidelines shows discipline and will show me as a teacher who is really listening to instructions.