Blog Journal #3
Going Off the standards presented in the common core initiative site, I'd be willing to wager my comfortability levels out around the grade 5 level; where most of the students are introduced to intro level software management. Essentially the surface level fair we've covered as a class from basic MS suite maintenance, to cloud and social media usage. I'm not currently fit to instruct at a higher level than what is my frustratingly low exposures to such technologies. Perhaps it's my lack of need for such suites? In any case If one were to throw me into a fifth grade class room setting and asked my to teach the basic functionalities I'd be more than happy to. I'd even throw in Copyright strike prevention and public domain usage.
I was playing around with the grade 5 resource toolkit and found some neat studying materials involving social studies courses presented cleanly and succinctly for young students to understand. tiny course nodes located near the bottom of each purple panel pointed you to supplementary video and cited materials that helped hammer home whatever history course was being taught--in this case, the battle of Yorktown. The subject is given a clearly defined lesson plan with printable worksheets. Like I've mentioned earlier in the course: I'm weary of many/most of these technologies taking over the classroom environment; they come off as distractions. But looking over the CPALMS courses I couldn't help but feel a tinge of envy towards these younger students--the wide breathe of tools available at their fingertips, the organization. All that is left is a teacher, adapt and resourceful, willing to turn it off when necessary.
I'll tell you what I hated about it: I hated how my Macbook couldn't be bothered to function right all the while I put together this project! In all seriousness It was a fruitful venture, this. It taught me how to be creative with the limitations of the tech. To use the border and column functions to full effect by applying alternative applications. I learned about the importance of color coordination--the painstaking work that goes into font selection and letter sizing. The great thing about windows suites is that they are not limited by the technical specs of your device, rather, by the users imagination. Whenever I ran into technical or creative difficulties I'd reference a work I'd find online and wonder, "Wow! how did they pull this off, on the same suite I'm using?!" In the future I plan to hone my suite application skills as to better compliment my creative endeavors. Tools are here to help, and you never know how they may apply to you.
I was playing around with the grade 5 resource toolkit and found some neat studying materials involving social studies courses presented cleanly and succinctly for young students to understand. tiny course nodes located near the bottom of each purple panel pointed you to supplementary video and cited materials that helped hammer home whatever history course was being taught--in this case, the battle of Yorktown. The subject is given a clearly defined lesson plan with printable worksheets. Like I've mentioned earlier in the course: I'm weary of many/most of these technologies taking over the classroom environment; they come off as distractions. But looking over the CPALMS courses I couldn't help but feel a tinge of envy towards these younger students--the wide breathe of tools available at their fingertips, the organization. All that is left is a teacher, adapt and resourceful, willing to turn it off when necessary.
I'll tell you what I hated about it: I hated how my Macbook couldn't be bothered to function right all the while I put together this project! In all seriousness It was a fruitful venture, this. It taught me how to be creative with the limitations of the tech. To use the border and column functions to full effect by applying alternative applications. I learned about the importance of color coordination--the painstaking work that goes into font selection and letter sizing. The great thing about windows suites is that they are not limited by the technical specs of your device, rather, by the users imagination. Whenever I ran into technical or creative difficulties I'd reference a work I'd find online and wonder, "Wow! how did they pull this off, on the same suite I'm using?!" In the future I plan to hone my suite application skills as to better compliment my creative endeavors. Tools are here to help, and you never know how they may apply to you.
I think the problem is that you haven't spent enough time and experience on using various functionalities. However, the question is do you/ your class actually need them? In many cases, you don't need all of them. If you ever need them, you will figure it out and after a couple rounds, you should be fluent about it.
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