Video Thread

I decided to my Voice Thread on fishing. Its something everyone looks forward to each summer. Our family helps each other with subsistence activies. This is one of the many things we do together as a family.
I had fun with this project. I just wish I had more pictures in my laptop that would be good stories for a voice thread project. I wish I had more fish cutting pictures on my laptop to add to this voice thread so I can show everyone what we do with the fish heads.
I like how we can tell a story with the pictures and how others can also comment on our voicethreads.
Voice thread is a good tool to use in a classroom. I think it would be good to start students young since technology is getting to children as young as kindergarten. Like in a Kindergarten classroom a teacher can work on the project with the students and a couple students can make a comment on a picture to make a class voice thread project.
It would be good for students fourth grade and older.
This would be a very good tool for students in a Rural Alaska to learn to use. Not everyone has internet connection in the villages. Most people that have internet access have dial up connection and the server is usually very slow. The internet connection shouldn’t be too bad in the schools though.
I can’t wait to share all these free different programs to students and others.

Story Book About Us with Crystal

It was fun to work with Crystal with the picture book. I wasn’t exactly sure how my part would turn out though cause I don’t have many pictures of the things I like to do. This project reminds me of the picture book I made without a computer. This would be a good tool for students or teachers to use to make good picture books. I like how we’re using our own pictures to tell about our own stories, its making the project more easier.

I can’t wait to share this free picture book making program with others. I share the other projects I have learned with my family and they would like to learn more about them. This is what I would like to do with students in my own classroom someday.

Spring Ice Break-Up in Akiachak

I went crazy with this assignment and started on a few different pages. This is the one I chose because the others that I made are lost because I haven't saved any of them.
A few pictures would make a good comic story too. I chose the Spring Break up because this is the season when the river ice is slowly starting to melt and then all the ice from above Aniak starts moving all the way out to the ocean.
ComicLife will be a good software to use in a classroom. I am definitely going to make more comic pages.

Picking red berries during a cold spring day

I had fun with Picasa, this is one of the things I didn't know about before this assignment. Picasa made me realize that I just need to take more pictures of the things I do when I go home during my breaks or whenever I have a free time here on campus. Picasa is an easier way to upload pictures for projects like the photo slide show we just did.
Picasa is also easy to learn and I am going to use it in my classroom for my students to do picture slideshows with captions for them to tell stories about whatever their pictures or slideshow is on.

Digital Video

Now I know what iMovie is for, I never knew what it was for until we did this iMovie project. I had fun with this project. At first I didn't know what to do it on, so I was looking over my photos and thought of making something for my niece since I have so many pictures of her. I plan on adding more on this to fit the whole music.
I also made a few wedding photo iMovies, one for my sister for her early anniversary gift and also made one for my cousin for her anniversary gift too. I also had to teach my brother inlaw how to use the iMovie. I can't wait to teach others how to make iMovies. This is going to be a good project for students to make iMovies about anything they would make and its going to be a good tool to use to make gifts with memorable photos for parents and other family members.
I like how we can add any music to the iMovie and the music can fit into the photos and match. If I hadn't taken this class iMovie software would not be used in my laptop.

Akiacuarr

This is Akiachak a Yupik-Eskimo village with an estimate population of 700, where majority of the people speak the native language. Akiachak is approximately 18 air miles north-east of Bethel.

One-On-One

I just got back from a bilingual conference that was held in Anchorage Sheraton. Most of the presenters in the conference were mostly presenting about how teachers can use technology in their classrooms and the presenters let the teachers and/or the people who were presenting the conference that their students might know more about technology than they do.

I have been to classrooms where every student had a laptop. This was at Effie Kokrine Charter school last semester. Students were doing science online but they had a worksheet on-hand to do the assignment instead of how the students in the video reviews were working on their whole assignments and communicating with their teacher through the internet.

I like how every information the students are learning are updated and current. Even I who was in school 8-9 years ago was learning stuff from the textbooks and not the internet.

Creating presentations using technology and still being a highschool or even an elementary student is so awesome. Cause that is not what I was doing. I would very much enjoy doing this as a student and a teacher. This would prepare the students for college especially the students in Rural Alaska.

There was many concerns that were addressed in the video review that I seen and I have wrote a little about some of them. I know that certain sites are blocked through the school system to keep students away from them. And the technology workers will know what the students are doing whether it is good or bad.

Then the chatting was one concern that I was worried about but the students are communicating with each others through technology and not disturbing the class and at the same time they are working on their assignments.

Each laptop will have a number and a student will be assigned to what number laptop he/she has.

And students will have school accounts and a password to get into the computers.

During the bilingual conference one of the presenters and one of the members that were in the conference said that they download some stuff like their Native Language words/numbers/saying into the students' ipod and that is how they are learning their native language.

Software Resources

Arcademic Games

Grade/Age Level: for reading and math in grades 3-8

Subject Areas: Language Arts, Math (Subtraction, Addition, Multiplication, Division, Fraction)

Platform: Mac/Window. This software works with both Mac OS & Windows

Review:

Every since I heard of this website I have not gotten a time to go to it and try it out but it seems fun for the students to do in or out of the classroom. This software was introduced to 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders at the Denali Elementary School where I did my field working for the ED 201. The software does different math racing games and language arts games. It is a good site to go to for students while they are in school or at home. The site for this software does not seem to have advertisements that would be distracting to students. Students just can sign in with a name the system gives them or one of them can be a host and make a password so they would know who all is playing.

Math Playground

Grade/Age Level: Grades 4-6

Subject Areas: Math (at mall, pumpkin multiples, percent shopping, math millionaire, algebra scales, space racer, number invaders, algebra puzzle, weigh wangoodle, making change, math Olympics, alien angles, calculator chaos, locate the aliens, space boy to the rescue)

Platform: I think it both works for Mac OS and Windows. This site requires the latest adobe flashplayer.

Review:

This site was created by teachers who are passionate about math and technology.

The website had ads for any kind of quiz.

School Time Games

Grade/Age Level: K-8 (recommended in the K-8 teaching magazine)

Subject Areas: Social Studies, Language Arts, Science, Math, Sports, Logic, Arcade, Brain Games

Platform: Mac OS and Windows both computers will work for this site.

Review:

This is a recommended site for Teaching K-8 Magazine. I had a hard time with geography when I was playing this game but I won even though I made a lot of mistakes. There are many different kind of games. It would be good for students in the grade 3-5. I didn’t really go through all the games just the social studies.

Personal Information

My name is Janice George, I'm a Yupik Eskimo from Akiachak. Akiachak is located 20 miles north of Bethel. I am a senior here in UAF double majoring in Elementary Education & Yupik Eskimo. After this semester I will have a year left of classes to get into student teaching. (I'm so happy!)