TECHNOLOGY REFLECTION

I would like my students to be able to show off the projects and art work they are doing in class to others in the school as well as their parents who may not be able to come in and see it. The technology tool I have chooen to do to this is called Smile box. Smile box is a fun way to share online scrapbooks, photo albums, postcards, slide shows. It has an templates for a news paper that could befun to send out head lines of what happen in class today. It also has a template for a TV- I could have the news flashes about whats going on in the next while at our school. This would be eassy and “cool” way to let parend in on whats their student is doing. It would make student progress a fun thing to hear about. Students could make e-cards to send to there parents for valentimes day, mothers day or just to show off art they have made.Smile box could be used to share photos of things that my class is learning about to my colleagues. Learning to using smile box is like a walk in the park and is fast to send. I can see smile box as a way to make classroom objectives funer by making a slide show of what where learning about. Its more colorful than power point and simpler to use. Smile box has the obshion of playing muisc in the back ground. The down side of using smile box is it is a extra thing for me as a bussy teacher to do. Having students make e-cards would take a lot of comptures and/or time that we may not get if I as a teacher don’t plan for it. Using smile box will help my students achieve more becaseu both of us together will be working harder knowing it is going to be shared with others.
http://wordpress.com/tag/smilebox-tips/

http://www.smilebox.com/learnMore.html

Children are captivated by the moving visual world around them. They are naturals on computers. Do to tie budgets classrooms go without up to date technology that could be available for them. Alice is a free program designed to help students create simple 3d animate for story telling, interactive game even short videos. Alice is helping the next generation of learns. It has, “drag and drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating fist programming experience.” Alice was developed by Carnegie Mellon University computer science program students. According to the CRA (computing research association there has been a significant drop in women’s science interest, “fallen to levels unseen since the early 1970.” The gap in wages between men and women came close in the 1980 and are falling back. Alice helps boosters interested in science by appealing to women desire to sharing stories. While at the same time guys enjoy the video game elements of Alice. Alice would be great in the classroom because it would capture the students interested and give them some basis skills in computer programming. On the down side it would take up a lot learning time as the students get hooked on programming.
http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=54742
http://www.cra.org/CRN/articles/may05/vegso
http://www.alice.org/