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Benchmark… Understand the political, economic, and cultural impact, and lasting influence of early civilizations on world development.

My Thoughts… Working through the process of creating my web quest had it’s ups and downs, but overall the project was interesting and applicable to teaching. I spent more time on this project than any other and utilized several of the tutorials for extra assistance. Hperlinks and powerful images really made this tool something special and I think the students will enjoy taking virtual tours and having access to specific we sites provided. Developing this assignment lead to a host of ideas for future projects and I can’t what to utilize what I’ve learned.

My Thoughts… What a creative way of integrating technology into the classroom. Implementing this application will provide a “hook” for the students that will draw them into the material. I envision utilizing this as an introductory tool that captures the students interest and allows me to build off of it. I am not thrilled with the coding that is required to add hyperlinks and images. I found it to be extremely time consuming. Working out the “bugs” is a most, especially before I would require high school students to work with it.

Eric’s Thoughts… Jesse, I really enjoyed taking your virtual google earth tour. I thought it did a great job of putting together a timeline of events you found to be important leading up to the civil war, and a few of the important battles that influenced the earlier part of the war. I thought the pictures on each of the locations were cool. I think that students would really like using a tool like this to learn about all of those different battles and where and when they took place. I think you probably could’ve used a few more website links that could add to the students’ understanding of the individual battles, but overall I thought you did a really good job.
Eric

Keynote Presentation

The Benchmark… SS.CM.GE.07 Understand human modification of the physical environment and analyze their global impacts and consequences for human activity.

My thoughts… I am comfortable working with Keynote/PowerPoint and plan on utilizing the programs in my teaching. Less is sometimes more on Keynote presentations, especially when it comes to text. All to often teachers overload their presentations with nothing but text, and I definitely keep those horrible presentations in mind when I create presentations. Instead of paragraphs of text, bullet points and short sentences accompanied with clear powerful images work best. Mayer’s principles for reducing PowerPoint overload are good guidelines to follow. Working with Discovery Streaming has been easy to navigate and interesting to explore the potential possibilities. My presentation analyzed the ramification of The Dalles Dam on the tribal fishing grounds of Celilo Falls. The topic had a tremendous amount of powerful images to choose from which made my job easier. I also found a short segment of a video that worked perfectly with the presentation. I find Keynote to be user friendly and the effects are better than PowerPoint. I will definitely try and work Keynote presentations into my teaching, I think it is an incredibly useful tool for educators.

Jerry’s thoughts… “Your Powerpoint looks good. I like your use of images. I’m kind o ignorant about fishing and what have you so it raised a few questions for me about just what is the reason salmon catch trailed off so? I imagine it had something to do with that dam being built over it. Anyway, it looks good. Keep up the solid work, buddy!”

Inspiration Diagram

The Benchmark…SS.CM.HS.06 Understand how individuals, issues, and events changed or significantly influenced the course of U.S. history after 1900.

My thoughts… Creating an inspiration diagram was a new and interesting tool that can be used for future teaching. My project took on many forms throughout the creative process and my final product reflects my view of a student-directed tool. Utilizing photographs from the web, I created image clusters that clearly distinguish between political events, influential people, the arts, and key events of the African American Civil Rights Movement. The use of space, symmetry between equal parts, and using the appropriate text size were techniques that took time to develop over the course of the project. Students and teachers would both benefit utilizing the inspiration diagram program and I think I will try to work this resource into my future work.