Back in Plymouth

Well I never thought I would say this....but I MISSED PLYMOUTH! I came to find out that we get spoiled in Radnor, with new towels everyday, and cleaning! After using a dirty towel all weekend in London, I realized how lucky we are to be staying in Plymouth! I also missed the small city feeling with the University here and everything...knowing where I am is a big thing too!

Today during the PLATE conference I was able to learn and see some GREAT stuff! It was amazing the things that the 2nd years had to offer to show us! I stayed in the same room the whole time, but every session I saw was great!

My first session was on screen capturing using Jing, and it was really cool! You can video or take a picture of you doing something on your screen, doodle on it, record onto it, then send it wherever you want! I think that this would be a great tool to use with my Mom! She sometimes has problems at home in Battle Creek, where I'm from, where she can't figure something out on her computer, using this technology I can make a video with voice of me doing it on my computer, and send it to her to watch! It'd be a great tool to use in the classroom as well and I definitely will be using it next year in my 1st grade classroom to show the students how to do things and get to things on the computers.

The second session I was able to see was the iPortfolio one. The ladies presented on several different ways to produce portfolios including, google pages, voicethread, and iWeb. I was able to get some one on one tutoring in iWeb as well! I had purchased the software and space for my computer but was not able to learn how to use it yet, so one of the year 2 students showed me how she created a presentation and a portfolio using iWeb and how I can publish it to my .Mac space online! This is something I plan on incorporating into my Inquiry 3 project by posting my Inquiry 3 project onto my .Mac space!

The last session I sat in on was one about gaming in the classroom! I went to the one before a week ago and it wasn't very informative, but this one gave me a whole list of sites and ideas to use in the classroom. There were a lot of fun and interactive games for all subject areas that I could definitely use to engage my 1st graders in learning! I'm excited to see which ones would be worth wild to use in a lesson.

Overall the one portion of this program (class wise) that I have enjoyed the most was the conference today. It gave us a real chance to learn about some things that we didn't learn about in our class, and able to interact with the Masters students so they can show us what they know and what we can use for ourselves! It was VERY informative and great! :)


I am going to finish doing my Inquiry 3, or at least most of the way tonight. I am focusing on the technology aspect of the culture here in England, and how my experiences have made me think differently about American culture and our technology compared to here and other parts of the world! It will be in the form of a digital story, and I am incorporating my iWeb that I learned how to use and the ability of vodcasting to put it into my blog so people can d/l it on iTunes from there and watch it!