My Website

Below is a link to my website but first I would like to comment on some parts of my creation. I think my website is well-formatted and organized but several problems could exist. First of all I did not make a student or teacher section. I left it all out in the open. I do not know how this will affect my classroom but I am hoping parents, teachers, and students feel free to communicate with one another about the website content. Also, I decided to edit out some information from my blog profile in order to protect personal information of others. I feel like this change is warranted and necessary so no qualms there. Lastly, I want to say creating the website from a template is much, much more difficult than starting with a blank slate. All this being said I am very proud of my website and hope to use it in the future!

https://sites.google.com/site/mrhoskinsclass/

Storm

Yesterday a violent storm tore through Knoxville taking out power and trees everywhere. Several people I know had damaged cars including Alex Dunbar. I loved the boxcar but I am glad she is ok! Anyways I am working on my website and should be finished by the end of the week. The semester is almost over but not without a little excitement destruction.

Digital Story

Check it out! My first YouTube video!

I enjoyed making this digital story using iMovie because I was familiar with the program. Not to say I did not have any difficulties. I had trouble formatting the labels for animal names and getting properly sized pictures. Unfortunately I could not completely remedy the latter and it shows on my YouTube video. Overall, I think I will use a few digital stories in my classroom because the production time is great but the motivation and interest are as well.

Digital Story- What Do I Want to Say?

I enjoy listening to stories as well as telling them but I have little experience doing this digitally. How should I compose my story? How long should it be? What should it be about? I love creative activities but I can see how a student might get overwhelmed with all the choices. I will try to give my students some guidance with projects such as these using examples. Hopefully I will find and develop my own idea soon! Fingers crossed!

Response to Wikis and Inspiration

Smilebox, voicethread, google forms, and animoto. Quite a list but these are the wikis I have not posted about yet. First, let me say that all could be used in my classroom, but google forms is hands-down the winner as far as practicality. Google forms allows anyone with a google account to make forms and these forms can come in all shapes and styles. Surveys, online quizzes, making exams. It can do it all! Animoto was also an interesting tool for use in classrooms because it allows almost anyone to form 30-sec videos from images, clips, and music. There are many limitations but a short activity would suffice using this web 2.0 tool. Voicethread is the tool I remember least about but it seems to be a complex blog post with drawings and voice recordings so I will have to pass. Smilebox gives users the ability to create designs for certificates, photos, invites, etc. I think this tool would be extremely useful for elementary or middle school teachers but my class could also use some smilebox functions for projects and to build a sense of community. Also, Inspiration is a neat way to design one of my favorite organizational tools- the concept map! However, I would like to know if an online or free option is available. If there is anything I have learned in this class then I am sure it exists. 

Science Scavenger Hunt

Here is my digital science scavenger hunt.






This project was not as easy as anticipated but wonderful Mr. Beard helped me figure out where my last album went wrong (to my surprise). I was easily able to embed my Picasa slideshow as well as a neat glogster post. See above!

Spring Break

For this spring break I worked and played at Disneyworld instead of sitting at home watching TV and hanging out with old friends. It was an interesting experience because I worked selling cheerleading merchandise to 6-18 year-old girls and their crazy mamas. I made enough money to go on summer vacation and the whole trip was paid for so definitely worth it in economic terms. I mean, I rode Space Mountain for free, can't beat that! Anyways can't wait to hear about voicethread and get outside for this digital scavenger hunt. Exam on Thursday! Guess I should check the syllabus more often...

Picasa and Fungi Slideshow!

Picasa is pretty neat! I will probably use this web 2.0 tool most often in my classroom besides Prezi of course. I did have trouble posting this embeded slideshow due to improper settings. Picasa and Picnik are both amazing tools for photo sharing and editing. I love pictures so it was not a difficult sell but I was not aware of all the possibilities available on the web. It makes me want to go buy a digital camera and snap a gillion photos!

Wow!

This word best describes my reaction to the awful thing I did on Tuesday. After Cassandra and I presented on Prezi I decided to change my account to student status. I thought it would be harmless but I was wrong. I logged into my account and discovered I could not upgrade unless I deleted my old account because I had to use my utk email address. Thinking I knew everything about Prezi I proceeded because Prezi is an online tool that store all the information online, right? Wrong! Prezi accounts hold your Prezis and once an account is gone the prezis are too! Well, all that to say, I will be more careful with web 2.0 tools, especially when I have valuable, grade-changing information stored on these websites.
In other news...I need to put my links on our new biology pbworks page and study for SpEd 402 exam. What a week!

What happened?

I do not have enough time to even write everything I want to say! It has been a busy week of written assignment after written assignment. TPTE486 has two assignments due and TPTE 355 & 352 are not much different. I liked the ole days when I had time to watch some TV. Now I come home and start on homework. Boo! Delicious is useless but Glogster is pretty neat! That is all!

Did I really just make a twitter account?

Yes, yes I did. Every once in awile I promise myself I will not get caught up in "some silly fad", i.e. facebook, toms shoes, and twitter. Fortunately, I had suceeded in two out of the three cases. Until Thursday, when I created a twitter account because I did not want the presenters to waste their time and mine. I do not plan on using this web 2.0 tool in my classroom but could see it being useful for parents to stay connected to teachers. I added tosh.o, the dali lama, and several music artists but I did have trouble distinguishing some of the authentic twitter accounts from fake or in memorium twitter accounts. Honestly, I have to rate this web tool 4 out of 10 based on utility alone. My life does not need to be updated each and everyday on the world wide web.

Amethyst is a Rock Star!!!!

I loved the activity we did today because I recently bought my girlfriend an amethyst ring for Valentine's Day. I did not know much about the stone but thought it looked nice, plus purple is her favorite color. The rock star activity also gave me some perspective on how students can use the worldwide web to learn  content. I thought the activity was simple and straightforward so almost any type of learner could accomplish this task. The website we were supposed to use looked a little tacky so I searched Wikipedia and gathered all my information from there. I see nothing wrong with my students doing the same for a small activity such as this. Honestly, I love 486 class because we are allowed to have some freedom to explore. Speaking of exploring...Wordle! Wordle is an online tool that allows users to paste text, url, or delicious file and form a 'word cloud' with text size appearing in reference to amount of word use. I think this tool is interesting but the uses do seem somewhat limited. I only enjoyed forming word clouds for five to ten minutes. Wordle fatigue... I guess!

WEBQUEST: Search for the perfect website

As the title may suggest, I assumed webquesting was some form of cheesy, interactive ride at an amusement park. However, I soon learned of the amazing virtual world of webquest where teachers compose websites to take students through an assignment. Typically the assigenment is a detailed project related to some unit of study for the grade level. The webquest includes both a student and teacher page. The student page includes background info. sometimes with links, instructions, conclusion, etc. The teacher page includes instructions, standards, uses, etc. I will definitely use a webquest with my students at least once a year to promote collaboration, communication, and project-based learning.

PREZI !!!!

Our class chose wiki tools to present and my partner, Cassandra, and I drew Prezi. From what I know so far Prezi is a wiki tool designed to design presentations. This tool is free to everyone but accounts can be upgraded to higher capabilities. Cassandra and I decided to make a Prezi about Prezi. I may even use this wiki tool to create a prezi for my 355 book report.

Website Evaluation Perfection Reflection

I found a perfect website for young students ... National Geographic for Kids. This website offers activities, photos, videos, and more for young children to do inside the classroom, outside the classroom, or both. I knew about this website beforehand because I am NG magazine member. However, I did not get a chance to explore. I was pleasantly surprised to find some familiar ideas for classroom activities from my childhood and newer ones for this generation of technology gurus. I have confidence most children could navigate this website with ease and could learn many things from the interesting reading material, visuals, and videos posted frequently to National Geographic for Kids. I could use this resource for classroom activities or assigned reading/homework in or out of class if I wanted to teach younger children.

Website Evaluation

I found a neat resource for evaluating websites in 486 today: http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html

This website lists criteria for evaluating a website and contains real or fictitious examples for almost every category. Five general categories are listed: authority, accuracy, objectivty, currency, and coverage. This website was sponsored by New Mexico State University and their library department. Updated 2009.

Wiki Experience

Today we worked on our wiki pages at PBSWorks. I had a little trouble with editing images at first but found lots of cool links to post for videos and other pages to connect to mine. I like the idea of having my own webpage to share with my peers and future students. I did not choose to wrap text because my preference is for images to be separated from text. I enjoyed class today!

Course Expectations

In this course I am expecting to learn more about how to use technology in the classroom. I consider myself to be fluent in most computer operations and internet websites. I do not know a lot about blogging but I pick up most internet applications fairly quickly. I hope to learn more about wikis because I enjoy Wikipedia very much. I have even donated to their yearly fund on several occasions. I think wikipedia is extraordinary and cannot wait to learn more!

486 Intro.

Hello, my name is Whitaker Hoskins. I am a senior in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I am currently seeking my minor in education and will go to the graduate school for science education next year to do my internship. I am interested in teaching high school or middle school biology. I enjoy the outdoors and work in the mycology lab on campus. I want to become a teacher because I believe children can greatly benefit from knowledge. I take pride in my knowledge of biology and want to inspire children with the wonderful living world that surrounds them. More and more children neglect the outdoors and have no connection to nature and if our planet would greatly benefit from a new generation that appreciates their surroundings.