Monthly Archives: January 2016

Improving through our peers

I have always enjoyed using other people’s work to improve and influence my own. Not only can we learn lots from our peers but we also learn lots about ourselves by comparing writing and learning styles. I am really glad that today we were encouraged to view other’s blogs, read and comment on posts that we particularly enjoyed. I found myself learning and reading things which I had perhaps not even thought about before and feel that I have learned lots of new tips and ways to improve my writing.

I was really interested by one blog in particular which used a game to simulate and create a classroom layout. I had never thought of using so much imagination in relation to my own blog! I also found that referencing throughout a post allows others to see exactly where you got your information from but also gives you the opportunity to easily revisit sites and books which influenced your post. This is definitely something which I plan on doing in future posts.

Some bloggers posted things which weren’t necessarily related to teaching but managed to link their understanding of the original concept and related it to their teaching practice very well. I feel like this is something I could begin to do. I often notice videos or newspaper articles about children or interesting topics but don’t blog them as they don’t relate to what we have been asked to post. Through my peers I have learned that there is no limit to blogging and although something may first seem irrelevant links to education often begin to arise. I hope to continue to post TDTs and now to also post anything interesting I discover and give my opinion on matters. I will definitely be revisiting other sites as I feel that I learned so much in the past hour!

Using Animoto

During my primary school years Microsoft powerpoint was always used for presenting work both by the teacher and by us as pupils. I have never really thought of new and exciting ways to present my work as a teacher and recent lectures have really opened up my eyes as to how many opportunities there are to create fun and exciting work presentations.

Today I created a short Animoto on how to be internet “SMART”. Although I didn’t spend much time creating this video I can fully understand how using this site can make simple presentations more exciting. Animoto is a fairly simple website and I found that importing images and music was straightforward and could be taught to children in the class relatively quickly. Over time I hope to develop my skills using Animoto and also other sites such as Fakebook.

I have attached the link to the short video I made today.

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