I have not done any blogging before so am interested to learn more about it as I think it will be a really useful skill to have as a teacher, particularly with the Ultranet coming in. I learnt how to create a post (obviously!) and how to add images. Greg showed us an example of how to add images in MS Paint which is a program I am very familiar with and use a lot. I haven’t ventured into looking for other programs as yet because it has always done enough for what I have needed, and I also think it is an easy and useful tool for Primary students to use – although I am sure they will be able to show me many more.
Next we were introduced to a program called Inspiration which is a great tool that can help to create diagrams and mindmaps. The program fosters creativity and higher order thinking processes, and one of the great things about it is that it is able to upload images (including images from the internet). This makes it a really easy to create visual pieces of work.
The first thing I created using Inspiration was a diagram. As is usually the case with me, my gorgeous cat Belle was my inspiration (pardon the pun) and I created a diagram that showed her in relation to her feelings about different thing in her life, as you can see below.
This was very straightforward and easy to create and I definitely think primary school children would have no problems doing something similar. Greg suggested an activity that I thought was a great idea, which was to use this diagram as the beginning of an author study. Roald Dahl could be the central starting point, and students could brainstorm all the titles of his books that they already know.
The next thing I created was a mind map, where related ideas branch out from one another. I decided to use holidays as my starting point, and listed the countries and cities I would like to visit if given the opportunity, and from there started to break down specific activities or things to note for each one.This was also very simple to do, and something that I think would be very useful to use at the start of an inquiry unit. A benefit of using technology to do this is that once you are finished you can easily keep it for future reference, whereas writing it on a whiteboard will likely be rubbed off soon after you have finished. Another great thing about the Inspiration program is that you can transfer your creations to a word document so that they can easily be saved and printed. At the beginning of an inquiry unit the class could create a mindmap together on the interactive whiteboard, then each student would be able to get a copy to keep in their folders or notebooks to refer to throughout the unit.
I had not looked at any other mind mapping programs using technology, but now that I see how easy it is I will definitely be investigating them further. From what I have seen, Inspiration looks to be a great program but does have costs associated with it and the school's that I have been in so far have not had it available to them. I plan to spend some time playing around with the sites that have been suggested in LMS and hopefully will find something that I can take with me and use in my classrooms.
