Planning & Designing

This chapter was a fun one for me because it dealt with planning and designing. I live my life with a plan and I must say I really enjoyed planning and designing my future classroom. I have thought of different ideas, but I never really had a visualization of these ideas. I'm sure I forgot some parts during this classroom design but I hope to revise it as new ideas come along. I was amazed at all of the features in Publisher. I have never used the drawing application and I must say that I am very impressed. I have used Paint before but I liked Publisher much better.

Another thing that amazed me in this chapter was Google Earth. I had heard of this program before but I had not used it. Wow! I can't believe all of the things that are possible within this one program. The pictures that people uploaded of certain sights really blew my mind. I am excited to incorporate this into my math class using latitudes and longitudes for calculations, and calculate distances between points, etc. I also like how students can learn about the area around the school and about some fun places nearby. Google Earth allows the students to see other places as well. They have probably not traveled abroad or even across the country but they can see different locations in Google Earth.

The interactive whiteboards have so many wonderful uses and I hope that I will have one of these in my classroom one day to encourage participation and show information easier. With the $100 laptop on it's way and the advancement of handheld computers, I can imagine all of the students having computers in my future classroom. My differentiated assignment as a secondary math education student was on the graphing calculator tool in Elluminate. This was a great feature to have to demonstrate to the class. I could not believe all of the features that it had. It is so similar to the calculator I am used to holding in my hand! Elluminate is a great way to encourage team teaching. A friend and I have already talked about using it when we have our own classrooms. I continue to be amazed at all of the technology that I am learning about. I can't wait to use some of this technology in a classroom one day!