My Blog for CIS 220

My Blog for CIS 220 http://taracis220.wordpress.com Have fun reading! Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:13:06 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.png My Blog for CIS 220 http://taracis220.wordpress.com What I learned today http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/what-i-learned-today/ http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/what-i-learned-today/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:13:06 +0000 tmcfadden http://taracis220.wordpress.com/?p=42 ]]> Today I spent my time looking at and exploring the various resources in our Live Text assignment. I like looking through the various health education videos about drug use, health and nutrition, and prevention and safety. I liked the fact that I could bookmark the good videos I watched into a play list so I can find them easily in the future. I also listened to some podcasts. I am hoping that in the future I can learn how to make a podcast and upload it to our wiki website; I think that will really add to our wiki. I didn’t get to play on the Smart Board today, but that is a tool that I’ve used before and feel comfortable using. It was fun to watch others play with it; it is a really cool resource to have in your classroom. I also explored Rubistar and saw how easy it is to use this website and to create rubrics for any assignment. It is a really cool tool that I will definitely use in the future. Next time I hope to explore and work with podcasts and screencasts and use these to add to my groups wiki.

]]> http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/what-i-learned-today/feed/ 0 tmcfadden Using Powerpoints http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/using-powerpoints/ http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/using-powerpoints/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:36:26 +0000 tmcfadden http://taracis220.wordpress.com/?p=37 ]]> PowerPoint is a program that is used all the time by teachers and students. I felt pretty comfortable with using PowerPoint before class today, but now that I’ve discovered some new and interesting features about PowerPoint, I feel like I am almost a PowerPoint expert. One important thing I learned today with PowerPoint is using the master slide to make changes to all the slides in my presentation. I never knew about the master slide before and it is much easier and faster making one change to the master slide and not having to apply an effect to each individual slide. Another thing I learned today was how to use action buttons to make my PowerPoint non-linear. This is useful because if I am giving a presentation and my audience already knows the information in one section of my PowerPoint, I can use an action button to bypass the slides that I don’t need to go over. This saves me from clicking through all the slides and wasting time during my presentation. Finally the last thing I learned more about in PowerPoint is using the animation function. I felt comfortable using slide transition animation before today, but today I learned how to make animation changes to the whole slide show by changing the animation on the master slide. Also I learned how to have bullets appear one by one. I think this is useful when presenting so your audience is focused on the point you are discussing, and they are not looking forward and becoming distracted with other information on the slide. Templates are another cool thing I learned about in class. We saw the Jeopardy template and how you can use it in the future. You save templates and a .potx and you can use this template over and over in the future. The key is to not edit this .potx file so it remains unchanged so you are able to use the basic template every time. Having the Jeopardy template in my file is very useful because I can keep this template and use it in the future when I am student teaching, or for a fun activity in a class here at Elon. I love using PowerPoints and now I know how to use them more effectively.

]]> http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/using-powerpoints/feed/ 1 tmcfadden Podcasts http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/podcasts/ http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/podcasts/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:51:52 +0000 tmcfadden http://taracis220.wordpress.com/?p=26 ]]> Podcasts are a really neat technological tool that can be used for educational purposes as well as for personal purposes. A podcast is a series of media files that can be audio or audio and visual that you can download from the Internet or iTunes. You can download various television episodes, news feeds, radio talk shows etc. as podcasts and stay up to date with your favourite show. A cool thing that deals with iTunes is that if you subscribe to a certain television show podcast, you can change your setting so that iTunes will update your subscription as soon as a new episode is available. A podcast is different from other forms of media for communication because the communication part of the podcast is only one way; the audience gains the information from the podcast.

A RSS feed is a web feed format used to publish news, audio and video media in a standardized format. This type of feed benefits people who subscribe to a specific television show, or radio talk show because they are able watch or listen to these shows with different programs and new episodes are being updated to the person’s podcastlibrary when they are made available.

Exploring various podcasts was very interesting for me. I found some great podcasts that would be useful in the classroom and some that are interesting for me personally. I really liked some of the podcasts I found on EPN. My favourite one was “Take one step for a healthy heart” by PBS. It gave some really useful tips to keep a healthy heart. This is great for my future students to learn to stay fit and to prevent disease. It is also a great podcast for my personal interest to keep fit. My other favourite podcast I found today was from Podcasts for educators called “Sports Psychology Podcast“. I thought it was really cool to listen to and I think it will help me as a student-athlete in college.

The various podcasts I found could be useful in the classroom in the future for an additional resource for students to listen and learn from. I could have students listen to a series of podcasts and have them demonstrate their understanding of various topics, or have them make a presentation of what they learned from the podcasts. I could also have my students create an episode about a specific topic and have them watch some podcasts so they have an idea of what a podcast is. Podcasts are a really cool technology and being exposed to them today was really rewarding. I now know more about them and how I can use them in my future classroom, and for my personal interest too!

]]> http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/podcasts/feed/ 0 tmcfadden Using Excel http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/using-excel/ http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/using-excel/#comments Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:03:59 +0000 tmcfadden http://taracis220.wordpress.com/?p=22 ]]> I’ve never really used Excel in the past, so learning about it and working with it in class was very beneficial. I knew that there were functions available to use in Excel, but I have never used them before. Now I feel comfortable using the sum, average, max and min functions. Also instead of typing in the function for each cell, I learned that Excel has the cool tool of allowing you to drag the function to other cells to save you time. Also I learned that it is really important to use cell addresses when typing in a function or formula. It is important to use the cell address and not typing in numerical values, because in the future if you have to change a value in your spreadsheet, the cell address will change. If you used only numerical values in your formulas, you have to go back and change each individual formula. If you used cell addresses in your formulas, Excel will automatically change formulas that use that particular cell address. This is really easy because Excel makes all the changes for you and it is a lot faster than doing everything by hand. The last cool thing that I learned about Excel is creating graphs that relate to the information in the spreadsheet. I am a visual learner, so having the graph as well as having the spreadsheet really communicates the information to me better. I am glad I am able to use Excel successfully now, and it is definitely a tool I will use in the future.

]]> http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/using-excel/feed/ 0 tmcfadden iPods in my life http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/ipods-in-my-life/ http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/ipods-in-my-life/#comments Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:11:46 +0000 tmcfadden http://taracis220.wordpress.com/?p=15 ]]> I use my iPod all the time. I use it when I work out, when I am practicing golf and when I am riding in our team van. I like my iPod because I am able to zone everything else around me, and I can get into “my zone”. I either get my music by buying CD’s or buying songs off of iTunes. I like to use iTunes to download songs and to also look up new and popular music. All of my music is on iTunes and I use it to sync the music on my computer to the music on my iPod, but to also listen to music when I’m just sitting in my dorm room. I don’t iTunes for anything else but music, but I know you can download movies and TV shows from iTunes also. I don’t really know what a podcast is, but because it is so popular today, I feel like I should learn about it. I think iPods are really cool, and I think that also the iPhone from Apple is really cool too because you can have your iPod, your phone and your Internet all on one machine.

]]> http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/ipods-in-my-life/feed/ 0 tmcfadden Inspiration in Class http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/inspiration-in-class/ http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/inspiration-in-class/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:06:38 +0000 tmcfadden http://taracis220.wordpress.com/?p=10 ]]> Today in class we learned how to use the Inspiration program to help us plan out the website we are going to create. I thought it was a really cool program. I am a visual learner, so being able to put all of my ideas onto the screen and organize them was really helpful. I think this program will also be helpful in my classroom in the future because different students have different learning styles, and this program can help incorporate these different learning styles for students. In inspiration you are able to put information into bubbles, or you can have the information written out into an outline. Both are effective ways in planning and both are ways students can plan projects.

I am excited to start making a website; I’ve never created one before. Learning how to make a website will be useful in the future because I will be able to create web pages for my classes so parents and students can look at our class schedule or homework assignments they need to do. I think using Inspiration and creating a website will be very beneficial and fun!

]]> http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/inspiration-in-class/feed/ 0 tmcfadden First day http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/first-day/ http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/first-day/#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:58:51 +0000 tmcfadden http://taracis220.wordpress.com/?p=3 ]]> n538155233_5681777_12802

Hi! I’m Tara, everyone calls me Tara or Canada. I am from Thomasburg, Ontario, Canada. I’m in my second year at Elon and I am hoping on teaching Physical Education in high school. An interesting thing about me is that I’m on the golf team at Elon and I love ice cream. I have learned a lot today. I will definitely use my igoogle account to keep my life organized. And now I am a blogger!!

]]> http://taracis220.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/first-day/feed/ 1 tmcfadden n538155233_5681777_12802