Zoho Show - Review…

Posted on May 2nd, 2008 in Uncategorized by bethca

If you have a basic understanding of PowerPoint you will have little or no difficulty using Zoho Show.  The templates/themes make it easy to create nice looking presentations.  You can email presentations to yourself or email them to friends.  You can share it online in a public network or may keep it private.  You can publish it to a website or put include it in your blog.  The buttons are right on the top and well labeled.  The menu is very user friendly.  You can use the menu of clipart, shapes, symbols and make flow charts too!  The nice part is that you do not have to pay to use Zoho and so you can create Presentations, as well as use them interdependently with the other Zoho tools.  I noticed that you are not given as many options to alter the timing, transitions and appearance of your presentation.  It would be difficult to create an interactive STair.  I feel that PowerPoint has more options for altering your presentation functions and to personalize it.Zoho could be used to create basic presentations in a classroom setting individually or in a group.  The teacher could pair up students who have computers at home and those who do not.  That way if they wanted to work at home they could.  Zoho is web based, so they could simply log on at any computer and have their presentation ready to work on!

Teaching using Bloggs

Posted on May 2nd, 2008 in Uncategorized by bethca

As I reflect on using Blogs and how a Blog could influence teaching strategies, I thought about oral language and the purpose for writing.  I ask my students to write during writing workshop.  I notice that when I give them a purpose for writing, (for example - a letter to a friend), they enjoy and seem to write more.  A blog could be used to communicate with other classrooms.  We could ideas or classroom rules with another clasroom in another state.  We could prepare our ideas on paper and then type them.  This would help my children understand how writing help us communicate and also how writing connects us to the real world.  The students could also show their families on their home computers. 

Blogging in Kindergarten

Posted on May 2nd, 2008 in Uncategorized by bethca

Blogging can be valuable when communicating with Kindergarten parents.  I can communicate which websites I use when teaching and refer parents to web resources through my blog.  In addition, parents can comment on the different blogs I write.  It would be great to have parents respond to current issues in education as well!