Tuesday, July 9th

We started off our second day forming our groups for our assignments for the course. I decided to work with Danielle and Lachlan. During our research on various interactive activities online, we found a number of useful programs and websites, such as Starfall, SMART Board (SMART Exchange), various math websites, Youtube dance videos,...etc. I was especially excited about the dance videos Danielle shared with us, which can be used for movement breaks in classrooms. Many of the videos come from Wii games such as Just Dance, and are extremely useful tools to use in between lessons or activities. Students constantly gain feedback from the dancers on the screen, allowing them to adjust their movements in accordance to what they see. Moreover, this activity is also benefical for children to develop spacial awareness as well.

In our group, we decided to focus our first project on using a SMART Board activity as an interactive tool. Through our group discussion, I learned about various new ways a SMART Board can be used in a classroom, such as using a koosh ball, which can be thrown at the board to select certain objects. This way, the lessons become more interactive for the students, compared to simply selecting or dragging objects using their fingers. This way, students are more likely to stay involved and movitated. Although we haven't decided on the topic of what to teach in our lesson, I'm excited about the ideas we were able to come up with today. I look forward to getting started on our planning in the next couple of days!