Triangle, Square, Circle

This is my responce regarding a presentation by David Jakes on developing digital spaces for learning.

Student Created Ebooks

Ebooks are starting to become more and more beneficial to both students and teachers in a classroom. They are not only saving the school money, but they are more interactive for students and when used in the right way they can motivate students to want to read and write.

I recently read an article and watched a presentation by Jon Smith about a teacher's positive experience with the use of ebooks and how much it motivated his students. Before, I never realized that ebooks would improve writing skills of students because when I hear ebooks, I think about reading. But it is way more than that. When reading this article, the app Book Creator was mentioned and is a perfect example that shows how we as teachers can make writing more fun. We can have them create their own books with this app, which allows them to add pictures, video, audio and can be published. This will have a great effect on students because they will have fun learning how to properly write and will be doing it with something that makes it fun. This will also have a positive effect on teachers because the students will be excited to learn and will give their teacher their attention.

I also feel that there are a lot of benefits for students and teachers because there will be more motivated to write and teach. the students will want to write because it's exciting and the teachers will be more motivated because the students will be more excited.

This will be hard for me to use in my classroom because I will be in an art classroom. If I did want
to though, I would be able to use the Book Creator app and have my students research an artist. Instead of having them write a boring paper, I could allow them to make their essay into a book form which would allow them to show more creativity. I will just have to consider how I can make this experience a positive and beneficial one for them though.

Jon Smith definitely opened my eyes and helped me understand what ebooks can do for a classroom. I think the thing that stood out to me the most from what he said was his project "The World Is My Audience."He made a huge impact on the students he had by publishing their books. This gave the students a lot of confidence and probably made them feel good about themselves. Not only did he help these kids create a huge accomplishment, but he improved their reading and writing skills in a new unique way.

Popplet: A poppin way to create concept maps

Popplet is a great way for your students to create concept maps! This tool is perfect for middle school and up. It is very easy to use and easy to stay organized. You can add pictures and videos, which is perfect for visual learners. I used this app for the first time to make a timeline for one of my own projects and it really helped me stay organized.

Some of popplet's features include different fonts, easy access to color coding, easy to combine different ideas, and easily connects ideas. I would personally use this tool because of the organization that it would provide for my students thought process. I am studying to be an art educator so it would be nice for me to see how my students are planning to organize and understand their thought processes. I could then use their ideas and help make sure they are headed in the right direction.

Besides an art classroom, this mapping tool would be perfect for a student trying to plan out a project, a paper, and even in my case with my project. This tool not only gives students a way to organize, but the teacher can understand the students through the process and will make it easier for the teacher to give them feedback.

There are some cons to this tool that I do feel educators considering using this should be aware of. You have to create a personal account which may be a setback for some classrooms depending on age. It also does not have spell check which may or may not be an issue. I do highly recommend this tool at least for students to have for their thought process.