CCMS Visit Observations

Date I take the tour: April 22, 2009 at 9:00 a.m.

What I observed about the learning environment that I thought was interesting, was...

How students work through their work cycle each morning at a Montessori school, is by....

Some observed similarities / differences from other schools I've seen or visited [without listing names] include...

What I will take with me from this observational experience into my future classroom is...

Spreadsheet

Wedding Budget Sheet

I really enjoy this spreadsheet because I think they are really creative and make a lot of information come together in one sheet. Also, I love the "tabs" because then you can break up your information onto different sheets and things are well organzied. One thing I can do is I can use this by asking students to collect information and applying it into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is very versatile and is good for many uses. I think that the spreadsheet is easier to read and is more organized. I can also ask students to make graphs and charts that depict the information that they have and show the correlation between the information.
-How will you organize the information you have into a spreadsheet?
-What kind of graphs can you make to visual show the information?
-What are some other ways to depict your information into a visual aid?

Movie

This week was really fun. I got to use Movie Maker and FreeMusic to make my video. I think that these two programs are really great because Movie Maker has a lot of cool tools like you're able import your own photos. I like the flexibility it has to insert text and change the background. I think that the tools were very simple to use and that it was a lot of fun to go through. FreeMusic was really fun too. They had a variety of music and it was fun going through the list and being able to choose from different sounds. I was expecting just a few genres, but when I got to the website to my surprise, there were a bunch of them and it was something different and fun to look through.

I know that I will use these tools again in the future and be able to apply this into the classroom. I think that these tools are really great for future classroom use because they are simple and I can have my students work with them. I think that students will be able to make videos for themselves as presentations for the classroom. Also, I found the tools really fun because under transitions, they had a variety of different transitions and they were fun to play with. I spent a bunch of time playing with the transitions and also the effects. My favorite part of this activity was the effects, I didn’t end up using any because I wasn’t sure that I wanted to use them, but they were a lot of fun to play with. They had a big list of effects and they were fun and would make a great part of a presentation.