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Journal Entry on MI This module focused on multiple intelligences, emotional intelligence and the group project was a PowerPoint presentation on the various MIs. The readings in Armstrong’s book helped me understand better how to use and integrate activities into the classroom that utilize various multiple intelligences. I particularly think it’s important to create a variety of assessments and the concept of an MI portfolio would be very interesting to view over the span of the year that you work with students. I have learned a lot about creating better assessments in my Lesley classes – they are becoming a much more valuable part of my teaching. The infotoday webpage on electronic portfolios was interesting and food for thought. Most of our teachers do not have the technical/computer skills to manage this at all, but I think it’s very much something we’ll all head toward. Their use of templates was good input. The videos at glef.org on emotional intelligence were very illuminating to me. Our district is using the Responsive Classroom curriculum and had used the Open Circle one in the past and I didn’t really understand what these were about. I think it is appropriate response to the difficulties we are seeing in the classroom as we see students lacking these coping and mediation skills. It affects the learning environment so dramatically, particularly the lack of respect some students have for their teachers and their peers. Our class project worked out pretty well. We e-mailed to decide who was going to do what intelligences and when we’d initially meet using IM. One participant needed some prodding – late to meetings, late submitting work, but once prodded she produced quickly. I’m not fond of IM but it worked adequately in planning and working through the project. Several times the chat went off-topic (into teacher whining) and I either worked on something else (I’m a great multi-tasker) for a while or asked a question that brought the focus back into the project. It wasn’t particularly efficient but it was effective. My time is always at a premium so efficiency is important to me. I did volunteer to pull the work together which I didn’t really know how to do but thought I could probably figure it out pretty easily, and I did. Our decisions on standards proved to be very helpful in the long run. We decided on a white background so it didn’t interfere with the variety of graphics that we would use, and in the planning stages I didn’t really have any idea of what kinds of graphics anyone, including myself, would use. We decided on font Trebuchet MS and who would create the title slide, who would create the index slide and who would pull it together. It worked well because everybody did quality work, mostly on time and we didn’t have any major problems. I think that’s typical of group work – it’s when you have somebody not producing or doing something that you don’t really agree with or have difficulty with the quality that problems arise. Sorry for the quality of the voice narration – there must be a problem with the microphone or sound card. I couldn’t get it any better, but wanted to have it in there at least as a demo. I couldn’t figure out how to equalize the sound levels – the voiceover was really soft and the sound effects on the buttons really loud. Is there any way within PowerPoint to control that? We decided to only put a forward/next page button on the student characteristics slide to force the user into the teaching strategies slide and then give them the option to go to home rather than put home on every slide. I had a good time playing around with PowerPoint and using features I hadn’t used before. This notion of creating non-linear presentations is new to me, and very exciting. Since I create web pages, it’s a concept I embrace. But I didn’t know that presentation software had the capability (it sneaked in somewhere) and it opens up all kinds of teaching opportunities that I don’t think have been tapped yet. Do you know of any way I could make a video file out of a PowerPoint? That is something I’d like to explore more sometime. I just don’t have enough time to play!
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