A brief look at inspiration and a lot of fixing up of my gradebook!
Well this week was technically supposed to be dedicated to looking at inspiration and how it is useful for teaching and such. But ultimately Mark gave into our pleas allowing us to fix up and re-work elements of our excel gradebooks. We were instructed as to how to obtain the colour coding of marks and such through specific formulae to differentiate examination scores. We also updated our spreadsheets to include actual grading for students as well as the frequency of grading amongst the students. If this were an actual gradebook that i was using for practical purposes in my future teaching career i am completely sure that i will adapt excel gradebooking into my routine as a means to keep marks and check the consistency of marks. I am really relieved that we dealt with using a technology such as this as i am a naturally messy person and wouldnt really be able to count on myself to keep marks neatly.
After the excel gradebooks were updated and ‘practically perfect in every way’, we didnt have much time remaining in the lesson. Mark briefly introduced us to the ‘inspiration/kidspiration’ program. I really like this visually stimulating program and will be sure to attempt to use it within my future teaching profession. As Lockard & Abrams (2004) believe that the program, “works as a kind of visual outline for almost any purpose, including planning stories or even story boarding for video productions… The key is the ease and flexibility with which [concepts] are created and then linked together.”
From the basic introduction that Mark gave us as to this classroom technology i am really looking forward to starting this task and having fun, noting and mind mapping all over the place about whatever topic i eventually choose to look at in depth. At the moment i am thinking of looking at online games as i dont think that many people will be inclined to choose it over something like smartboard technology. Anyway, time will ultimately tell…
 I look forward to working on this lil inspiration portfolio item in the coming weeks…
 Xoxo!
