Most people use power point to present information because they see it as a tool only for the purpose of presentation, but I was shocked and excited to learn that we can use power point to do so much more. It was so simple to design an e-book. A child at any level can use this tool to create their own work.
It can make the classroom a inventive, motivated, critically thinking room, where student can collaborate, share, learn and enjoy what they are doing. I mark social Studies for The CSEC examination and one thing I have noticed over the years is that our student do not know how to think critically. This tool can facilitate this also with the advent of web2.0 there are a lot of tools available to teachers to help students improve their critical thinking.
I hope you guys are enjoying this class as much as I am. And take what we learn and incorporate it in our class. Whether we become reading specialist or not, I beseech you to go back to your schools and teach what you have learnt, you may not benefit financially but when our students level of academia improve this will be payment enough.
Not unlike you Thilica, when we were learning to create e-books, I lost track of the time and did not realize when it was eight o'clock. I was so thrilled. Right away I saw how effective this tool would be for stimulating our students and for engaging them in learning to become literate. Also, I felt that teaching our charges to produce their own e-books would cause them to draw on and develop their individual, innate creativity which far too often remains untapped in the usual content area classrooms.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to developing critical thinking skills, we need to teach our students to identify and articulate main ideas, and to be concise in their expression (as a colleague commented on one of my blogs), as they sequence their narratives logically. Accordingly, in scaffolding our students as they read and create e-books, attention must be paid to having our students focus on critical areas of reading such as vocabulary, comprehension and fluency. I agree with you that there will be much gratification to be derived when our students' literacy levels improve.
Beverly Phillip-Le Gendre
Powerpoint without bullets! That was really a new and refreshing way to interact with a familiar and often used program. When I heard the term e-book I thought of the fancy, kindle and ipad. I must agree that as educators on a budget we need to find the innovative ways to use the inexpensive tools we already have. Creating an e-book is simple and effective I am already brimming with ideas on how they can be used in a content area, as well as a reading class.
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