Importance of Cultures

Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling is a great technology tool that can be used to tell stories of any kind whethere it be nonfiction or fiction. They focus on a specific topic and get try to make a certain point of view through. What is neat and cool about Digital Storytelling is that you can insert pictures, you can embedd your voice in it as if you are the narrator, insert videos, and even music to make the slides a but more entertaining and less boring. This can also not just benefit the teacher, but also the students. The way that digital storytelling can help the students is with vocabulary; on how to pronounce the words correctly, how it is spelled, and what the meaning of the word is. It can also benefit them on how to tell make a story and what the criterias are on beginning, middle and end, and the main topics that need to be presented upon the story.

One of the different methods of digital storytelling that I have used is called Voicethread. It is similar to Digital Storytelling because it can do the same thing as to put anything from pictures, audio, video or text and you can make it any length you need. It allows the students to interact with each other and look at each other's work to produce higher levels of thinking skills and get more informed about how technology works. My voicethread talks about how knowing different cultures is important and what you can learn from everyone's traditions to how they live.


I have created my activity plan  and decided to engage on the different cultures and why its important and they can also learn how voicethread works in case they would like to do one on their own; they can have mine as an example.On each slide, it is focusing on a certain topic on cultures and how it has some similarities and differerences or how they can be beneficial to others. Also, there are HOTS questions that allows them to interact with each other and brainstorm different ideas. What I like about voicethreads is that it can let the students comment on the slides, input their voice and draw comments on the side to answer the questions.


I can definetly see myself using this technology that I have learned into my future lesson plans because it gives a different perspective on how to introduce a lesson to where it makes it educating and interacting at the same time. So why not come out and let your ideas be heard!

Blogs in the Classroom

At first, I was not too fond of using blogs or even looking at blogs because I thought they were "boring". But in fact, I was unaware that they are and can very  beneficial because as a teacher there are so many ways to communicate to children in a subject that is being taught. In Sue Waters' Check out Class blog, she uses her blogs to interact with the students from different grade levels on exercises that can be taught for a certain subject. I would like to us this blog because as a new coming teacher, it is very important that we have a general idea on what we want to teach the students, if what we are teaching will benefit them or will they be confused and not understand. Also, this blog is great because experienced teachers or new teachers can also go over and comment on how it can be improved and better our students.

Blogs can also be great for allowing the students to log in and work on some activites that I have posted. As a teacher, I can fomat it to where it is educating, fun and a great tool to where they can come back to and work on a subject they may not understand. There are a galore of activites that learn as incentives to the students.


It is very important to know that there are blogs that can be beneficial to the students, parents and teachers. I found some cool blogs such as Fun Activites, where there are many different activities that involve all different types of subjects like math, reading, social studies and arts and crafts that can be used in the classroom. Another great blog I encountered was how to have Classroom Management. This is a great blog because it gives an great outline on  how the students should follow guidelines and rules on how to help keep the classroom neat and organized. Classroom management doesn't necessarily have to be in classrooms, as parents, it can be an excellent method for home use too! And last but not least, vocabulary is a big part in education, and the best thing is that there are ways to teach them by using Vocabulary Activities. There are a bunch of interesting and educational blogs out there that anyone can use, hopefully one like mine will be one!

Internet Resources

Today i would like to share with you some new information over internet resources that i found. Technology is so far advanced as it was back in my school days, but it makes it the more better and educating because students are really good at technology.

I have found a good handful of resources that ties into my unit plan of how important it is to know different cultures. This blog talks about how people come from different places, but food is something that everyone can coincide with and enjoy! There are also many different kinds of activites online that students can do to understand the different types of cultures that exist in the world and if they were to make a new friend from a different ethnicity, they can always go back to the activities and find things that they have in common. I think one of the things that I really like to do is create or even look at other surveys that are interesting to me,and in this case, knowing about others' traditions is neat.  


There are many other cool resources that are out there, not necessarily for this lesson but for others as well. I can see myself using Meebo to interact with friends,families or even get to know people throughout your world by using this cool site. Also, there are other informational websites with different templates that have different and interesting lesson plans. A big thank you to all the bloggers that I have come across and have shared their ideas. Here I have included my Works Cited that I was able to share with you for my unit plan!

IBL and PBL

Inquiry-based learning implies that you are seeking for knowledge or information by asking questions. The historical roots of inquiry-based learning came from was first introduced by John Dewey in 1961 by being an advocate of child-centered learning based on their real-world experiences. His theory also compounded with constructivism because it is based on observation and scientific study about how people learn. The components that are involved in inquiry-based learning is activating prior knowledge, providing background information, modeling their outcomes(ppt, word doc), establishing a topic. The way that this could be modeled in the classrooms by turning information into useful knowledge because it is information that they have learned as opposed to seeing it. This helps students because they are able to make connections of useful knowledge into other subjects that can easily be related too. An activity that can use inquiry-based learning could be learning about maiking predictions, and a great example could be about the weather. The students can predict what type of climates there are by having that background knowledge, or by gathering data like pictures of the weather, etc.


Project-based learning is best defined as instruction relating questions and technology relative to the students' everyday lives to classroom projects.This is more of a hands-on connection with the instruction. Some of the components of project-based learning is being organized around deriving a question, a need to know essential content and skill. Project-based can be used in the classroom by integrating technology in meaningful ways to help them investigate, collaborate,analyze, synthesize and present their learning.  An example of how project-based learning can be done is by performing science experiments, recording and analyzing results, Using computer learning games and word puzzles, Examining relation of story to real-life situations and people.

I have included my  Unit Plan how it can also connect with the IBL/PBL information.

Here is an example of how Inquiry Based Learning and
Project Based Learning can be introduced in the classroom, and what is neat about this source is that it gives different methods on how this can be used with different subjects too.