Journal 1: Software Review (iMovie & InspiredData)

InspiredData
For software evaluation I chose InspiredData. I created a math lesson plan for grades 9-12. .It consisted of creating two table, one table contains the data of a ball that was dropped from a height, the entries in the table consisted in the height of the ball taken at certain times intervals, the entries for the balloon’s table consisted also about the height at the same time that the ball.

I liked using InspiredData. I tought that it was easy to use after a saw some of the tutorials in Atomic Learning, although this program has some similarities with Microsoft Excel there are some of the features in InspiredData that do not work as in Excel, like pressing enter to insert more rows. Although for the students I think would be easier to use this program that Excel since it does not have many command and for what I saw this program is more kid-oriented. However, for teachers I think Excel is a much better option since you can do more stuff in it.

I would like to incorporate InspiredData in to my future classroom. I would make lesson plans in algebra where they can enter different data for different variables and see how the change in values affects those variables, and graph that data to see how it looks. Another good activity would be to have the students make surveys using InspiredData and collect the information and see have them predict some of the result and then compared them with the results from the surveys, and see if there are any patters they can generalize.

This was my first time using Atomic learning tutorials. Although I learn better in face-to-face situations, I liked this tutorial since the videos where small and right to the point and didn’t require us to read pages and more pages of instruction. I think Atomic learning is of great help for those people that are using a program for the first time and just want to get started, especially for kids since the videos actually show you where the icon and commands and do not overwhelm you with information.

iMovie

I really liked using iMovie. I though that iMovie was easy to use. Even though during class that there are many thing to remember (especially to save your project often while working in it, I had to redo it since something went wrong), I think in general is very self explanatory. What I like the most is that Apple offers many of tutorials in it webpage. I think students will find this program very fun not only for educational purposes but for personal since it so easy to use.

I think this program would be hard to use in a math classroom. But I think it could be useful to communicate with parents by posting videos online. One assignment where my futures students can use iMovie, give them a set of problems and asking them to choose one and explain it in a video to their classmates. This would make the students to actually understand the problem in order to be able to explain it, with out the pressure of speaking in front of the class.