Name: Sunday, November 4, 2007
Games for Children
Brother Pap’s Hankies
This game is about matching skills and reaction time. There are sixteen handkerchiefs on the four rows of clothes line. The children will then need to rearrange the handkerchiefs on the right hand side to be in the exact same order as the handkerchiefs on the left hand side. Through this game, the children can learn matching independently as they try to put all the handkerchiefs in the correct place. The game is not too difficult for the children, yet it is challenging at the same time. There is only one way to arrange the handkerchiefs so the children can keep trying till they get the correct arrangement. When the child has finished the game, he can always try the game all over again, with a different arrangement and try to do it within a shorter time span. Teachers can use this game to reinforce the concept of matching after they have taught matching in class. The children will have a different avenue to learn about matching; other than listening to the teacher, playing at the learning corners or doing worksheets.
http://www.uptoten.com/kids/kidsgames-mixedbag-papnapkins.html
UptoTen.Com: Guess Which Animal
This game is all about guessing which animal Candela, the “game host”, is talking about. There are 10 animals for the children to guess and in each question, there is only two animal to decide from, on which animal is Candela describing about. This way, the children can and will be able to see the difference between the two animals and also at the same time, apply the knowledge they have of each animals to answer the questions. Unlike other quizzes, this interactive game does not provide the answer for the children if they got it wrong. Instead, it prompts the child as to think and get the right answer. This game also provides reinforcement by congratulating the child of his or her success to find out all the answers, this means that there are no marks or grades given at the end of the game. Therefore, this is a highly recommended game for the children to play with and at the same time, really learn from it.
Click here to go to the game,
http://www.uptoten.com/kids/kidsgames-mixedbag-guesswhichanimal.html
Marcelino Game
This game is known as Marcelino Pairs game. It is a memory game with 32 cards, 16 pairs. The children are require to use their memory and remember the cards, and to select the two cards are the same. Through this game, the children are required to look for two similar cards and match them together; hence it will bring to the children the mathematics concept of matching. The children’s memory power is also being challenged in this game. For beginners, they can work together with another two or three friends. Through working with peers, children learn to cooperate and also build up team spirit in them. Their friends can also learn from them. This online game is easy, and parents can also play the children during free time. With the parents’ company, I guess the children will enjoy the game more and it provide a chance for family bonding as well. As a teacher in class, this game will help me to enhance children’s learning in mathematics and it will encourage them to be more interested in mathematics as well.
To access to the game, just simply click the following link: http://www.uptoten.com/kids/kidsgames-mixedbag-marcelinopairs.html
10:12 PM
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Picasa or Getty Images?
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THE LYNDEELina,Lydia,Wendy
Web Tool 1: Picasa
Picasa is basically a programme that Google provides to just help organize, sort and edit photos. And so you ask, why would Early Childhood teachers need a programme like that. Well, Teachers like us are responsible with the child’s development and teaching is only a part of the job of an early childhood educator. In fact, we have to take pictures of children be it to keep sake for the parents and also to serve as evidence when observations are made.
And why would we recommend Picasa again? So imagine this scene, you have 20 children, and you have to a pile of pictures of them for the observations made. On top of that, you have your own photos taken with your friends and family. Imagine the number of photos you have in the end. But with Picasa, you can actually sort out your photos according to the friends and children.
To add on with that, Picasa also has information of the time, date, and type of camera used, size and more! And we know that the pictures don’t always come out perfect and sometimes the lightning of the place seems to be too dark. Well, Picasa is also a photo editing programme.
You can actually edit the photos, change its tone and add effects; you can also crop it or turn it to the angle you want it to be in just a click! Captions can also be just added in Picasa and parents can actually see the captions when you send it to them via email or when you post it on the blog.
This way, photos you want to print for your class or parents can easily be edited to your perfection. Isn’t that easy? If you have too much photos to edit, you can also put the different photos into a collage by just a selecting and clicking create collage. Also, if printing is too much a hassle for you, Picasa actually allows you to share your photos through email and web. You can easily post it up on a blog with just a click if you have a blog for the parents to check up for updates or just send it to their emails without having to worry about resizing it and uploading the pictures as Picasa helps you with it with just a click of a button.
A parent’s night coming up and you need to rush out a slideshow or movie of pictures? Well, making Slide shows has never been easier with Picasa. You can just create it using Picasa and save it into a CD straight! You can also put the children’s photo as a slideshow and give it as a gift to the parents! It’s that easy.
Also, Picasa helps to make your archiving of your photos easier into a CD or DVD. This way, you need not worry if your computer crashes and all the photos are gone. And it makes exporting of the photos you edited to any hard disk or hard drive easily. Picasa is just that easy and simple to use.
Web Tool 2: Getty Images
Getty images is a website where you can browse and search for photos, pictures and music files. They have just revamped their website and it is very well-done up. If one is a member of getty images, he can buy the original music files through getty images. As for non-members, one can only search for the music files they want and listen to the soundtracks online. The search engine for pictures and photos is very well-established. The main categories are creative, editorial, photo assignments and footages. The creative category mainly consists of rights-managed, right-ready and royalty-free images. The editorial images are spilt into three parts; news, sports and entertainment. The photo assignments provide links to other professional image websites and the footages provide a large scope of sub categories to obtain images from. If one wants to search images more specifically, he can also choose to use the advanced search or the catalyst search. The advanced search provides many categories and sub categories to select and search for the image you want. The catalyst search simply requires you to type a keyword to find your image and other related keywords will be suggested to aid in the image search. But of course, there will be the simple image search, where you can choose to search in the creative, editorial or footages category.
Getty images is useful to teachers to search for images. As teachers prepare lessons for their children, there may be times when they are not able to find the real-life object to show the children and thus a picture or photo of a real object will give the children an idea of the real object. The images are all finely taken and thus are clear and sharp. Cartoonised images can also be found. Teachers can use them as templates for children’s hands-on work or for use of beautifying the classroom. All three categories of the image search engine can be used as sources for teachers’ lessons, own general knowledge and for the pleasure and general knowledge of children too. Teachers can even use the images as materials for their various learning corners. For example, a number of images can be used to play memory game whereby the children try to flip open two identical images. The images can also be used to label materials so children know where to put their materials.
Conclusion: Picasa
Comparing both Getty Image and Picasa, we had come to a conclusion that Picasa is better for the educators although Getty Image useful as well. Picasa has more functions as compared to Getty Image. By using Picasa, we can edit the photos, add in captions even making slide shows to present to the parents. Whereas for Getty Image, it does not provide the above few functions. Picasa also helped to sort out those photographs easily. This will allow us to locate the photo straightforwardly and it will not take up much of our time as well. With all these functions that Getty Image does not have, Picasa is proven to be a better web tool for not only the teacher, but anyone.
9:15 PM