Natural Disasters

I think it is extremely important for students to understand how natural disasters occur and what we can do to predict them.  It is even more important to know how it affects peoples lives.  One of the best ways to introduce a topic, is to provide a real world example that is has affected their own country.  Often students do not think that disasters could happen in their areas but they are more real than they could imagine.  I would choose a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina and show them pictures of hurricane from NOAA and videos showing the destruction.  By showing them real examples, they are more likely to be focused and interested in how the hurricane is actually caused.  This also will be more motivated to help and contribute to relief efforts because they have an emotional connection to these disasters.  This past winter we had a bad snow storm and our mayor did not plow the roads, leaving most families in Brooklyn stranded in their homes for many days.  I wish that I had discussed with my students ways that they could contribute during times such as a snow storm.  For example, they could help shovel the walk ways for people on their block or make sure that elderly in their neighborhood have food and water.  I think it would be important to stress the idea of community at a school and foster a love for each other's neighbor before a disaster hits.  One of the most powerful tools teachers have is the power to motivate their students to be contributors to their society, whether it be knowing why they must recycle or how they can help others during natural disasters. It is our job to be a source of knowledge about disasters and lead by example by being an active contributor to society.

Different Presentation Technologies

There are many presentation tools that I experimented with. Some presentation tools I could not use because my school was not listed or I need to have adminstrative assistance.  This was frustrating because they seemed like great tools (such as Globster).

 The first one was Prezi.  Prezi was fairly easy to use and I thought of many applications to use for my students.  However, when I watch and click the prezi presentation after its created, I felt a little bit confused and that could be a problem with my students. It seems a bit limited in that it can be confusing with the other tools that students are used to using.

I tried Empressr next and I thought it was cool how you could add in graphs and their data.  It also allows you to add in powerpoint presentations.  This can be both a benefit and not because students can use powerpoint with this tool but then I need to have time to teach them about powerpoint.  This program also allows the presentation to be public or private which is nice to keep a presentation just for students and allow them access to change and edit.

If anyone has any other suggestions please let me know!  I tried others websites but some said they were no longer in use!