ABC's Scavenger Hunt

What went well:
The group scavenger hunt went very smoothly. Our group worked together and found it very easy to find majority of the pictures to represent a letter from the alphabet A-L. Using the dropbox tool we were easily able to share the photos with everyone in the group and access them from any computer. Uploading the pictures to Picasa Web Albums was extremely easy and allowed me to make a slideshow of the scavenger hunt to share here on my blog and also to share with the public. In addition, Google Presentations was very easy to navigate and allowed for a variety of creativity in creating a slideshow presentation of the pictures from the scavenger hunt. This can also be viewed below on the blog. 

What did not go well:
This assignment and the tools used to create a presentation of the photographs taken was all around a very easy project to create. Our group did find that we had trouble coming up with a picture for a couple of the letters, but that was easily resolved once we thought hard enough about it. I found that when uploading pictures to my Google Presentation that there was a size difference between vertical photos and horizontal photos. I had to adjust the size of the horizontal photos to make sure my photographs were consistent throughout my presentation. Unlike Picasa Web Albums, my Google Presentation was a little bit harder to embed into my blog. I had to do a little bit of searching in order to figure out how to get my presentation to appear just like my Picasa Web Album on the blog. 


What I would change:
There is not very much about either of these tools nor the scavenger hunt project that I would change. I would say if I had to change one thing it would be making embedding your Google Presentation easier. It may have just been something I struggled with, but I would change this aspect to make navigation go that much more smoothly. Obviously, if one person has had trouble with it someone else has probably come across the same problem.


How I plan to use this in my classroom:
Picasa Web Albums, Google Presentations, and the scavenger hunt project will all be tools and projects I use in my future classroom. Picasa Web Albums will be a great tool to create lessons and slideshows for my students. In addition, it will allow me to share photos of activities done in my classroom with my students' parents and will allow me to post their work for their parents to see as well. This tool will also be something I can use to integrate photography into the curriculum by having students take pictures of related subject matter and posting it to our class web album to present to their peers. Google Presentation will also serve a similar role in my future classroom. I will use this to create slideshows to present to my students and can even use it to present information to parents at open houses. This will be a great tool to teach my students to use and to help integrate technology into the curriculum. Last but not least, the scavenger hunt project will be put to use in my classroom to go hand-in-hand with both of the tools mentioned above. This project will integrate collaboration, technology, and photography into my class curriculum and all three are very easy to do. I am excited to teach my students how to use these easy tools and see all of the amazing things they can create!