Week 7

For the best writing activities in my classroom that I would make use of is probably the, the concept maps it is  very helpful when creating ideas and planning a paper. Concept mapping is good for developing  research topics, organizing presentations, or writing bibliographies and with the help of semantic networks software's concept mapping becomes even easier and more effective. The semantic networks help plan and analyze tools that could help students generate and organize ideas for planning papers or speeches. Which is perfect for when I ask my students to do a paper about the history of a Spanish speaking country or when I ask them to give me a speech over Don Quixote. With these programs at the palm of my students hands, writing research papers, speeches, bibliographies, and any assignments that I give them  shouldn't be a problem for them.

 It is very easy to get off track when using power points one can start messing with all the adjustments to the power point and forget completely about the main idea. Don't get me wrong power points are very useful and very fun to work with but they can all be very distracting, so it's important that you keep to some rules when doing them. For when I become a teacher I will have certain rules that would keep so that my students don't get distracted when I'm doing a power point. First I will use the same font for all they slides, and make sure that the slides are readable and not to bright. Then I will have no more then three slide transitions for presentation or stick to one type of transition through it all . Have four to five different slide templates per two slides this way I don't have to much going on that could cause a distraction to my students. Last i would not have to many slides because if there is to many most students will get bored and dose off after awhile. With these "potential pitfalls" out of the way and with these rules listed distractions in my class when doing a power point shouldn't be a problem. Therefore: yes I believe I could follow the potential pitfalls from the text.

Using the concept mapping and power point will be very helpful and useful to me in my classroom and for the the papers I will assign my students. My students will have the concept maps to prepare and organize the assignments and then when they are ready they can present it to the class using power point. 


Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R.M., & Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful Learning With Technology. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.