Keynote Compared to PowerPoint:

PowerPoint is a common program that I use currently for a variety presentations and displays, and in the future I will use it for my lesson plans and teaching instructions. Therefore, learning its Google counterpart makes perfect sense and is extremely applicable. Compared to PowerPoint, Keynote has many similar abilities: creating multiple slides, developing textboxes, build-ins, and transitions. However, the program overall seems much simpler and user friendly. The majority of the options to customize the slide show is on the same homepage. In addition, the program has an available App that allows for the slide show to be controlled on your personal cellphone. Keynote also has customizable features that allow for the pictures, textboxes, and graphs to be presented on the page in a variety of ways. Students being able to use the program on IPad could easily translate to students following teaching slide show at their finger tips or proving content knowledge through building slideshows, and its touch screen allows for kinesthetic learners to be more involved in the learning process.

Keynote seems to have all the potential of PowerPoint and more for my future classroom. I think its main function would be to create a slide show to accompany my lesson. I think that its ability to display information point by point helps when instructing new ideas or hiding answers from students working on problems. I think that one of its biggest potential uses may be in how it could be used to actively create slide shows during a lesson. In my experience PowerPoint takes time to prepare and get ready to teach with. Keystone’s quick ability to form a quality slide could be used to teach similar to how teachers use a whiteboard or Smartboard. In any case, Keystone seems to have great potential in my future classroom.

iThoughts as a Mindmapping Tool:

The app is mainly used for brainstorming and task management. IThoughts allows someone to organize ideas in a variety of ways. The display of its contents can also change through adding details to its layout. Details can be added to specific parts like due dates and how long projects have for completion. The design of the page can be changed through different colors of boxes and connecting arrows, different backgrounds, and other little design details. The control features of iThoughts allows for free movement around any place on the map and focusing on all or one part of the map. One of the main points the second video made was that the mindmap can be made quickly and easily. Instead of clicking boxes on the homepage to start a new textbox, a person can use keystrokes to open boxes or new streams of thought, which allows for more fluid and natural thinking. Ithoughts also has the ability to directly download the mindmap into a PDF file.

Brainstorming is an essential part of planning any project, writing any paper, or decoding entangled thoughts. Many people learn to do this naturally, but often students in the education system lack the ability to naturally dictate their thoughts without writing them or seeing their thoughts visually. IThoughts could be used as tool to have students bring their thoughts into a visual form. Teachers could point out where connections are weak, points that should be expanded on, or where more support is needed. Students could also use iThoughts to start the process to papers, presentations, or even when figuring out personal conflicts. Overall, I think iThoughts’ best function is its ability to provide students a tool that will help train them to think and prepare for their future education and life in general.

Safari vs. Rover:

Safari and Rover are two different platforms to view the web. The first two videos described all the capabilities of Safari. Safari allows for searching for specific websites, searching for topics, some different browsing options, records website history, rearranges tabs, “reader view,” sharing website content options, bookmarks, and assess to ICloud. Rover allows for many of these similar functions, but does so through a different means. Rover acts on IPad to view Flash content online. It does so through using a server to connect to the website content and streaming it back to the IPad. The problem is that streaming costs continuous bandwidth, where as normal website browsing downloads the content and then stops using bandwidth. Rover allows for Flash content to be viewed, but works slower online and uses different controls.

I would prefer to use Safari as much as possible over Rover in my future classroom. The main problem being that Rover limits the amount of technology assessable to the internet. Since streaming using more bandwidth I could probably use it for my whole class, but using Safari my whole class could probably work online. Safari also has the ability through reader view to download a website and view it later, which further cuts down on bandwidth use. Safari also seemed to faster and have more functions with easier controls. I would however use Rover if I really needed my students to assess Flash content on their IPad, but only a few students could do it at a time.