Atmosphere

Mike and I teamed up together to present Atmosphere. (Unlike anyone else, just US. BACK UP EVERYONE)

Dr. Smirnova asked us to use the website PowToon. Nifty, right?

But it had a very high learning curve. Or is it low? Either way it was difficult. D.I.F.F.I.C.U.L.T.

Mike really took hold of trying to wrangle it into submission. I checkout the minute there wasn't a real toolbox or a way for Mike to share the document/slide he had created with me. I'm a control freak, so having almost no ability to reach over and take over, like I do, was punishment. Although I feel that Mike had the bigger burden.

However, once Mike fought with PowToon and won, he was smitten. The slide becomes a movie, but a fancy and exciting movie. And even better yet, as Justin pointed out, most students already know how to use PowToon. Of course they do.

We used the tool for our Atmosphere presentation, in which we both learned a great deal about a subject area we had almost no knowledge in or desire to learn about. By the end of our research and work, I was coming up with ways to bring Atmosphere into the classroom everyday.

I liked the idea of integrating multiple subject areas. For this example, in my theoretical classroom, I could integrate a city we have been exploring in a non-fiction book (I'm looking at you Common Core) or hopefully a fiction one with a lesson about the atmosphere. I was thinking of using a foreign city, like Venus or Moscow, and checking the weather each morning as a class as part of our morning routine. Since google has google maps that allows people to visually stroll through the city ways/roads/tunnels it would be a great way to introduce geography, history, climate change and technology to my future students.