A Successful Journey

Following the previous posts, it is clear to both the audience and I that I have grown in my knowledge of learning this year. At the beginning, I though that I was familiar with technology, but now I see that it was just hopeful ignorance. I had no idea what tools the internet and technology allowed access to for both teachers and students. This blog is a great example. This is the first blog I have ever created and I must say I enjoyed it. I never knew it was so easy to communicate my experiences to everyone. Almost every single tool introduced to us this year was a completely new experience for me. Picasa Web Albums was the only tool I had heard of but even that was a unfamiliar world to me. I look forward to introducing my students to technology so that they can experience, even if just a little bit, the growth that I experienced. It amazes me how many things you can do using web tools. I am now curious to explore the rest of the web and find more tools that I am unfamiliar with. I can only encourage everyone else to do the same. If you think that you know about the web, you have no idea. I literally learned something new every week. I think that it is safe to say my lessons will be greatly enhanced by these newly found tools on the web. With the ever expanding world of technology, there is no telling what will be available to us as instructors and students in the near future.

Storytelling in the Digital World

Have you ever seen short clips at a presentation or on YouTube of pictures and wondered how they made such a cool video? Well this week we were introduced to a tool that makes creating one of these videos very simple. It is called iMovie. iMovie allows you to upload as many pictures as you need and create a video with them. There are ways to add transitions between the pictures in order to keep it interesting. One of my favorite characteristics of the iMovie is the background music. You can choose a song or any sort of sound file and simply drag it into the movie. You must be sure that you have the rights to use the song however, as well as the pictures. You can also fade songs in and out so that you can use different songs if you want to change the mood of the clip. There are certain text templates that can be added to pictures so that you can add some detail. But you can also record a narration and add it to the movie if you simply want to narrate the movie. One of the downsides of this tool is not only that you have to have a Mac, but also you cannot export the movie to edit on another computer. It must be completed on the same computer that its started on. This tool is a lot of fun but it is sort of tedious to create a video. The possibilities are endless however. My video is uploaded to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Just click the link below.

Blaise Pascal in a Nutshell

Digital Diagram

I'm sure many of you have been exposed to some interesting diagrams throughout your school careers. I know I have seen some pretty creative diagrams many times. I often find myself thinking, "wow, they are really good with the paint program on the computer or they know something I don't know." Turns out it was the latter. Digital diagram seems to be the tool that many teachers and businesses have been using all along. After seeing many of the diagrams, it seemed that it could be a very complicated program to use if you wanted to maintain some originality. Well, after playing around with it some, I found that it is not nearly as complicated as the final product makes it seem. In fact, Digital Diagram may be the most user friendly tool that we have worked with thus far. It is a great way to make a quick, attractive  diagram for absolutely any topic. It is set up to resemble the web diagrams that so many of us are accustomed to. The majority of the tools buttons are represented with a picture so that you know exactly what each button does. It is not meant, however, to go into great detail about a topic. The topics can be divided into many layers but there is not much elaboration on each layer. Therefore, I think it best serves as an introductory tool or a review guide tool. Either way, it can easily be used in any classroom at any level.

Problems on the homefront...

This week was an important experience in the world of technology. Much of class time was spent getting to explore the tools of interactive white board in a deeper context. This exploration was not such smooth sailing. I would not say that we ran into problems as much as I would say that we ran into some rough waters. Some of the tools can be very complicated in interactive white board. Luckily, it was a great time to interact with my peers and put our heads together. As they have said for a long time, two heads are better then one, therefore a class full of heads must be better than two. This week created a great opportunity to see just how far teamwork can go in technology. Many of us have different strengths and weaknesses and when these are combined, there is almost nothing that we cannot do. We also found that sometimes a simple Google search can speed up the solution process whenever you may run across a snag. The tools were not the only part that gave us problems. We explored the web tool called Storybird this week also. This is a simple and fun tool for kids to use. There are not many applications for a high school math class but I am positive that it is not completely useless. The class discovered together an important part of Storybird. When you publish your story, it must first be granted permission by the Storybird staff before it can be embedded in a website. All in all I think this week served as a great reminder for all of us. Things will not always go according to plan in the classroom, but that is no reason to fret. When faced with a problem, simply gather yourself and search for a solution. It is also never a bad thing to seek help from your peers if necessary. Sometimes that is the best solution!

What a week!

This week in the world of technology was a little overwhelming. The class was introduced to a plethora of information and tools. One of the tools introduced was the interactive white board through Activeinspire. I think this may be my favorite tool so far. It has limitless applications in the classroom. It can be used in absolutely any subject at almost any grade level. It is by far the most interactive tool we have come across. I think it is imperative that all teachers in the future be familiar with this tool. There are many great ways to customize lessons with the white board. It can even be used for assessment of students. When implemented in lower grade levels, I think it can be one of the best ways to familiarize students with technology and how to use a computer. We were also introduced to Animoto which is another pretty neat tool. Animoto is a tool used to create video clips. Unfortunately the free access only allows for a thirty second video. I know it doesn't seem like much but you would be surprised with what you can fit in such a short time. It seems to be a reoccurring theme but I continue to be surprised by how much I learn about the web each week.

Put It In a Slideshow

This week in the technology world has led me to stumble across some pretty amazing stuff. Do you ever look on the web and notice neat slideshows of digital images embedded on their sites? Well I certainly did. Luckily this week has opened my eyes to the digital image world. Picasa Web Albums is a great place to store your photos on the web. The best part about Picasa is that you can access your photos from any computer with a web connection. Picasa also allows you to tag photos so that others can access them more quickly (if the pictures are public). It is important that people explore ways to create digital storage for photos on the internet. People have been collecting photos for years. When there is a fire in a house, most people go after the photo albums first. Now, pictures aren't lost so easily. One of my favorite things about Picasa is the fact the it allows you to embed your albums on a website. I currently have my scavenger hunt photo album on my classroom website. The embedded file automatically scrolls through the pictures in slideshow form along with the captions. This obviously has many applications in a classroom. Teachers can now store appropriate digital images and create an attractive album for students to view. It also allows a simple way for students to have fun with images on the web. I am very excited to discover so many ways to play around with pictures on the internet. This class continues to amaze me at how ignorant I was as to the tools available on the internet. I say bring on more tools!

Discover a Whole New Wordle

This was another interesting week in the world of web technology. We are beginning to take a deeper look at many different tools available on the web. This week managed to be a very educational class for me. Some of you may have heard of Wordle but may have not used it before (like myself). Wordle is a great tool for classrooms. One of my favorite strengths about it is its simplicity. It can be used at any age and for almost any topic. Wordle creates a word cloud based on words you enter and the frequency in which they appear. It doesnt "just" generate a word cloud, it creates a colorful and theme based cloud. I also learned just how many ways there are to customize your cloud. One of the weaknesses I have noticed is the fact that you can not go back and edit the words entered in the cloud. So it is important to be sure of what you have typed before you generate the cloud. I am very interested to explore it's uses in mathematics. I think it could be a fun way to create a cloud of random numbers to be put into equations. or even and answer bank for some equations. I haven't gotten a chance to explore all of it's uses in math but it seems to be a list of many so far. I look forward to learning about the other tools in the following weeks. I have a feeling that some pretty amazing things can be done with the combination of so many different tools. There may even be undiscovered uses!