Course Reflection

This course did meet all my expectations because not only was everything covered, but additional educational technologies that I will be able to use in my classroom were also reviewed. I strongly think that this course should be required for all education majors because it is something that we all can use. Not only can teachers in training use the information from this course, but teachers that are already in the classroom can always benefit from the new technology that is constantly being created. There is so much information that everyone can learn from this class.

I will implement technology into my future classroom in a variety of ways. There are so many programs and tools that were introduced in this class that will be very helpful in the classroom. To keep parents and guardians of my students updated constantly about what is happening in the class, I will open up a blog specifically for my classroom. The online puzzle/game creators are also something that will be really useful because they are created to match what I am teaching in the classroom. I hope to expose my students to the many online learning resources by having them become knowledgeable of computers and online software.

Weebly Movie Commercial

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

This final project of Educational Technology was a really fun and great experience. In our group, we all decided on what software or online program we liked best and made a commercial about how it is useful not just for us as future teachers, but for anyone who wants to post up an online portfolio or resume. We had a lot of fun creating and editing the movie, and we enjoyed putting it together. After we edited it, we posted it to both Flickr and One True Media, but unfortunately, Flickr was only able to upload 1:30 minutes, so the full movie as shown above is on One True Media.

Weebly

Weebly is a site for “web creation made easy” and using this online program, I created a website for my online portfolio. The portfolio consisted of information about my education, experience, teaching philosophy, skills and awards, hobbies and interests, travel, references, and a link to my blog. I added pictures and information about myself and my experiences for others to view.

I really liked the convenience of the weebly.com software because unlike a resume, it can be accessed anywhere that internet connection is available. The online site could also be modified at any time to add updated information about the person. Employers can access resumes online, without having to look through a large portfolio. Nothing needs to be printed, and all that is needed is the online address that can be given or a link sent to view the site. The only thing I disliked about the software was that it was difficult to add music and the font was hard to change.

Weebly is a great online site because not only can you create your own sites for portfolios and other things, but you can also make blogs through this website. The webpage creation section of weebly, compared to a blog has some similarities and some differences. Both are online and can be used to post information and pictures. Both can be customized, but blogs are more easy to personalize.

As a future educator, I could use this to keep the parents of my students updated on what is going on in the classroom and also inform them about any upcoming events. This could be more convenient for working parents who are not able to visit the class during working hours. Not only parent s could view the site, but principles and other family members of the students could log on and view the site. I also want to use this site as a professional portfolio that I can use as a supplement to a resume.

Elluminate Live

The distance education tool, Elluminate Live is a tool for real-time learning over the internet. Several colleges have invested in Elluminate Live and is great to use for online classes or distance learning. It is an online conferencing system that allows you to meet with others in a virtual meeting room. Using a head set and microphone, those in the virtual meeting room can communicate through voice and chat. There is also a visual in which we can view the sites of someone presenting and use the whiteboard as well to write on.

During the online conference, a lot of information was shared. Together with the class in the online conference was our instructor, Mr. John Jenkins, as well as two guest speakers, Marian Campo and Bree Reynolds. They both were a great help because they explained and shared a lot of helpful information that we could all use as future teachers. It was very interesting to hear about online tools that they were using in the U.S. and in the middle east.

The positives of Elluminate Live was that we could easily go onto the site from the invite in our email and downloading the program didn't take more than a few minutes. Once we got on, we could hear the speaker and communicate through chat in the smaller window. The guest speakers showed us some good sites, and it was overall very informative. The whiteboard was also a really interesting and useful tool that we used during the online conference. Though there were many postives, there were some negatives to the tool as well. Using my laptop with the Windows Vista program, I had much difficulty opening the program after it was downloaded. During the conference, we could only listen to one person at a time because the microphone was only open to one person. If someone forgot to turn their mic off, the no one could use it. Some of the sounds that came through were also delayed at times.

I would really like to use this program in the classroom, but I think it would word best if used in the upper grades who are more advanced with using computers. This is a great tool to use, and many should take advantage of it if it is available in their school. I think teachers can use this program for use when they want to have a guest speaker in the class who is unable to make it. This is especially useful for distance learning where guest speakers from the states or even world wide could speak to a class. Since we live on an island that is very far from many places, this could really benefit many people. Overall, I thought this program was very interesting and I enjoyed using it for the first time.

SlideShare Presentation

The Future Of Mobile Learning

View more presentations from jovannamafnas.

The experience of presenting using slideshare was an interesting one because this was the first time that I have used slideshare in a presentation. I found it very useful and convenient because I could connect presentation to the over head projector straight from the online site, I didn’t need a flash drive, or have to email myself the PowerPoint presentation. Everyone that I presented my PowerPoint to could easily log on to slideshare.net and open my presentation without me having to send them the document. Viewers could easily look through the presentation and visit the links on the their own time instead of having to wait for me to visit the link so that they could see on the projector, they could easily click on it on their own screen.

The challenges with using slideshare are that some of the features or effects that are placed onto PowerPoint are not successfully transferred over onto the presentation on slideshare. Once the presentation is uploaded onto slideshare, it cannot be modified in any way. It was helpful that I did not have to send everyone viewing the slideshow presentation a copy of my PowerPoint, and that all they needed to do was log onto slideshare.net to view the complete slideshow and follow along with my presentation on their own screen.

If I had the chance to do it over, I would do it almost the same way. I do want to learn more of the features that slideshare offers like music and other things that I could add to my presentation to make it more appealing. As an audience member of others’ presentations I really found this online program very useful. With my eyesight now being that great without glasses, being able to see the presentation on my own screen right in front of me was very helpful. I also greatly enjoyed visiting the different links that each presentation had to offer.

Group Slideshow Project

In today's class, we worked in groups and were each assigned a website to use in order to create a slideshow. In my group, Livia, Rita, and I were assigned to use www.rockyou.com to create our slideshow. We brainstormed and discussed what our slideshow story would be about. We finally decided to make a slideshow using a legend we created about the red plumeria. We then set out with our digital camera to take pictures that we would use in our slideshow to tell our story. We decided who would be the main characters or actors in the story, who would be the director, and who would be the photograher. Me being the photographer, I took several shots of the main characters, and the plumeria trees. We decided how the pictures would be taken and which would be used. When we completed the picture taking part of our project, we then went back into class to put our slideshow together.

First, we picked the pictures that we wanted to use, and eliminated the unnecessary ones. We then created an account on rockyou.com to create our slideshow. We uploaded the pictures that we decided to use, and then added transitions and designs. We put the pictures in order, and then finally added captions to tell our story. We also added a song, which was already available for us to just pick and add directly from the site. Our slideshow was now complete, and a tag or url was available for use to add to sites such as facebook, myspace, hi5, and other online sites.




I really enjoyed using this online program to create our slideshow story. It was easy to use and had a variety of different graphics and designs to choose from. I liked how there were songs ready for us to choose from and add to our slideshow as well. Overall, I give this site a 9/10 becuase it was not difficult to use and had a variety of options to choose from that I think would really appeal to students.

Slideshow from www.rockyou.com

Create Your Own

Online Puzzles and Computer Games

Today in class we each explored sites that had puzzle generators that we could use in our classrooms. Several puzzles were available for us to choose from, and we could also modify them to tie into lessons being taught in the classroom which makes it more meaningful because it reinforces what is already being taught. Puzzles such as word searches, crosswords, mazes, falling words, etc . . . were available for us to choose between. I like these sites because they offered set puzzles already made as well as puzzles that we could modify and change to our liking. As a future teacher, I don't want to give my students just any puzzle all the time, I want them to be able to enjoy learning about what is already being taught in class, and use puzzles as a fun activity for them to better apply what they learned in class. Online puzzles help children to learn because they reinforce what is being learned in class. It helps students refresh their memory and assesses them without the tension and anxiety that tests bring to some students.



We also read an article entitled "Video games have role in school." It explained some evidence and surveys that were conducted on 1,000 teacher and more than 2,300 students in the UK. It was a very interesting article because it brought up some interesting issues on computer games and the use of them in the classroom, as well as at home. After reading the article we summarized and relfected on the article through the use our online forums. It was nice to read the thoughts and concerns of others because it brings out different sides of what we think.

WebQuest

A WebQuest is an online learning tool that teachers can use to create lessons online. Assignments that are given to the students has asks them to use the internet to research and learn about the given topics assigned to them. When using WebQuest, parents can now be more involved in their child's learning and assignments can be easily accessed any time of the day where internet access is available. Our assignment was to get into partners or groups and create a lesson using WebQuest. In my group there were three (3) of us: me, Rita Mae, and Livia. After several minutes of brainstorming several possible subjects to use in our WebQuest, we decided to create a lesson on world religions. We went to the online site given to us (www.zunal.com) and signed in. There was a sample WebQuest shown by Mr. J on PI Day. This helped us to get a feel on how our WebQuest might look. In our WebQuest we made several pages: title, introduction, task, process, evaluation, conclusion, and teacher page. I liked this assignment because it introduced us to the world of lessons online. I think WebQuest is something that every teacher should be exposed to so that they know what kind of learning tools are available online. The world today continues to bring in new types of technology everyday and we as teachers need to know of the many advantages there are of using online tools in our classrooms. I liked using this site because it wasn't so difficult to use. There wasn't anything I disliked about this assignment except that it may be difficult for lower grade students to use. As a teacher, I would implement WebQuest as a way for students to become familiar with the world wide web. Students should become aware that information is at their fingertips today, and learning or researching about anything is not so hard with the use of the internet. I would create lessons and activities for students to get online and use. And I could also use WebQuest as an online site for group projects. This way, parents can be more involved in the assignments that their children are being given. Overall, this is a great tool for all teachers to use.

Timeline

In class today, we each created a timeline from the site: www.teach-nology.com. For my timeline, I did used several significant events in my life that has happened. I placed the dates that I remembered, along with a description of the significance of each of the dates on my timeline. I liked that this online software was really simple and easy to use. The site was easy to navigate through, which made creating the timeline a breeze. What I disliked about the timeline was that it had limited settings and designs. All timelines created would look almost exactly the same, except for the few selections provided for borders, and the information that was inputted. I could definately use timelines online for lessons in my classroom because it is a fun way to introduce timelines in the classroom for Social Studies lessons as well as a way for students to get to know each other. The students could each create their own timeline and then share with a partner or group. Then when they have become familiar with timelines, it will be easier for them to understand historic timelines without becoming confused. I would really like to use timelines in my classroom because it can always be modified to fit several different subjects, and I think its a great activity that the students will enjoy. When comparing the first timeline generator at www.teach-nology.com to www.xtimeline.com, I think that they both have their qualities and down sides. The first site was simple and easy to navigate through while the second site was more complicated and took longer to complete. Also, the first site was limited with designs and other features, but the seond site has several designs and other features such as picture adding. I would prefer the first site with lower grade students and the second site with more advance students. The first site is good as an introduction because its simple and not so complicated especially for first time users. The second site is more advanced and takes more more work. So overall I liked the second site because of the additional features but it really depends on who is going to be generating the timeline, whether it be lower grade or upper grade students.

Online Programs for January 31, 2009

Class started with a new website for the class to explore. We broke up into three groups and explored buzzword.com. It was difficult for us to get into the site and took some time before anyone was able to get in. When we were able to open the site, there were several programs but we discussed the word processor section as a group. The word processor was similar to the word processor in Microsoft Office. Though this processor was a bit difficult, it had a lot of features such as being able to save documents online, without having to use up the computer's hard drive. Also, documents could be easily shared and accessed on any computer with internet access. We rated the online program as a "5" out of "10" because it was difficult for us to use. Though that could have been because of the computers we were using, or the speed or our internet connection. After, we then explored google docs., which was another computer software that had a word processer. This program was more "user friendly" and was much easier to use. It was connected directly with my email (gmail). I could easily save, edit, and share my documents with others. Finally, we then worked on editing our blogs on blogger.com. We also connected with each person on the class so that we could easily view each others blogs and posts. We then added pictures and made our first post.




The programs that we explored and experimented with were really fun to try out. I think these can really be very useful in the classroom. Especially, the google docs. site, because many upper grade studens are very aware with the internet and have their own email address. They could very much benefit from these programs. In the classroom, these programs can make things a lot easier for teachers and students. The online programs could be used with a projector to replace using a chalk or white board (save time on having to erase and clean). Also, it will be easier for students to view and read. Journal writing, editing, and group work can be done using these programs. There are many activities that can be done in the classroom with the right equipment, the options are almost unlimited with the use of the internet and technology.