As I reflect over this semester it has been one that has been unusually busy and of change for me. Due to the life altering ceremony that I partook of this semester, I knew that I would have to be on my ‘A-game’. I initially started all of my projects quite early so that I would not have a lot of last minute work to do. But technology and life threw me a curve ball that I tried to manage, but did so horribly. At the beginning of this class I wrote all due dates in my calendar and never went back to see if any had changed. (my mistake) This made me realize what a face to face learner that I really am. I need the constant reminder of seeing my professor every week. The drive doesn’t bother me as long as I know I am getting the information I need on a weekly basis. Although Atomic Learning is a great tool, there are times that I need the modification of having my instructor show me step by step what I am suppose to be doing. Especially in this type of course, I am not technologically fluent AT ALL!!! Therefore, I wish there were more meeting times for those of us who lack prior knowledge.
One of the other things that I have learned and appreciated about this course is the multi uses of PowerPoint. I truly have never taken out the time to walk through and discover all of its applications. To show my students what they could accomplish utilizing this software was awesome and they began to ask me questions that I had to research further to give them correct answers. In the Teach & Learn with Technology course I discovered the ends and outs of Excel, Access, and Word, in this class I am glad I took the time to learn the more advanced applications of PowerPoint.
Using audio is a great tool for me being a reading teacher, I have had a blast learning how to use Audacity and other recording programs. My students who are behind grade level have grown by using these tools to read into and playing back their work. They have taken the time to learn the vocabulary and understand the tone and mood of what the author is trying to get across. This has increased not only their reading ability, but their understanding of literary devices as well.
One of the pitfalls, if you will, that I am not sure I will ever conquer is video. I had the worst time/luck with this aspect of the class. I have cried, screamed, and pulled hair over the video projects for this class; so much so that I am rethinking taking the MTT certification exam. I really wanted to take this cohort to grasp an understanding of where technology was going in education when I initially started out and I think that is what I am going to stick to. I do plan on completing the other two courses, but I think I am going to leave it at that. I will however continue to try and get better at editing and cleaning up video for the benefit of my students, but I need more hands on direction on this subject.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Creating Video. . .Blunders
April 30, 2010
Patience is a virtue is what they tell me . . . so finishing up this video project has been one of the toughest things I have had to do throughout my college career. I have had a rough time with the video portion of this class. As I videotaped my 'shots' I thought that would be the most difficult part, I was sadly mistaken. Taping was quite easy; I made sure I had plenty of footage to cover what I wanted to demonstrate in my video. Then the most annoying thing in the world happened!!!!!!!!!!! The downloaded footage of my video was not able to be salvaged from my hard drive. Now I had to start from ground zero!!! (Yes, I am in tears as I am writing this)
One of the things that my husband doesn’t like about me is over preparing. (But thank goodness that I don’t listen to him about everything) I had started preparing a lesson for my students to review for their final exams on inferences. The concept is to have each student bring in a recipe, they would present it one ingredient at a time and the class would have to ‘infer’ what the dish would be. If the class has not ‘inferred’ the recipe by the last ingredient it is revealed to them. This gave me the grand idea to put a couple of recipes on video by showing the actual ingredients and preparing the dishes so that the kids can see the final product. Hence, the ‘Inference Café’ was put together in a time of crisis.
Now all I have to do is complete the editing portion of my footage. I am completely terrified of how the editing portion of this is going to work out.
May 2, 2010
After pulling out a significant amount of my hair. . .I had to make some 'adjustments' to my video project. Once I downloaded my clips and transferred them to MovieMaker. I lost all sound!!!!!! All audio from the shoot was gone. So I tried a couple of things, like using audacity, only to have the clips look like a bad martial arts movie. So I tried to narrate over the clips and again the timing and flow of the video looked horrible. So using a bit of improvisation, I used an upbeat clip of music and some pretty cool editing tools to make the flow of the video look sharp. In an attempt to cover/modify the narration portion of the assignment I used captions on each slide. I think my only saving grace is that this clip is for an inference lesson. . .therefore it makes it a bit more rigourous for my students, they have to rely on their critical thinking skills to follow the steps. I get to play it tomorrow for them, so we will see what happens.
Patience is a virtue is what they tell me . . . so finishing up this video project has been one of the toughest things I have had to do throughout my college career. I have had a rough time with the video portion of this class. As I videotaped my 'shots' I thought that would be the most difficult part, I was sadly mistaken. Taping was quite easy; I made sure I had plenty of footage to cover what I wanted to demonstrate in my video. Then the most annoying thing in the world happened!!!!!!!!!!! The downloaded footage of my video was not able to be salvaged from my hard drive. Now I had to start from ground zero!!! (Yes, I am in tears as I am writing this)
One of the things that my husband doesn’t like about me is over preparing. (But thank goodness that I don’t listen to him about everything) I had started preparing a lesson for my students to review for their final exams on inferences. The concept is to have each student bring in a recipe, they would present it one ingredient at a time and the class would have to ‘infer’ what the dish would be. If the class has not ‘inferred’ the recipe by the last ingredient it is revealed to them. This gave me the grand idea to put a couple of recipes on video by showing the actual ingredients and preparing the dishes so that the kids can see the final product. Hence, the ‘Inference Café’ was put together in a time of crisis.
Now all I have to do is complete the editing portion of my footage. I am completely terrified of how the editing portion of this is going to work out.
May 2, 2010
After pulling out a significant amount of my hair. . .I had to make some 'adjustments' to my video project. Once I downloaded my clips and transferred them to MovieMaker. I lost all sound!!!!!! All audio from the shoot was gone. So I tried a couple of things, like using audacity, only to have the clips look like a bad martial arts movie. So I tried to narrate over the clips and again the timing and flow of the video looked horrible. So using a bit of improvisation, I used an upbeat clip of music and some pretty cool editing tools to make the flow of the video look sharp. In an attempt to cover/modify the narration portion of the assignment I used captions on each slide. I think my only saving grace is that this clip is for an inference lesson. . .therefore it makes it a bit more rigourous for my students, they have to rely on their critical thinking skills to follow the steps. I get to play it tomorrow for them, so we will see what happens.
Multimedia Experience
tI thought that I would fly right through my multimedia project due to the fact that it was over a topic that I enjoyed music and Ella Fitzgerald. I decided on this topic because the focus in our curriculum this year has been on memoirs and autobiographies. We have had to study what they are and the students have had to write their own as well as interview someone of interest to them. By putting together this example of expanding their written work I just knew it would be a piece of cake.
I initially started with the trial of Soft Chalk, it appears to be a great tool, but I had a hard time converting the information onto my website and burning to CD. One of the features that I thought was awesome was the crossword tool. But I could not get the feature to come up on my website. After searching YouTube I was able to find a few video’s that were supposed to be instructional, but they did not go into detail as to how to implement a lesson plan online. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pozX628s0FM
Since Soft Chalk did not work out for me I converted the project over to PowerPoint. With the help of a classmate I figured out how to change the slides into jpeg and moving it over to movie maker. (Sounds like I am trying to impress the teacher don’t it) but what didn’t click in my head was the fact that I would lose all of my animation by doing this. So I did a search on the trustworthy Atomic Learning and realize that adding the recorded voice into the PowerPoint presentation was a snap. (How I initially missed this I do not know) Now I think I have it all under control because I have the recorded voice on each slide, my animation, as well as the background music. I am quite pleased with the outcome of this project. And my students love the fact that they can utilize photos and record their own voice for this project. (Mainly because there resources are limited and video cameras are not accessible) I have posted this project onto my website under ‘End of the Year Project’ http://sites.google.com/site/cwillismartin/home/end-of-the-year-project
My parents who have internet access have given me some great response and appreciate the fact that I have listed everything for them. (Even the State requirements) They told me that it helps them understand why we, teachers, are requiring so much from their students.
I initially started with the trial of Soft Chalk, it appears to be a great tool, but I had a hard time converting the information onto my website and burning to CD. One of the features that I thought was awesome was the crossword tool. But I could not get the feature to come up on my website. After searching YouTube I was able to find a few video’s that were supposed to be instructional, but they did not go into detail as to how to implement a lesson plan online. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pozX628s0FM
Since Soft Chalk did not work out for me I converted the project over to PowerPoint. With the help of a classmate I figured out how to change the slides into jpeg and moving it over to movie maker. (Sounds like I am trying to impress the teacher don’t it) but what didn’t click in my head was the fact that I would lose all of my animation by doing this. So I did a search on the trustworthy Atomic Learning and realize that adding the recorded voice into the PowerPoint presentation was a snap. (How I initially missed this I do not know) Now I think I have it all under control because I have the recorded voice on each slide, my animation, as well as the background music. I am quite pleased with the outcome of this project. And my students love the fact that they can utilize photos and record their own voice for this project. (Mainly because there resources are limited and video cameras are not accessible) I have posted this project onto my website under ‘End of the Year Project’ http://sites.google.com/site/cwillismartin/home/end-of-the-year-project
My parents who have internet access have given me some great response and appreciate the fact that I have listed everything for them. (Even the State requirements) They told me that it helps them understand why we, teachers, are requiring so much from their students.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Classroom for the future
I must admit that this is a difficult task for me to imagine. I am on a campus where I have only one computer in my classroom and a projector that was assigned to after attending a professional development. (I must use my personal laptop to show presentations on it) There is one Smart board on campus that is used by the math department. With that being stated, the classroom that I envision has all the bells and whistles.
Laptops will be made available to all students in every classroom. Their textbooks will be online and when they do homework they will be able to log into them from home. For students who suffer from ailments that keep them out of school, video conferencing will be made available to them through webcams. No longer will they have to miss instruction directly from their teacher. Also, due to distance education students who choose to study foreign languages will have them made available to do so.
As for the educator delivery of lessons will be changed immensely. I see video conferencing capabilities available for every classroom. Video creation and editing will be a staple for every classroom as well. Educators are always looking for ways to expand upon lessons/projects; video will be a key component to doing so especially with the usage of ‘flip’ styled camcorders. A classroom of the future will need to have this equipment available. Educators will need to be able to podcast as a means of make-up work among other things. Websites are a must for every teacher; they are an open line of communication with parents, students, and administrators. The capability of what a website can provide for students outside of the classroom is endless.
Parents would also have to become a part of this classroom as well. Going online to view progress reports at their leisure is only scratching the surface of the possibilities. By having access to their student’s classroom website parents can view graded work, announcements, and upcoming assignments/projects. Many working parents would appreciate having teacher or POD conferences with via webcam instead of coming up to the school to find out how their child is doing. (so would the teachers) By implementing these tools for the classroom of the future I am sure it would be quite costly initially. But with the need for students to be college/world ready these changes are a prerequisite to arming them for their future.
Laptops will be made available to all students in every classroom. Their textbooks will be online and when they do homework they will be able to log into them from home. For students who suffer from ailments that keep them out of school, video conferencing will be made available to them through webcams. No longer will they have to miss instruction directly from their teacher. Also, due to distance education students who choose to study foreign languages will have them made available to do so.
As for the educator delivery of lessons will be changed immensely. I see video conferencing capabilities available for every classroom. Video creation and editing will be a staple for every classroom as well. Educators are always looking for ways to expand upon lessons/projects; video will be a key component to doing so especially with the usage of ‘flip’ styled camcorders. A classroom of the future will need to have this equipment available. Educators will need to be able to podcast as a means of make-up work among other things. Websites are a must for every teacher; they are an open line of communication with parents, students, and administrators. The capability of what a website can provide for students outside of the classroom is endless.
Parents would also have to become a part of this classroom as well. Going online to view progress reports at their leisure is only scratching the surface of the possibilities. By having access to their student’s classroom website parents can view graded work, announcements, and upcoming assignments/projects. Many working parents would appreciate having teacher or POD conferences with via webcam instead of coming up to the school to find out how their child is doing. (so would the teachers) By implementing these tools for the classroom of the future I am sure it would be quite costly initially. But with the need for students to be college/world ready these changes are a prerequisite to arming them for their future.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Audio & Animation
The school in which I teach has VERY limited resources and I am constantly looking for ways to pull in technology in a variety of ways. (As least expensive as possible) So when I was introduced to audacity I was in hog heaven!!!!!! I normally take a mike and sit at a tape recorder to record portions of books, short stories, and other literature for my students who need the additional modification. With audacity I am able to record and save tons of stuff without having to reuse cassette tapes. (I know, who uses those anymore?) I can burn my recordings to CD and save them for the next year and build a listening library for my students.
Now that I have experienced using the animation portion of Powerpoint a bit more I am excited to combine the two for those students who are below grade level. With the combination of the two the visual learners can make the connection with the reading selections. For example, one idea that I put to practice was to use pictures of characters that resemble those in the stories that I select for the class in a Powerpoint. As they are listening the characters change expressions, posture and so on to flow with the reading. At the end of a section or chapter I would take that time to introduce the new words and reread the portion of the story that it was in by showing the slide that it is connected to. Naturally this took a lot of time to prepare, but the excitement of those students who were able to join in the discussion with the rest of the class made it worthwhile.
Now that I have experienced using the animation portion of Powerpoint a bit more I am excited to combine the two for those students who are below grade level. With the combination of the two the visual learners can make the connection with the reading selections. For example, one idea that I put to practice was to use pictures of characters that resemble those in the stories that I select for the class in a Powerpoint. As they are listening the characters change expressions, posture and so on to flow with the reading. At the end of a section or chapter I would take that time to introduce the new words and reread the portion of the story that it was in by showing the slide that it is connected to. Naturally this took a lot of time to prepare, but the excitement of those students who were able to join in the discussion with the rest of the class made it worthwhile.
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