You versus Teacher. . .The Tubes

Being a person who is dyslexic, visuals are always a plus when you are in a class that has a lot of reading encompassed in the curriculum. So I decided to check out Teachertube for instructional video for a couple of things that I couldn't quite wrap my mind around in the reading. In a word. . .sucky!!!!! I was really disappointed with the lack of educational information available on the site. (especially since it is a site that my campus doesn't have a block on it) I have tried to rephrase and use advance search methods and nothing viable come up. Cute little inspirational ‘you can do it’ videos seem to plague the site, but nothing that will assist educators with the use of technology in the classroom.


Youtube on the other hand has so many tutorials that they put the aforementioned site out of business. For example, I have a very good friend who is an awesome cake decorator and she wanted to borrow my cricut machine to make some stencils. I thought that teachertube would have something useful about this equipment since so many teachers use it for the classroom. Youtube had an instructional video on exactly what she wanted to use it for and gave me some really neat ideas for decorating my classroom. I have considered contacting who ever maintains the site to see if there is anyway they can raise the bar on the quality of video they get on the site. But I am sure this request would be better if it came from someone who actually is comfortable editing video. I may not be the best person for the job.

Twittering. . .

As I look over social networks there are times when I feel as though I am spending too much time on the computer. . . therefore I disconnect from technology at least once or twice a week.  (this has been hard being that I need to be at a computer during the weekend because of class) I literally turn off my phone, computer, and MP3 player and put a few CD's in the stereo and read a book or two.  With that being said I am not a big fan of Twitter although it does offer a lot of viable information to educators.  One of the site that I do enjoy receiving tweets from is PBS.com.  It gave me some wonderful examples for my multimedia project that I used to share with my students.  

The other really cool usage of Twitter that my students enjoyed was the polling application.  The majority of my students have cell phones that have unlimited texting so as a review for our TAKS test we played a jeapordy styled game using this app, they had a blast and so did I.  (I only had to convince our campus tech to lift the firewall for a day so that I could actually pull Twitter up)  One of the other nice things that I can admit to that I liked about Twitter was putting out questions to other educators about 'beefing' up a couple of my lesson plans.  This came in handy because it gave me another perspective from teachers who didn't have all of the technology bells and whistles that I so often wish for.  This opened up dialog that pushed me to be a bit more creative in the classroom.  A bonus for me and my students.

The wonders of PowerPoint

As a professional I always looked at powerpoint as a really cool way to present overhead materials.  But as I read and explored atomic learning this software is absolutely amazing.  With powerpoint I have been able to create presentations where I don't have to say a word.  The animation feature is nice, but when I finally discovered the recording feature I was ubberly geeked.  The presentation I used as an introduction to an inference lesson captivated my students immensely.  As I set up the presentation, my students took out their binders to take notes, under the assumption that I would be speaking.  As I clicked the button to start the slide show I took my seat.  (by now my kiddos were thoroughly confused)  As the music began and they heard my voice all I could here were the ooohs & aaahs of their amazement.  Of course I had to replay the presentation because they missed the information due to the fact they wanted to know how I put it together.  After the second viewing the class had some awesome questions and were able to come up with their own examples of inferences. 

What I learned from this whole 'experiment' is that my students needed a breathe of fresh air and so did I.  By putting audio with my powerpoint it allowed me to monitor the classroom more and offer one on one assistance to my students who needed it.  So the next presentation that I gave was on plot I provided an empty graphic organizer of a plot diagram and as the slide show played I was able to assist students in filling in the information.  By presenting new information in this format is like having a co-teacher in the room at all times.  It was absolutely awesome. . .even my inclusion teacher loved the concept.