Semester’s End!

I’m not sure if it was because of all the different types of projects we worked on in this class, but the semester really seemed to fly by! I’m happy to have learned many new technology-based teaching tools in this class, particularly the digital stories. I think the difference between the two stories that I made is night and day. It took a lot of experimenting and planning, but I think practice is all you really need to become better at anything. I’m also glad that we got to work on our digital stories towards the beginning of the semester. I found those to be the most time consuming projects that we had for this class, so I’m glad they were scheduled at the beginning before the workload became heavier in other classes towards the middle to end of the semester.

I worked mainly on my MacBook for the projects in this class, so I used iMovie and GarageBand when creating my digital stories and podcasts. It was fun figuring out how to work those programs. (Thankfully it was pretty simple because of the way Mac’s are made!) But I also sort of wish that I had been able to work on a PC to create these projects and use programs like Premiere Elements and Audacity since it’s very likely when I become a School Library Media Specialist that I’ll be working on PCs and would have to use these programs. I know we could have downloaded some of these programs for free trials, but I already had so many other programs on my computer that I didn’t have enough free space to do so. It wasn’t until the end of the semester that I even knew you could take out a SHU laptop on loan! I think it’d be great to somehow incorporate laptops for graduate students who take Production classes. I think it’d be a lot easier for us to complete our work outside of the classroom. For someone like me who commutes via train, it’s much too hard to get to campus after working during the week to try and complete homework on the computers in the open labs. Anyway, that’s just an idea/suggestion because I really enjoyed all the things we learned in this class and for all of these projects. I think you just need to practice as much as you can to get better at them and at learning the programs, which is why the laptops could come in very handy. Even though I will be graduating in May, I still plan to take the other Production classes that are offered at some point after I finish my student teaching this spring.

While digital storytelling was probably my favorite project that we worked on, I also liked the Visual Vocab project and creating podcasts. I really enjoyed the Visual Vocab project because it was a fun way to connect words and images. I was happy with the way mine turned out but I think if it was something I had done at the end of the semester, now that I’m more familiar with design theories, it would probably have ended up differently then what I had originally made. As for podcasts, when I first signed up for this class and heard that we had to create them, I sort of cringed! Like most other people, I dislike hearing my own voice, but I also didn’t think I would enjoy creating them for some reason. They actually turned out to be really fun to make and I can definitely see myself using them when I begin teaching. I think they’re a really fun way to entice kids to learn or even just announce information to students. There are so many great uses for creating podcasts, so that’s definitely something I look forward to utilizing in the future.

Another thing that I was happy to learn more about this semester was RSS feeds. I had of course been familiar with them but honestly never got interested until taking this class. Now that I have Google Reader set up, it helps me organize my online reading so much more. I use it at least a few times a week for my current job, and I am sure I will use it even more when I begin teaching. Also bookmarking on Delicious was a great tool to learn more about. Much easier to save important links on there then it is to bookmark everything on my laptop, plus I like being able to access that information from any computer.

I enjoyed utilizing the Wiki but I had already used PB Works before in another class, and also for a work project, so it wasn’t that new to me. For this class, I felt like we used the Wiki just like we used our blogs – mainly just uploading our work to it –not actually communicating with my classmates through it for our group project.

Finally, I have to say that it was pretty neat that my high school journalism teacher wrote the book we used for our class. He had us doing the coolest projects in the late ‘90s when he taught me, so it was fun also getting to learn a bit more from him throughout the semester. 

Poster: Fun Learning with Flickr

I decided to create my educational poster on Flickr. It’s one of the few topics in Will Richardson’s book that I was not already familiar with so I wanted to learn about it and how it could be incorporated in the classroom.

Some of the theories that we spoke about this semester that are applied in my poster include visual literacy, information processing and Gestalt principles.

Visual literacy is present because it encompasses the overall poster. The use of images, the layout of the poster, the Flickr logo and image all come into play through visual literacy, especially Flickr’s two dots that act as a visual stimulant so we can recognize their logo even if the word is not present.

Information processing is incorporated through the use of headings, complimentary use of color, size of font, bolding and highlighting words that are important, and use of graphics. Also, the length of text is concise, to the point, and is broken up by chunking in hopes that the information will be more memorable. The overall design is something I want to draw people in, to have them view and remember.

Gestalt principles are also present in the design of the poster since we view it as aw hole, and the way that the text and images are grouped together in a cohesive way, creating structure and harmony. Closure, symmetry/order, similarity, and proximity are just some of the principles that are present in the poster.

Closure: no boxes or line surrounding the text to keep it in line but it is still formatted in a way that creates structure and is uniform.

Symmetry/order: Graphics, text, and images are all lined up in a way that’s balanced. Shows consistency and structure. Can easily comprehend information quickly and effectively.

Similarity: harmonious structure throughout the poster. The way the elements are arranged allows space and creates easy organization in the viewers mind.

Proximity: all poster elements are in direct proximity to one another and organized via color, shapes, tone and size.

Researching 101: Critical Website Evaluation

References

Website address. [Graphic]. (2010, Jan 7). Retrieved November 4, 2010 from, http://www.techpin.com/cool-new-websites/

Kirk, E. E. (2010). Evaluation information found on the internet. Retrieved November 4, 2010 from, http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/evaluating/

Schrock, Kathy. (2010). Critical evaluation surveys and resources. Retrieved November 4, 2010 from, http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/eval.html

Researching 101: Using Google

References

Google legos. [Graphic]. Retrieved November 2, 2010 from http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/08/600_google_employees_google-ve.php

Using google for research. Retrieved October 29, 2010 from http://www.lib.unca.edu/library/infolit/google_research.html

The Digital Divide in Education

Web Questions 4 Will

Out of all of the Web tools you talk about when you visit with schools, which do you see educators utilizing most? And is there a certain tool that you see them struggling with most? 


Why did you decide to use tinyurl in your book?


Like YouTube, Facebook seems to be one of the popular websites that is blocked in many schools. I can understand why students might like to use a social networking site like this in the classroom, but I can also see how it could become distracting. Do you think the popularity of the site will eventually lead to it be used more widely in schools in the coming years? 

A Birthday Down Under!