Final blog... sniffle sniffle

As part of my final blog, I created a VLOG! Who knew when I started this course I would be able to create a vlog? Wow, I feel so accomplished :D I am having a hard time embedding the recording though. I watched videos and read blogs on how to embed the player but I still can't get it to work *sigh* so I will post a screen shot and the link.

I always knew technology was important but not until I took this class did I realize how important it truly is. I thought that student spent too much time using technology before this class and now I know that expecting anything other than the use of technology is unrealistic.


I am sad this class is over, I wish I could take a refresher every few years, but now it is my responsibility to keep myself up to date on all the amazing applications and programs available to teachers.


This is the video I watched on embedding podcasts

Voice Thread

Slowly making my way through all the assignments this week and I get to the PLN and Voice thread... I am listening to each other educators when I get to the guy from Chicago who says the single most important things is TWITTER?!?!? My chin hit the table. This summer session I was also taking Writing in the Classroom with Dr. Rebecca Norman (she is great if you get the chance to take a class with her). As one of our assignments we were to create a twitter account and tweet eight times about what we discussed in class that day. Now that the class is almost over, we had to write a reflective essay about the experience. I was not very nice and expressed my hatred of twitter. I never understood the point of twitter, honestly I still don't.   So I am a little shocked to hear this educator discuss how imperative it is. Ok... back to listening. Oh geesh, another person plugging twitter. What am I missing here?


I am all about being a 21st century teacher, what other resources can I use besides twitter? As I continued reading and listening, I was hoping to get some other options. Maybe I need to stop resisting the current and join the twitter movement. Most of the educator talked about edchat. I have never heard of it before so I did some research. This is what I found: What is #Edchat?

Now that I completely feel behind the twitter times, its time for more research. How do I use twitter? Well, that's where I started.

Hmmmm... maybe twitter isn't so bad after all. 

A6 Search Story...

For some reason the youtube search story is not working... So now I am trying to find an appropriate video slide show creator. Not an easy task. I found Animoto and created this video. After many attempts at trying to change the setting, I realized this program was not going to work for my project. I love the song and wish I could use it on another site I am working with. Right now I am trying to use Masher. It's not going too well unfortunately. I think I am going to scrap Masher and move on to Smilebox. I have messed around with Smilebox before but never made a video on it. While looking up Smilebox on google, I stumbled upon Britely, its like pinterest but for slideshows. There is a tutorial on how to fold a fitted sheet!

Anyway, back to the assignment. I ended up creating my video on Smilebox. I took screenshots of me looking up things like digital footprint, my name and images. Then I looked through the "catalog" of slideshow backgrounds. I found a few that I liked but either did not like the provided music or I could not change the text on the first slide. At long last, it is done.

Zoho vs Google Docs

For my WoW project, I chose to compare Zoho and GoogleDocs. I wanted to use prezi but I did not like the way my prezi was coming out. I decided to use slide rocket and create a slide show with tons of images and videos. 

Zoho vs GoogleDocs

Creating this project took longer than I care to admit, so I really hope that everyone likes it and can learn from it. At the end I pick one of these two programs to use in my class. Watch the slide show and decide which of these two would work better for you

Khan academy

I tried to watch the video that was posted but after about a minute and a half the video stops. I started to do my own research on this topic and found that the Khan Academy now has an app for the iPad. This is the link about the app and the consumer reviews. I was able to locate this video which is the same but has a different title.

Khan academy started about 5 years ago when Khan started tutoring his cousins. He decided to upload some videos onto youtube. His cousins told Khan they liked him better on youtube. Now his cousins were able to pause, rewind and go back to relearn a topic. At the same time other people began stumbling on his videos. People began to respond to his teaching and appreciating what Khan was putting out there. And so the Khan Academy was born. Now, classrooms are being flipped, lectures were watched at home and homework was done in class. 

The Khan Academy wants students to reach mastery. Each time a student masters a topic, they are moved on and up. This is an amazing free tool that makes diagnostic simple. Teachers are able to see EXACTLY what students are struggling with, where they paused the video and where they stopped watching. I will be passing this along to the girl I am tutoring.

Engrade

What ever happened to all assignments would be due on Sunday or Monday that was said during our first class? I completely missed the due date on this assignment but better late then never.


I have used an online school management system in the past called School Tool. I immediately thought Engrade would not be as good as School Tool, but I was wrong. School Tool is very cumbersome and difficult to navigate if you do not know the program well. After using School Tool for many years I was very proficient, but that took time. Engrade I was able to pick up immediately. I love how easy it is to weight my different categories and even the option to drop the lowest grade, which I always had to do manually in School Tools.


The only problem I had with Engrade is needing to input the student's id. When I was working we did not know our students id numbers, honestly I do not even know if they had them... I am sure they did but I have no clue. My school always set up the classes for us with the rosters, so I assume if Engrade was the program the school was using, the id numbers would already been inputted. I am used to working with online grading systems so in general, Engrade is extremely easy to navigate. I would improve the view of your gradebook. It gets very frustrating when inputting hundreds of grades to have to stop every few students to scroll down. I would make it so you could see all your students on one page. 


Online grading software is imperative for teachers in this digital age. Parents want to be able to check and find out immediately how their child is progressing. With online grading systems, emails can easily be sent out to alert parents what a child is missing. When a teacher has a website in combination with the online grading, students can assess assignments they are missing and hand them in the next day. Gone are the days when parents can be ignorant to how their child is doing in school until report cards come. Online grading software also provides print outs for each student with all of the assignments and their grades. If a family does not have Internet or a computer, a teacher can easy supply the parent with the student's grade at any moment. 


If I had a choice when I was teaching, I would have used Engrade instead of School Tool, provided it was available at the time. Below is a screenshot of my fictional first period class.

Website

I FINALLY made my website!! Please check it out, I will post more tomorrow

Goanimate

Yesterday my group met to discuss the constructivist theory for education. We were tasked with making a video using either GoAnimate or Xtranormal. 




We decided on GoAnimate because we were able to get a free version. The free version only allows you a few options for your characters, backgrounds and voices. Each time you create a page or edit a page, GoAnimate charges you a token (users are provided with 100 free tokens). We each took on some slides to help the process move quickly, normally we work for more than two hours. We were very pleased with our video until we had to delete some of it. The free version only allows users to create and save videos that are two minutes or less. Our video was 2:21 seconds. We had to cut a good amount of the introductory information about the constructivist theory. 




I am posting the link to the video, in order to download or publish the video to youtube, you must pay. Alas, I am cheap/frugal/thrifty, whatever you want to call it, and do not want pay. Sorry followers, I hope you can understand. Below, I have posted a screenshot of what you will see when you click on the link.

I would definitely use either of these two programs in my classroom if my school had a subscription. One example of how I might use this is to have students create a classroom, in which they are the teacher. Students would create a problem and then teach the class how to solve the problem. I would then have students share the videos on our Edmodo class page. This is only one example. I am sure I could find many other ways for students to use this in my classroom. This program would also help the teacher incorporate writing in math, which often is very difficult.


I am very pleased at how this all turned out and am lucky to be a group with two hard working women. I have been able to learn a great deal from them, and for that I am very thankful.

iPad love

Now Aubrey is started to become interested by all the technology in our house. Both my girls love to discover new apps on my iPad. It makes me wonder if I should get one for my preschool in the fall.

Voki

Just created my Voki avatar. It was fun and easy to do. It took, maybe five minutes, because I looked at all my the options. I did not like that I had to have a sound file. I recorded myself saying "Hi". Here is my avatar.

This is just a screenshot of my avatar.

Just for fun

iGoogle

Today, I used iGoogle for the first time. I have seen people using it before but never realized what it was. Looking through all the themes was fun, I chose a pretty one but when I came back to the site, the theme had changed itself. My new theme is pretty as well but not the same... Oh well. I loaded my iGoogle with a bunch of gadgets like Facebook, the NYT and the world clock for New York and Alaska. I added a bunch more gadgets but was surprised that a lot of the gadgets I searched for were not available. It's easy to see all the important sites in one easy to view location. I will definitely continue to use this site after this class is over. To finish the assignment, I downloaded Jing onto my parents laptop, of course it would not work on the iPad. After numerous failed attempts to run Jing, I downloaded Google Chrome and then Awesome Screenshot. Awesome Screenshot is so easy to use. When downloaded, Awesome Screenshot adds a little camera at the top right hand corner of an Internet page. You just click on the camera and decide if you want the whole website or just the screen. I chose the whole screen. I am amazed at how simple it was, once downloaded.

Web 2.0 experiences

I have really been slacking lately with my blog, so I have a lot to write. Currently, I am taking teaching writing in the classroom and as part of our assignment we had to start a Twitter account. I have always been vehemently against having a twitter account. What is twitter's purpose except to over inform people about your life? I think I am stuck in between wanting to be hooked up with the rest of the world and wanting to break free. My husband and I constantly talk about posting pictures of the girls in facebook. I get annoyed when every picture is posted, but this is besides the point. Part of our assignment is we need to make 8 tweets regarding the topic we discussed in class in only 140 characters. The character limitation is harder than I expected, I guess I am long winded. In class, we talk about the benefits of twitter and a teacher who uses it currently. This woman is a social studies teacher, he students are only allowed to follow news twitter accounts and tweet an article they found interesting or important. Slowly, I am warming to the idea of twitter. Once this class is over I will still delete the account. I have this nasty habit of getting sucked into Facebook, the last thing I need is another social networking site acquiring my time.


In this other class of mine, we need to develop a workshop that we then turn into a video. I have been exploring Photostory, Garage Band and iMovie. Our video needs to have voice over, which Photostory allows you to record on each page. You are also able to take a PowerPoint and save the slides as jpegs, which you could then import each slide into your Photostory. Garage Band allows you to record voice and then the user can import the music file into iMovie. I have never used any of these programs, so I am still unsure what I will use. I will update you on how it goes.


Last week during our group project we used Wordle for the first time, well most of our first time (to see my wordle <a href=http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/5387537/jackiewojtak> click here </a>). We learned that unless you have some words more than once, all the words will be the same size. To make our Wordle look the way we wanted it to, we typed the important word, like our motto and names, multiple times. We also learned from a group member to save what we wrote in the text box. If for some reason we did not like how the Wordle came out, then clicked the back but, we would lose all our text. I could see how this would work better if you had students take a short essay they wrote and type it into Wordle. The words they mentioned most would be the largest, these words would hopefully be the important topics in their essay. Our group meeting went well, we were only able to meet through Skype chat unfortunately. Technology was not cooperating that day. Hopefully this week will be better. We are going to try to use WiZiQ. I'll let you know how it goes. More tomorrow, I promise.

The panic has set in

HOLY MOLY! Who was overwhelmed last night? I was in a mild panic attack by the time class ended. I had a long drive to think and stress about everything that was discussed. When I finally got home I decided it was time to just bite the bullet and start my research. It has been almost 2 years since I have been in the classroom and I feel so technologically out of date. I did not have access to the web module which made locating some of the programs Dr. Smirnova talked about difficult. I tried to find Wibby? (not sure on the spelling, probably why I couldn't find it), however I did find Prezi. Prezi is a type of presentation tool, which from the name now makes sense. It take presentations to a whole new creative level. I downloaded the app for my IPad and started exploring. I ended up watching a few prezis, I really enjoyed a prezi on the Art of Espresso. I was blown away by the amount of work put into this presentation and wondered if I would ever be able to create something of that caliber. These prezis do make me a little scared haha. You know those commerials where kids use powerpoints to convince their parents they need something... oh Lord help me when my girls are old enough. I am off to do homework and more research, thankfully we are having nap time at my house woo hoo :