Monday, August 17, 2009

Thing 23

I have acquired many new skills and loads of information by completing this class. I plan to integrate many of these new techniques into my computer classes. If students have the knowledge and skills to use some of these techniques to complete assignments maybe even some teachers who are resisting will become curious about how they did that. Many of the techniques presented in this class could make assignments and projects more interesting and pleasant to view and grade.  I love digital photography and I also have many new sites and cool ways to alter photos. I have posted a few on my facebook page and have had many friends comment on them and want to know how I did that. And many of fb friends are my colleagues who are interested in how I did that. I will continue to look for information online and any other classes put out by our great tech people at the ISD. 

Thing 22

LearnPort has a lot of great lesson plans websites and many interesting PD opportunities. I would do PD online over going to classes. The advantages are you can do it when and where you want to. Disadvantages would be no immediate peer collaboration. Many times PD is boring and irrelevant to the subjects that I teach. I would prefer choices that would make it more interesting and relevant to me. My experience with this class has been good. The information and new skills are going to very useful to use in my classroom. I will be able to generate new lessons for the students to utilize many of the new resources also.

Thing 21

There is so much information out there. The trick is finding the right and appropriate information. Online video could be used in the classroom to supplement lecture or demonstrations. It would break up the lesson and keep students more in tune. Most students are visual learners and have grown up with extensive hours of video and tv. There is always the risk of inappropriate material showing up or being led there by a link especially if students are the searchers. You Tube is blocked for students at our school, but not for staff. 

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Thing 20

I think students would enjoy listening to podcast. They seem to always want to have earbuds in listening to music, they would probably rather listen to their teacher in a podcast instead of live. I think students would love creating podcasts. They usually enjoy hearing themselves talk. This could be used for sharing ideas or evaluating a classmates work. I am pretty impressed with the photoshop podcast they are very detailed and could be a big help learning the program. There are also a lot of special interest and hobby podcast with instructions.

Thing 20

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io