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. 

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

Thing 19

Podcasting
I listened to the following:
Photoshop for Digital Photographers
Nightly Business Report – Video Podcast PBS
Dilbert Animated Cartoons Podcast Tech Support Call
Learn to Speak Spanish with Discover Spanish
The Daily Giz Wiz
The Sound of Young America

I like listening to the podcast there are millions and many have very specific topics. I prefer video vodcast over audio. I think most students would prefer video as well. I think most students are aware of podcasting because they seem to all have ipods. If they are to find a podcast for a class I think the information needs to be very specific. However they may still see inappropriate podcast. Podcast could be used very easy in the classroom by downloading and listening to as a group over speakers and showing on an overhead projector. This could be followed with a hands on project. Files could be copied into each students folders if they needed to listen to them individually. An issue that could make it difficult to do is the bandwidth space that is available on many school computers. Also it is not available for hearing impaired students.

thing 18

Thing 18

Thing 17

To blog or to wiki?? There is a difference. A blog is more of a personal thing and often the opinion of the author. Others can comment on blogs but cannot change the content. A wiki is a website that can be edited. A wiki also is usually specific information and not opinion.
A wiki could be used to display knowledge that students have learned about a particular topic. A blog could be used for students to log their progress on a particular project, and any obstacles they may have encountered.
Problems that could occur with wikis are the students ability to edit. A lot of time could be spent making changed that are not necessary one student prefers different colors, fonts or layout designs and this could be a time consuming conflict. To get around this students could be given certain criteria that cannot be changed after it is set by a leader.

Thing 13

Art Museum by dumpr.net




This is really fun I think I could do this all day long.

Thing 13

Create your own Rubik's Cube




Using Dumpr Rubix Cube

Thing 13

Picnik offers many cool photo editing things. I think kids could have alot of fun changing the way their their picture looks. The could be a great thing to use in a computer class to introduce contrast, hues, and many special effects. I could see students spending alot of time using this and enjoying it. A really fun assignment.

thing 12 Flickr photos

www.flickr.com Go to amait's photostream

Thing 12

Flickr allows you to download photos, and store them on the internet. Photos can be public or private. I can see where this could be a good opportunity for teachers to show parents pictures of activities that are happening in their classroom. Parents could also upload pictures that they may take at a school event and share them. This would be a great opportunity to get pictures for the yearbook from classroom teachers and parents. The downfall could be students having access to inappropriate photos downloaded by others that are open to the public.

Thing 11

Slide share gives us access to many good presentations that could be useful without have to start from scratch. It could be a great way for students to share their slide shows with the world. This would have to be monitored very closely so that they don't get access to inappropriate things. A nice feature of this is parents could have access to their childs work from anywhere. Although we occasionally run into the parent who does not want their childs work published, or put out for anyone to see.

Thing 11

The e-learning skills gap

View more presentations from Clive Shepherd.

Thing 10

I can see multiple uses for Google Docs. The survey is a very valuable document. I will use to find out about students computer knowledge and what types of technology they have access to at home. I will also use it to find out what they know about a particular topic then have them retake it after the lesson is complete. I will be able to find out what they have comprehended during the lesson. I also like the idea of students working on project together such as powerpoints and knowing who has submitted what or who did not submit anything toward a group project.

Working in the cloud does not really bother me actually I prefer it. It is so much faster, accurate, and has many more possibilities. The disadvantages are the unexpected power outage, or loss of internet connections, which we have no control over.

Thing 8

Social Bookmarking allows us to have the power to find things from any computer. Which is a great feature since I am in different computer labs and different buildings every day. It also allows us to collaborate with colleagues doing the same thing. If one of use finds it we can share, and save a lot of research time. In the classroom students could also share informative websites with their classmates that has valuable information that they can utilize for projects. A very powerful tool that I will use regularly.

Thing 6/7

Using bloglines is like subscribing to things that interest you and gettting to it when you have time. It comes to you, without searching for it. It seems there are thousands of items out there for professional and personnel use. Visiting colleagues blogs was rather interesting, there is a wide range of technology being used. We just have to remember that we are all in this together, and we must keep up with the students.