Final Project June 17, 2009

Well my final project is officially done!  I had a great time making this project and it was nice to do something that meant a lot to me and that I find interesting.  This made me realize that I need to develop projects for my students that have meaning to them so they stay interested and enjoy working on their project.

Challenging my Skills:

This project challenged my skills because I have never developed any sort of presentation on a computer in this way.  I enjoyed playing around on Voicethread and trying different things.  Once I took all the pictures I unloaded them into the Voice Thread and started to figure out how I was going to develop this so that it would keep the students engaged and interested.  I tried to  use one of the other 50 story telling tools and then upload it into my Voice thread.  I soon learned that you can not do that sort of thing with a voice thread.  The positive part was that I learned how to use another tool that I will use in the future.  I will post the little presentation that I did with the tool.  We will say that it is a sub-project that helped me to think about the order that these pictures are going to in.  I know feel very confident using Voice thread and I will use it in my future classroom.  It is a great tool that can be used for almost anything.

Planning

The planning of the project took a while because I was trying to figure out what I was going to talk about.  I also had to get all the pictures and I do not go home very often.  I decided to get other people to talk on the Voicethread and I thought that that really helped to make it more interesting.  In previous posts I explain the process that I took and what I was having troubles with and what was easy. 

Usefulness

The project that I designed will come in handy in the the future.  In my internship classroom I am going to show the students so they get an understanding of where I came from.  I think that I am doing an agriculture theme and the pictures that were taken will help the students to get an understanding and it will also have a personal connection to it.   It was also useful because I got an understanding of a tool that I may never have tried to use. 

I really enjoyed doing this project and I found it useful to play around with the tool and get an understanding.  So take a look and tell me what you think or feel free to make comments.

This is the link: (Does anyone know if I can put the Voice Thread right into the post?)

http://voicethread.com/#e536588

Social Learning June 17, 2009

 

          Through out the class, ECMP 355, I have had experiences with people that have helped me to learn socially.  This class is a challenging class because there is a lot of information that I did not have any previous experience with.  The challenges in the class were helped by the people that I was in the class with.  I did a lot of my online sessions at the university with a few other girls.  It was nice to do the class there because if I had a question those girls would help me and I would help them as much as I possible could.  When the whole group of us did not understand something we would work through it together.  It was a really good learning environment.  This is an idea that I would take into my future classroom.  I feel that in a classroom it is important for students to problem solve and to come up with a solution without always asking the teacher.  This is what we did in a group and it made me realize that putting students in groups is very beneficial because they all have different background knowledge and perspective that can help to solve the problem. 

          The blogs I feel were another place where social learning took place.  I enjoyed looking at other people’s blogs and writing comments.  Looking at the other blogs helped me to get ideas of different ways that I could have done the tech tasks.  Some people did some really interesting things that I would love to try, that I would have never thought of.  I read another girls blog that is in the class and I found it very interesting about her digital identity.  She talked about facebook and I thought it was interesting that we both have the same feelings about it.  Through social learning and reading peoples blogs I realized that I have thoughts that are the same as some peoples and different from others.  Another blog that I looked at made this idea even stronger about having the same ideas or thoughts as other peoples.  I was looking at a post about the story in four pictures.  Her pictures represented what she is like right now.  Each of her pictures could have represented me as well as her.  I thought that it is nice to see that there are people that are a lot like you.  The pictures that she picked were beautiful and showed what she was trying to tell perfectly.  I just thought that it was interesting that one story could be the exact same for two people.  On this same post I wrote to her explaining my idea that it is interesting that one story could be the same for two people.

          I enjoyed reading other peoples blogs and it helped me to become informed about what is going on around in the city.  On one person’s blog I red about ducks being ran over by police officers.  I commented on her blog because I thought it was good that she wrote about events that are happening locally.  This helped me to think about different topics that I could write about in my own blog.  I liked writing comments of this blog and I found it very interesting to read.  Another post that I read and left comments on was about one classmate’s project that they are doing for the class.  I wrote and told her that I liked what she was doing for her project because she was doing something that taught objectives out of the Saskatchewan curriculum.  It was nice to go visit the other blogs and find out what people are doing for their projects.  It helped me to get ideas that I could do in the future in my classroom.   

          There was a really good experience I had through my blog with another member in the class.  When I wrote about my final project she wrote back some ideas that may have helped with my project.  The idea was to use one of the 50 ways to tell a story and then put it into my voicethread.  I never knew that this could be done and I tried it.  The one that I tried I could not get it to upload, but I did learn about another really great tool that I will be using this summer for a wedding.  Another time that I helped someone in the class was when they were trying to put a cluster map onto their blog.  I have done this in the past so I helped her get it on her blog.  It was nice because I actually knew how to do something with the computers and could help someone.

          When I first started my blog I was not really sure what I should all write about and how personal I should get. Reading other peoples blogs helped me to see what other people commented on and what they write about.  When I would read them I would come up with ideas that would help me to write posts and think about ideas deeply.  I started to enjoy blogging more and I enjoy when other people comment on my blog.  When people comment it is nice to be able to write back to them and answer any questions that they may have had.

Mentorship Reflection June 17, 2009

My mentorship was a positive experience.  When the mentorship idea first was discussed I was a little unsure of what I would have to do and what my expectations were.  I contacted my mentors and I had one mentor that had an idea of what I might want to do for his classroom.  He told me the idea of developing a Voice thread about me for his class, I replied back to him with asking if I could do a Voice thread about the small town that I grew up in.  He thought that it was a great idea and he thought that it would work perfect for his students to draw conclusions about people that live in parts that they do not know about. The only little problem that I had was that I only got my voice thread done a few days before ECMP class was done. I am planning on continuing on with this project with the class for about another week or until the students reply and ask questions on my voice thread.  The class is working on having digital conversations so I think that my voice thread may help with this.  The other activity that I did with this class was to reply to a group of videos that the students made.  This was part of the students learning about how to give good feedback and developing digital conversations.  I found this very interesting, the videos were on natural selection and the students did a great job.  From watching their videos it gave me ideas of what I could do to teach concepts or what I could get my students to do with this idea in the future.  The part that I liked was that every video was different in some way and it made them interesting to watch.  After I watched the video I would leave comments about the video and I would ask the makers questions about it.  There were other people in the class that left comments for the makers of the video and it was nice to read through their comments to see what they think about the work that was done.  All the videos were done by using voice thread and that was when I realized that this tool can be used for many different activities.  Reading and replying to comments was beneficial for me because it made me think about developing my voice thread.  One of the comments that was made about one of the videos was that it was to long.  When I started to develop my voice thread I thought about this comment and I had to cut back some of the pictures because it was getting to long.   

          The other classroom that I got to do my mentorship with was also a good experience.  I did not do much with this class because they were almost done school for the year.  I may not have done a lot with the students or the teacher but I did get to see how she used a blog.  I really liked the idea of having a classroom blog.  When I was looking at this classrooms blog I realized that it is very beneficial for the students and the parents.  There were many comments that students put on the blog about how much fun they had at certain events.  As a teacher this would be great feedback to know what your students enjoyed and what should be done again in the future.  The other thing that I learned from looking at the blog is that you need to make sure that you get pictures of all the students on the blog.  One student comment on her blog that there was no pictures of her from their fieldtrip.  I never have really thought about how students would notice these types of things.  So I got the idea that in my internship I am going to have a checklist to make sure that all the students get to be represented on the blog.  Every time that a student has their picture or their work posted on the blog I will check off.  This would also be helpful to see if there are some students that there is a lot of pictures of.         

          Both experiences benefited my teaching in different ways.  I was glad to be able to become involved with the classrooms.  I took ideas away from both of them that I will use in the future.

Progress on Project June 14, 2009

I tried to develop a way to make my images more exciting in the Voicethread.  I decided to use one of the 50 tools to tell a story.  I tried the one true media site and it is amazing.  I was not able to put it into my voicethread but I will show you what I developed.  I will use this tool this summer for my cousins wedding, it is quick and easy but looks great in the end.  Here is what I developed on it for my project:

Farm Project Pictures

YouTube Video June 13, 2009

I am excited for this movie to come out in November.  I was having a hard time trying to pick a video that I could use for this tech task.  I just thought of the last video that I watched on youtube and decided to use it. 

This movie trailer keeps the viewer engaged and excited because of the music and the different angles that the camera takes on the scenes.  There is one part in the trailer that has one bad vampire coming in to get Bella.  The camera circles around the actress which makes it look like he is herding her.  Because of the music in this part you can feel her fear.  The music changes to fast, almost heroic music when Jacob comes into the picture.  The music makes it so the viewer understand that Jacob is going to save her.  I thought that this trailer was a great example of an exemplary video because it keeps the viewer engaged.

Voicethread Project June 11, 2009

Today I really started to get at my final project.  I have been trying to think of ways that I could make the voicethread more interesting and I think that I might turn it into something a bit like a game.  I have started to contact people to get themto comment on the voicethread that are from Edam.  I think that this will help keep the viewers interest because there will be more than one voice.  The voicethread will be set up so that people can ask questions about the town and I will be able to answer them.  It helps to write out what I am going to do on here because it makes me think more deeply about the project.  I have all the pictures taken and uploaded onto the voicethread.  My only issue right now is that I am not sure how to add any special characteristics when the pictures are changing.  I am not even sure if this is possible , but there must be something to make the images change more interestingly.   I am going to go keep working on it and will hopefully have it done by Sunday for sure.  Wish me luck!

Technology in Action June 8, 2009

Listening to other people talking about what they are doing in the classroom was very helpful and gave me many ideas.  I have made a classroom blog, but I did all the writing on it and the students and their parents would write and comment on it.  One of the speakers talked about how she gets the students to write in their own blog area and then she would go in behind them and ask then what they are saying.  She would then write what they were saying in brackets.  This is a really good idea and I will use this idea in my internship.  I also really like the idea of having blogging buddies that are from another part of the world.  I would do this through E-Pals because I have seen Epals used in another classroom and I thought that it was very beneficial for the students. 

I have never used Skype and I would really like to figure out how.  Once I get my new computer I am going to sign up with Skype and play around on it to figure out how to use it.  I think that it will be easy to figure out from what I have heard.  The one teacher used Skype to get people to come into her classroom and share their area that they are an expert in with the class.  I thought that this was a great idea and would keep the students engaged.  It would be easy to set up and could be done in any subject and to meet any objectives. 

I am very interested in teaching younger grades so watching the letter videos was very funny and I thought that it was a great idea!  The letter videos would work well because I think that when they are doing something fun instead of just sitting in a circle and saying what sound the letter makes, the students would remember it more easily.  I will do this in the future and it would also be a great way for the class to review the letters and watch themselves on their video.  I got a lot of good ideas and it is nice to see what teachers are doing to include technology in the classroom!

I thought at the end of this I would include the blog that my teaching partner and I developed for our pre-internship classroom.  It worked really well and we got postitive feeback from the parents and students.

http://dinodiaries.wordpress.com

My Digital Identity June 8, 2009

I had never thought about my digital identity before.  It is a very interesting concept that I feel everyone has to start to think about.  I thought it is interesting to think that we can either make our own digital identity or someone else will make it for us.  I started to think about what my digital identity is because this could either help me to get a job in the future or it could be a reason that I did not get a job.  I googled my name the other day, I have done this before but it was a few years ago.  It was interesting to see what came up.  The first thing that came up was facebook.  Then there were other people with the same name as me, so of their sites came up.  I did not have anything that I thought was bad on it.  I had to laugh though because there are still pages that would have been formed when I was in high school.  My name was found from track provincials and also for an award that two other girls and myself won at a business conference.  I didn’t think that there would be that much information about myself on the Internet.  It made me realize that if someone googles my name I want to have a choice of what they can find.  I am not sure how I would do something like this to just have what I want on the Internet, I don’t think that it can be done.  But I can make my own wikis and make my blogs not private and this would help to get the identity that I want to have on the Internet.  I think that this is an interesting concept that people need to think about.

Weekend June 8, 2009

I usually don’t write personal stuff on here, but my weekend was really great!  This past weekend I went home because it was my mom’s 50th Birthday.  Over the past few weeks I have been planning a big surprise Birthday Party for my mom, which has been a lot of work, but it really paid off this weekend.  I invited about 75 people and most of them showed up, I was also in charge of all the food, that was a lot of work, but nothing was to big of a disaster. 

So I didn’t tell my mom I was coming home and I hid at a friends house until Saturday night.  I prepared all the food on those days and hauled it out to the location.  My dad took my mom out for supper and then brought her to the location.  She didn’t have a clue, it was really great!  I had a good weekend and a lot of fun planning the party and making my mom happy!

Mentorship June 8, 2009

So far I have been really enjoying my mentorship classroom.  I have learned a lot about different things that can be done with computers in the classroom, that I would love to try in the future.  The one classroom that I am working with uses voicethread to explain natural selection.  I had a groups of videos that I watched and I asked the students questions and commenteed on their work.  I whole idea was to give feedback on the video and be part of digital conversation.  This really helped me because I got to use voicethread and see different ways that it can used, this will help me with my big assignment for this class.  I am really enjoying this mentorship and looking at the students work.  I am planning on going onto the students voicethreads again to see if they answered the questions that I asked and try to start more conversations with them.  I think that voicethread is a great tool and I am excited to explore more so I can use it in my future classroom.