Weekly Reflection-Digital Story Telling

This week in class we are learning about digital story telling. A new topic for me, as I had never heard of this type of technology. As I viewed the many examples, I found them to be quite interesting and informative. A great use of technology with many possibilities for teaching.

So what does this mean to me and my colleagues? I am seeing an expanded way of learning and teaching. Just opening up more possibilities for my teaching future. This also creates a great opportunity to work with my colleagues and collaborate on a project. As we generate many ideas for the story, we will be able to find a great variety to choose from. And after we choose a topic, the other ideas we can put in our notebooks for future use.

As I move into the future with my teaching career, I will be able to develop many projects and come up with newer and more interesting ways to teach my future students. Being able to learn all the new technology available for educators is such a great resource to be used in my future classroom.

NASA Digital Story-Video Reflection

This was an interesting digital story on NASA and their accomplishments. Going into the story, I thought that it was going to be on all the positive aspects of NASA and its achievements. But a large portion of the story looked at all the life's that have been lost due to space travel. And it was quite a large number. The video made me more sad than proud of NASA. All the money that we have spent trying to find out what is in space and all the lives that are irreplaceable makes me think is it all worth it? I suppose it is all how you perceive the story and with the end focusing on the positive outcomes of NASA gives you may feel otherwise.

Weekly Reflection-vid cast/pod cast

What is happening right now is that we are learning some fun new techniques in technology using video and pod cast. With the pod cast, we are learning how to make short audio instructional procedures for our future students. With this knowledge we will be able to download them onto our classroom websites for our student to listen and learn from. With the video casts we are learning how to make short instructional videos that can also be downloaded onto our classroom websites for our future students to view and learn from

What this means to me and my colleagues is that now we have another great way to teach our future students. Something that they may be able to use when in the class or not in the class. Maybe to even use when they are absent. If used correctly, students may find this to be an interesting and fun way to learn and retain information

How does this affect me in the future? I will be able to use this technology with my future students and they may too even be able to make podcasts and vidcasts to be used for homework and assignments. This may even be a useful tool to use over an even larger audience. Say possibly student who are in another country. Now thats something to think about.

Video Reflection-Education for All

An education for all, what a concept. I really liked this video and what it was saying. If we are having difficulties educating our children and there is a lack of teachers, why not open up the classroom using technology. Offering children all over the world education through video cams. With the Internet there are so many possibilities with education and this is by far one of my favorites. I suppose to make this work you would need to have some supervision over the class that is being taught via web cam, but this would be easy to do with multiple volunteers and parent supervision. Or, as I have seen in some places around the globe, children are so eager to get educated they will do anything for the opportunity.

Weekly Reflection-WebQuest

As I have now completed my first WebQuest, I feel that this was actually a fun and productive project. Working as a team was helpful for the first WebQuest and collaborating on ideas seemed to work fairly well. I do feel that after completing this project, I could come up with some good ideas to do on my own.

Being able to learn how to work on technology projects and using a team is worth while to learn. It definitely helps to get more ideas flowing and also learn more about your colleagues. Who you work well with and who you would like to do more work with.

Learning different ways to use the computer will help me in my future as a teacher. Especially learning how to come up with a website my students can interact with and learning how to make power point presentations. The more I can learn about the use of technology in the classroom, the more ideas I will be able to come up with and use to teach. Definitely preparing me for the future classroom experience.

Schoolhouse Rock-Video Blog

This was a blast from the past. I remember these from watching cartoons on Saturday morning. They had an impact on me when I was young and I still think they rock. I feel that kids will have fun watching this type of cartoon video and actually remember what is being said. Especially when it is played over, and over again. They are not too fast and have fun characters to watch. Kids need to keep seeing this type of video.

Weekly Reflection

As this week is slowly going by, What is happening right now? I am in the process of learning about webquests and how to put one together. They seem to be pretty straight forward and in the end quite useful. The ones that I have viewed have been mostly fun and quite interactive and for a student's use it may be a very useful learning tool.

So what this means to me and my colleagues, is that once again we have another great technology tool at our disposal. Working together as teams, we should hopefully get a lot of useful ideas and be able to come up with a great webquest. Then after it is all said and done, we will hopefully be able to put together these webquests to use in our classrooms as we become educators.

For the future, I do hope that either I will be able to use the webquest as a learning tool for me and my students. They will be useful in the class as well as in the home. They also should be useful just to get ideas for lessons.

Surface Computing-Video Blog

Surface computing is an extremely interesting new technology that possibly may have a future in the classroom. The video was new information to me. If this type of technology could eventually make it into the classroom, it would be so useful. Having a google type map that was on the wall and students could just touch it and move into new areas around the world with a large view. To me this whole idea will possibly the new chalkboard for our students and teachers classroom. I do hope that as an educator I will be able to be a part of this future toy.

Why Let Our Students Blog? Video Reflection

Why let our students blog? A good question with a good answer. This video is very simple with a few comments about the question of blogging. Letting our students blog opens up the opportunity for them to have a large audience. It gives them the ability to express their feelings or work without a face to face audience which is sometimes intimidating for students. It opens up the whole world to them. It gives teachers the opportunity to view a students work and progress and give feedback. There is also no time constraints on students when they use blogging, helping to work with peoples tight schedules. These are just a few notes addressed on this simple quick video on why to let students blog. A great idea. Yes!