Course Reflection

I'm not so sure that there is enough space available on this site to record all the impressions I have from this course right now. Suffice it to say that I have probably learned more in this course than I have in courses for a long time. That is not to say that the other courses have not been useful or were too easy, but this course has presented new territory for me and that is exciting. I have found the Treasure Hunt sites to be valuable in providing some new and interesting resources and student activities that I will begin using this fall. And learning about blog sites and how they can enhance my teaching was excellent. Utilizing the blog in class and the interactiveness it provided with fellow students gave an excellent trial run for possible uses. Having a class WIKI was also a good learning experience for the same reasons and I will explore this aspect further for classroom and parental communication. Learning how to do a flip book on Powerpoint and how to do the iMovie was the highlight of the course. I am proud of both projects. The Powerpoint ended up being long, but that was necessary to have the action flow in the cartoon I made. The iMovie is my favorite though and I feel as if it is something I can use for students, but I can also use it to prepare with my professional development presentations in my Literacy Coaching with colleagues and at departmental meetings. Thanks so much for your patience and guidance, Liz. And thanks to fellow students for suggestions when things were getting glitchy.

I stayed in the lab after class today, finishing the burning of my DVD because I had lots of delays with downloading today. I thought it would go without a problem...After checking it, some of the narration was off due to the importing of a new slide at the beginning of the show. At that point, I had no other DVD to record after I fixed the problems. I will return to the lab tomorrow morning to burn again because I am determined to learn this so I can do it on my own and to be able to do it well on my next projects. All throughout the course, it has been a learning process, so these glitches are fine tuning me to produce better iMovies in the future. I truly wish this course were longer so I could learn more. It feels that we have only scratched the surface.

A post script: I did return to the computer lab and had problems burning the project in the mode we used in class. The computer was not switching on to burn mode. As an alternative, the lab assistant and I created a CD using the IDVD-One Step Movie. The final storybook project plays like a slide presentation on film and loops back to the beginning to repeat play after it is finished with the story. That would be beneficial to use for a display table or for back to school night/open house for parents. I like the format of it and will be able to present it in class on Friday. For a while, I was doubting that it would get burned, but I also got to learn another aspect of iMovie-making in the process.

Powerpoint Project

Digital Storybook Project

Next iMovie: The Dog Days of August 2007

July 23

My blog is crowded with the audioblogs I placed onto it in preparation for the digital storytelling project! Unfortunately, they seem impossible to remove. I consolidated the individual slide audioblogs I did into groups of 3 or 4 and that is why there are so many. That worked out well for the project. The steps of the process were very challenging, at times, because there were so many new things to do. But, that is how we learn. I always wondered what the commands "import" and "export" were used for. Looking at all of the available commands on the captions on the toolbar makes me realize that I am only at the surface of all that computers can do for my students and me. After placing the music on the digital story, it sounded so professional and I am planning to use this in my portfolio and my topic fits literacy education. There are a few things I want to do to make some fine adjustments on Wednesday and then I will also do some final adjustments on the Powerpoint. Both projects are things I have enjoyed learning and I have wanted to do these types of things for a long time. I find that many of my language arts students are so creative and really are coming into their own during the last two years of middle school and I believe these uses for technology will inspire them to write and put their thoughts together ways that will help them go further. Today began with a lot of glitches with the computer, but by the end of class, I felt accomplished. Looking forward to making the final product on Wednesday.

Rerecorded Audioblogs for the I Movie

I have rerecorded the individual blogcasts I made for the digital storybook. Hope it works out. I am concerned that having the comentary in groups of three will not allow for editing for timing because they seem so connected without time for transition between slides, but I am not sure how to do the editing process and will discover if more flexibility within each audio blog component. I am looking forward to today's class to see how it all works and hope it sounds as good as the examples we have seen.

July 20

This was a big learning experience for me today. Our process is complex, but many things seem a bit complex when you are learning for the first time. One thing I will do more consciously from now on is remind myself how my students are feeling when they are doing new things. I was certainly on the bottom of the learning curve when the procedure for the digital storybook began, but feel as if the concept and procedures are becoming more clear as I do the work. It is exciting to think that I will have a finished film at the end of next week. The prototypes we viewed seemed so professional. I'd like to get to be proficient in this medium so we can use video storybooks in some professional development presentations at department meetings and at staff meetings. And my eighth graders would probably love to produce movies. I'd like to do a project related to one of our novels or maybe poetry and assign it as a group project with a final "academy awards" day. We could even do a little buffet and beverage thing to make it a fancy occasion.

The Treasure Hunt presentations were quite helpful. I liked the Laura Candler website and marvel at people who have enough time to share their good ideas and maintain a website while teaching full-time! The kidsread site will definitely be one resource that I will use for student exploration when I do poetry. My students like to specialize in their favorite poet or a theme and that site makes it easy to dig deeper into those. Even though the poetry site is often under construction, that site continues to update and become better for those who might use it. Hearing actual poets recite their works might really appeal to students. I like that idea because you get the voice and intonation of the author and that might help to promote greater understanding and pleasure when reading a poem. All you have to do is listen and enjoy.

I am especially glad that we can do our audio segments on audioblog because this will simplify the process of getting audio to the computer. Hopefully, the sound quality will be high. I am thinking that individual sound bites might make it easier on the editing process, but since I haven't done that part am unsure about the practicality of 25 separate audioblogs. It seems that I could get the exact time down before editing to save time. So taking the time to record them might avoid audio editing glitches.

More will follow after the weekend! Enjoy.

July 18

So many ideas are going around in my head right now. The rubric generating sites we looked at today are going to be so useful to me in my own classes and for the teachers I assist in Literacy Coaching. The neat thing is that there are many already-generated rubrics, but there is also room to customize for specific assignments, objectives, and individual students. I am planning to have a notebook of ready-made rubrics when I get back to school in the fall and this will free me up to do some more creative applications during the time that I might ordinarily have to spend generating my own rubrics from scratch. Why reinvent the wheel when I can be moving on to the real part of my job--teaching. The Treasure hunt sites were also most useful and I plan to explore them further. I really like the idea that the sites had specific activities and resources geared toward different levels. The RIF site had middle school items, usually more difficult to find. My Powerpoint is shaping up and I am enjoying the process and am trying to be creative with adding more items to keep the interest of viewers as the slides progress. Finally, I am looking forward to beginning the digital storybook because I am planning to make a piece that will be useful for my struggling readers in my eighth grade Reading Workshop. It is so exciting to find fresh and useful ideas and activities for the classroom and for professional development.

An Afterthought: New Use for Audioblogs

I just thought of the idea that audioblogs can be convenient when computer systems go down. If a group of people who often communicate through email can't contact one another because the system or server is down, they can call to audioblog, finish their commmunication, and know that they don't have to wait until the system is up again to get their work done. Personally, I could have used this last month when my husband was in Iraq. We communicated by email, but I could only depend on getting that every few days because he had to wait in long lines to get to a PC. It was hard to wait for each communication, given the circumstances. He had been issued a cell phone with a US exchange so it would have been easy to hear his voice more regularly. With the time zone differences, he could have placed the call anytime and I could have accessed the audioblog when convenient. Hearing his voice would have been a great addition from this service. For higher education, with people collaborating all over the world, this will offer a convenience for those many time zones away. They can leave messages without waking up those colleagues far away--in the middle of the night. This probably has business applications related to better and convenient communication too. I'm assuming that anyone around the world can use this service as long as they are connected to the internet and can access 800 numbers.

Audio Blogs to Blogger #4

Gabcast! Audio Blogs to Blogger #4

Audio Blogs to Blogger #3

Gabcast! Audio Blogs to Blogger #3

An Interem Posting to Reflect on "Using Wikis in Education"

Since many universities are using wikis there are bound to be discoveries of additional ways to use the technology. I am thinking that this will have tremendous implications for distance learning, the way people coordinate and participate in study groups, and how we collaborate at the professional level. So much more collaboration may be possible because of wikis or the other formats they may generate.

July 11

The wiki page creation went smoothly and I found that wikispaces was easier to set up at the beginning, but that both sites worked well when that first portion was completed. I can see how this might be used to post assignments and messages to parents. The fact that WIKIs are changeable might be problematic, but taking time to alert parents that this site is intended as a convenience not as an official accounting of homework and that there is a history kept in the site might solve any concern about that. I can see how this might also help me to post a Wiki for people in my building to give them new reading strategies and communicate about reading in general to encourage more teachers to participate in the coaching process that I provide and started this past year.
The Powerpoint project is the one that intrigues me the most. I took an instructional media course back in 1984 before all of this technology was developed. At the time, we did video production with cameras. I ended up doing a news broadcast for our production, adding curricular information pertaining to our unit in social studies. What I really wanted to do at the time was an animated film, but I could not do that without starting and stopping the camera and repositioning props. It was a cumbersome process way-back then. The flip book would allow me to do this and I plan to work in something about the parts of speech in some way to reinforce a concept that is hard for my students to grasp. We have so much more available and our resources are user-friendly compared to 23 years ago. Oh, the things I might be able to do...!
The article on cell phones was also enlightening. Despite the fact that students can not use cell phones according to district policy limits their use in the classroom, but since most students do have phones they could do that part of the assignment at home and know how to use the technology and learn through the interviewing process, followed up with writing extensions to go along with the audio. Again, another fun and novel way to have students process information.

'A Space for Writing Without Writing"

This article really made me think about ways I can have my students write regularly and in a novel way that appeals to them, through hands-on technology. Blogs seem to be a new way to get them to create authentic writing that I can check regularly and give immediate feedback to them. Too often, students write and it takes forever to read and write comments to them. These are comments that can really encourage them. I had thought of doing blogs last year, but no one in my building could help me with setting anything up and I was worried about privacy and students being out there on the Internet receiving messages from just anybody. The blogger site we are working on seems to alleviate these concerns of security. I am more inclined to set up a blog and to develop assignments using this format now. The article brings up questions about how I can tailor the classroom site to the curriculum, but I think that there is so much room for exploration and if I start off with some smaller assignments, it might catch on to be a continued practice for many years to come. Just knowing the enthusiasm the students show when we work on computer projects makes me want to utilize blogging in some way. The article brings up that a survey may be in order to see if students have computer access at home. If not, modifications of longer-term deadlines for the posting of blogs might be advisable. Students could have a series of open-ended blogs to complete by the end of each trimester to show continued growth and improvement in their writing. No matter what, this medium will provide another venue for essential practice.

July 9

I am already learning so much on the first day of class. Blogging seems to be a good way to record student's journaling and I think there can be many applications. Is this blogging site free, or would my school district need to subscribe? It will be good to know the process of stetting up a blog for each individual group of classroom students. This is something I would love to introduce during the first few weeks of school to really get some students interested in doing more writing and to have more writing practice. Students could access the site from home too and that would be very convenient for them. I did have some glitches so far though. When I posted my survey for the online survey/quizzes, I posted it and it took me to the surveymonkey homepage. I wasn't sure if it has been saved to the "Evaluating Resources" folder. Also, when I tried to access blogger.com from home, it would not take my passcode (thought I might have inserted a wrong user name), but after I changed my password it let me in. It asked for a google account before the attempt to get into the site so maybe this new code will work the next time I try. If not, I may need a little trouble-shooting tomorrow. This is exciting because it is new, but is confusing at times and I'm sure I will get much better as the course progresses. I hope to become quite computer literate!