Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Weather Lesson
For the first category I decided to investigate podcasts. I followed the third link that was given and scrolled through the different options. I ended up using Audacity, which is a free program you download to your computer. I really like that you can download it for free and use it as much as you need. Audacity offered downloads for different computers and systems. The one downfall is at first it is a little confusing, but if you play with it a little you can definitely figure it out. There were tons of tools to use if you are making a lot of podcasts. You can select and edit certain sections, or cut and paste it around. You can also set it on a timer to record too. For my podcast, I just played around with audacity for a little while and checked to see how it worked and what I could do with it. In the end I decided to record a lesson I had done last semester. I really love that I can listen to myself and see how I sound to the class. The podcast allows me to check how fast I talk and how I am presenting the information in a way I would not normally be able to. I definitely plan on using audacity to practice my lessons from now on. I would use podcasts for creating lessons for when I was not able to be in class with my students. You could also have students create presentations on podcasts too for the rest of the class. Podcasts are great for online classes too.
Weather Lesson MP3
Weather Lesson MP3
Friday, July 15, 2011
Gliffy
The third emergent tool category was communication. I am not very knowledgeable so I googled a couple of the examples that were given. I found Gliffy. Gliffy is an online diagram software that is a really cool technology. Gliffy lets you choose templates of different communication and presentation tools. The different templates are things like floor plans, Venn diagrams, network layouts, flowcharts, and much more. As a future teacher the thing that really stuck out to me was the Venn Diagrams. Venn diagrams are used quite often in elementary school curriculum and lessons. I hate drawing them all of the time though. On Gliffy I was able to quickly create a Venn diagram that I could use in my classroom. I would use Gliffy for Venn diagrams for my class or even personally to do floor layouts and charts too. I chose to do a Venn diagram. First, as always I just started to explore the technology and see what I could do with it. I chose my template and began designing. I was able to choose the size of circles and color of each, and then write whatever I wanted in the diagram. The one bad thing about Gliffy is it only gives you a free trial, but it would definitely be worth it to not have to draw out all of the diagrams too. Also, it there was a link to easily embed it to my blog.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Photo show
For the second emergent technology I used photoshow. I found photoshow on cool tools for schools. Photoshow is a photo sharing technology, where you upload pictures and can then organize them into a cute album and then share with friends or classmates. Overall, I really enjoyed using photoshow. I scrapbook and it was like digitally scrapbooking. It was extremely easy to use. The site is very user friendly. Once on the site all you must do is sign up. To sign up you just have to create a username, put down an email, and create a password. The account will save for 30 days, then you have to upgrade and the site is no longer free. The cost would be downfall, but would be worth it if used often. From there the website laid out the steps. First, you upload photos. You can upload the photos one at a time or all at once, which was convenient. Also, you can upload photos from your computer, facebook, flickr, shutterfly, or picasa, which was super neat. One slight thing was that downloading the pictures took quite a while, but you can work on other things while it uploads. After uploading, the site takes you to the personalization page, where I was able to decorate my photo album. You could add music, borders, stickers, and captions. My photoshow turned out great. After personalizing my album, photoshow gave me the option of sharing my album with others. I could email it to friends, upload to facebook, or get it on DVD. Also, it had a quick link to post directly to my blog, which was super helpful! As a tip I would suggest creating a trial album. The site was very self explanatory and literally takes you to the next steps so you do not get lost. As a teacher I would use this to document my class and the school year. It is an easy way to organize pictures and albums and make them cute. Most importantly, you can share the pictures and albums with the students and their parents and other teachers as well. Another way to use this in a class is to have the students create albums for a project. They could make an album as a research project and present it to the class, which gets them on the computer and doing research as well. Overall, I really liked using photoshow!
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