This was such an exciting week of using technology for my Literacy & Technology class. As usual. there were two individual assignments, one is required while the other is an HA (for High Achievers), and there was a group assignment.
The required individual assignment involved creating a poster for an event, either real or fictional. I chose to create one for an actual event occurring at my local library related to literacy. The event is called Books with Boomer. Boomer, a Golden Lab, is a reading therapy dog. This event stood out to me as perfect for this assignment because although Boomer is not a new, web-based technology, he does offer an intriguing alternative to the traditional approaches toward literacy. I did, however, have to integrate technology into to this assignment somehow. I accomplished this by using Glogster to create the event poster. Glogster is a different kind of poster. You can add text, images, music and video to your glog. Glogster offers "spin-off" for use in the classroom called Glogster EDU. The ideas for using this in the classroom are flooding my head. What a creative way to create a listing of class rules, or as an introduction of the class in the beginning of the school year. Other ideas are for individual projects, introducing a "boring" topic, a way to review before a unit test. Like I said, the ideas are flooding...
The High Achiever assignment was for those of us willing to take the extra challenge, and explore another type of technology. It was to create a podcast to share. Podcasts are an ingenious way for teachers and students to share information. A teacher can create a podcast of lessons and share them with students, either because they were absent that day or as a tool to review the information taught. Students can create podcasts as a way of sharing information about a research project (an alternative for those that do not like to speak in front of the class), or share thoughts with another class outside their school (in another city, state or country).
For my podcast, I actually went a step further and created screencast. In this form, my viewers get more than just my speaking; they also get a video presentation. My screencast was a tutorial for using Wallwisher. I utilized Screencast-O-Matic to create the screencast.
It was very intimidating at first. Then I felt uncomfortable talking to myself. Finally, after several tries, I felt satisfied with my creation. What is the adage...Practice makes perfect...
The group project for this week was to complete a webquest regarding the theory of knowledge called Constructivism. We explored the webquest individually, then came together to create three products based on our research: a presentation aide (ie. PowerPoint), a graphic organizer to present the Pros and Cons, and a Science lesson using the 5Es (this is one way of implementing Constructivism into instruction). These products were to be created either separately or integrated together into the PowerPoint presentation. With all this new technology we were being exposed to, I was getting tired of using PowerPoint. I suggested my group explore one of the tools we are learning about as an alternative way to present our information. My suggestion was to use Prezi.
Prezi is more than just clicking from one slide of information to another. You input all of your information into one "slate". You can add text, images, videos, documents, and shapes. You can organize similar thoughts, ideas, information, images by grouping them, and them framing them. For the presentation, you create a path from one entry or frame to another. The program will them move from step to step, zooming in or out where needed. It was very fun and easy to use this tool. And, best of all, it is a free resource. As a side note, I do suggest viewing their tutorial video first. It was very helpful in understanding how to use the tools within Prezi.
No comments:
Post a Comment