Wrapping it Up!

Final week of classes!! This semester sure has flown by! I'm excited to start my second student teaching practicum. There have been many cool tricks and gadgets I have learned this semester in my ICT course that I would like to try and incorporate into my classroom. 

My favorite assignment was when I made a video from my own pictures using the site Animoto. It was fun and very easy to do. I think my students would like to use this program. It would be a great way to learn about my students. As an ice breaker I could have them make a short video of their favorite hobby. They would have pictures of them doing this hobby and with these pictures create their video. I think this would be a good way to meet my students, but also in a fun way for them. 

Another assignment I enjoyed doing was picture editing. I think this is a great way for students to be creative and use their imagination. Almost everyone has a phone that takes pictures. Everyone is taking pictures and a lot of people take multiple pictures a day. Editing your own personal photos is fun. I think students could enjoy this activity because it is relevant. I don't know anyone who hasn't taken a "selfie." Students can edit their selfies and have fun with their pictures. It allows students to be creative and make a final product that they can be happy with. 

One program I have started using a lot of is Google Drive. I like how you can share with other people and these people can edit what you have shared. I think this makes it easier to do group work, especially when it is hard for all members to get together at once. It's a lot simpler to use Google Drive then it is to always e-mail yourself things. For example, I always used to e-mail myself assignments I had done so that I could have access to them where ever I went. Now, with Google Drive, I don't have to worry about e-mailing myself all the time. I can access my assignments on any computer. This is a tool I think anyone could use, not just students. 

Overall, I have learned tons of things in my ICT course. There was many programs and sites I have not even heard of before taking this course. Weebly is a great site to make websites or e-portfolios. It is very user friendly and I would recommend anyone to this site to play around on. I have learned how to embed videos (which is a lot easier then I had ever imagined). Now I have to try and remember all this information and all these programs so that I can use them in my classroom! This class was very informative for me and I'm glad I had the opportunity to take it! 

This is my last blog for this course, but I am considering keeping up with my blogging. I didn't think I would enjoy it this much to be honest. I think I would incorporate a blog into my classroom. I would have a weekly question that students can talk about and debate. It would be open for the whole class to keep informed about events, activities, homework, and whatever else that may be useful or helpful for the class. They could blog about resources they have found or an experiment they have conducted. This keeps the class in touch with one another and they are able to learn from one another in a fun way. 

Well, for now good bye, but I'm sure I will be back with another blog in the near future!

Lindsay Smith :)

e-portfolio

This week I have started my e-portfolio. I think e-portfolios can have positive and negative aspects to them.

A positive thing to e-portfolios are that they are convenient to the person looking at them. They can have access to the portfolio whenever they want to. It also helps the owner of the portfolio because they don't have a huge binder to carry around with them and don't have to worry abut dropping it off and picking it up again. Many people prefer things online. Example, it is usually easier to contact someone over email then it is to call someone. Many people prefer a digital copy over a hard copy now. Having a digital copy is easy to keep track off. Hard copies are sometimes lost or forgotten about so another copy has to be printed off.

A negative thing to e-portfolios are that they are online for everyone to see. Some people might not like other people looking at personal information like previous jobs. Also,  I don't like the idea of putting the names of my references online with their contact information. I think this is disrespectful and invades their privacy. On my own e-portfolio I put references will be available upon request.

I think having an e-portfolio is a good idea. I think it is a good idea to have both hard and digital copy. This way you could ask a future employer which they would prefer to have or look at.

I don't think I would have my middle years students create an e-portfolio. I think it would benefit high school students more. This is when they are applying for jobs and applying to universities. This is something they can always use and just update as they have new information to add. Once it is created it will be a lot easier to keep updated. At first it is very time consuming, but once it is made I think it was worth the time.

Videos in the Classroom

So I realize I have said I would post a link or embed my group video to my blog... unfortunately I will not be able to do this. We edited our video on a school computer. We never emailed it to ourselves and decided we didn't want it on YouTube. Sorry!!

Editing was more difficult then we thought it would be. It took longer to do then we initially thought and adding music was difficult for us. We had to switch computers a couple times and get help from our professor a few times, but we managed to finish it! I was overall happy with our video. It was a ton of fun to do. We got to watch everyone's videos today and they were awesome! Good job groups! They were all really funny and entertaining.

This activity I could definitely seeing students enjoying. It is fun and creative. Students have a chance to act in front of the camera and show their silly, serious, or whatever side they choose! This activity allows students to be creative. I think this activity also encourages higher level of thinking. It's not just about memorizing facts or how to use this. It enables students to think about what they want to do and how they will make the final product. Editing their video encourages higher level thinking because students need to think about the effects they want, the tone of music in the video, their audience, and many more things. They need to use skills that they don't always get to use in the classroom.

I would like to do this type of activity in my own class one day. I think it's important as teachers to think about the time line of this project. I think one class for planning the video is necessary. Students need to think of a topic, angles, lighting, props, etc. This all takes time and everyone will be eager to throw ideas out. To do the actual filming will also take at least one class. Once the filming gets going it flies by! But, you have to remember students may want to do two or more shots of each scene. This allows them choice when they are editing and lets them play with angles. What I found that took the longest was editing. I would allow my students 2-3 classes for this section of the project. It takes time to edit. Students will get the chance to play with their video and adjust things like sounds and timing. This is the part that you want students playing with and practicing the most so I think it is important to allow them enough time to get to know the programs and the different things you can do with them.

Overall, as you can probably tell, I think making videos in class is an awesome idea! I am usually a quiet person and I don't like getting in front of the class and doing presentations. I think making videos is an awesome idea because this is a different way of presenting material. You are still being active and presenting to the class. It is a fun way for students to present, but also fun for the audience!

Videos

This week in class we have worked on our own videos. We were to get into small groups and create our own video. The first step was to plan, plan, plan! We had to decide what we wanted to do our video on, lighting, angels, number of scenes, props, etc. This step took my group the longest to do. We had many creative ideas that we wanted to do... it was hard to just pick one and run with it! Once we finally decided on an idea we had to figure out what kinda scenes we wanted to create and who would act what. Once we had everything figured out it was time to get the phones out and video tape!

Each one of my group members had a small scene in which we acted a particular part. It was a lot of fun filming! We had a chance to be silly and creative. It took less then an hour to do all our filming. We filmed each scene at least twice... each with a different angel. 

Next step was to edit. We used the program I-Movie to edit our video since we filmed using our I-Phones. We still haven't completely finished, but got a lot done. We figured out how long our video was and edited the clips so that they ran smoothly together. We added transitions between scenes so that it would make more sense to our audience. We still want to add music to our video yet. 

Once our video is done I hope to post a link or embed it to my blog so everyone can see it! 

"Powering Up"

In class we have now learnt about editing photos. Photos are so easy to take now. Before we had to go to the store and buy film. Once the film was full we had to go back to the store to get it developed... which took who know how long to finally get it back. (I don't really remember this actually, but I remember my mom doing it!!) Now it seems everyone has a smart phone. Cameras are so good on smart phones that many people no longer even have a digital camera. (I have both!) Once you take a picture on your smart phone it is very easy to edit the picture right there in seconds. There is also some cool websites that edit photots as well. I have tried to: pixlr and ribbit. I personally liked using ribbit. It was super easy to use and had many features that you could do to your photos. Here are two examples of photos I have edited.

Using Pixlr

Using Ribbit 

I find editing photos something fun to do. I would definitely use programs to edit photos in my class. I think it is a fun, creative way to express yourself. I think students would have fun playing with their own photos.

I have also started to read "Powering Up" for my ICT class. The section I have read is called "Turning up the Juice" which I have read the sub-section "Inquiry Learning: This Isn't Scary at All" by Shelly Wright. I really enjoyed this article because it made me think about how I would structure my class. Shelly believed in allowing her students compose their own experiments in her chemistry class. She believed that allowing students to compose their own experiments they would learn a lot more. This is a student centered approach to learning. She explained to her class that there was no failure in any experiment because you are still learning and when scientists do experiments they don't always get the results they wanted either. Students really enjoyed this way of learning because it was engaging. It was better than just getting lectured every class and taking notes. It was hands on and they got to learn things for themselves. I absolutely loved this idea and would love to do this with my future students. I think when students are engaged and really enjoying what they are doing they will be able to learn much more because they actually care about that class.

Digital Storytelling

This week in class I have learnt about digital storytelling. This is where you can create your own videos using your own pictures. You can use programs like photo story or animoto. I made a video on animoto about people in my life that I couldn't live without. You can pick the background you want, the music to go with your video, fonts, colors, etc. It is a really neat tool that could be easily used in the classroom. Even students at young ages could do it! It's easy and fun to do. I think it could be a great way to learn a little something about your students. They could be used in the first week of school to get to know one another. They can put pictures from their summer vacation, their favorite activities to do, etc. This is a great tool to use so that students can get to know you and you can get to know your students. 

Below I have shared the link to my video I have made using animoto.
The People I Love

This week we also had a presenter come to class. John Finch came and talked to my class about Literacy with ICT (LwICT). LwICT is not a curriculum, rather, it is a continuum that teachers use to assess their students on how they are developing their literacy across all curricular areas with the support of ICT. The two big ideas are cognitive and affective domains. I thought this was an interesting presentation and I'm glad Mr. Finch was able to come.

Making My Own Website

So this week in class we have talked about making our own websites. At first I was like oh great... get to try this out again. In high school my class was required to create a website in our keyboarding class. It lasted about 2 days before the teacher gave up on us and we decided to skip this project. No one understood how to add/attach things to their websites. It was frustrating and I was glad when the teacher told us we no longer had complete the assignment.

Now that this is my second attempt at creating my own website I do not feel as frustrated. The site I am using to make my website is called Weebly. I am finding it is very user friendly. I am creating a website with my future classroom and students in mind. I have learnt how to embed a calendar into my website which would be very useful for students and parents because they will be able to see what events are coming up and any other important dates. I have also embedded a video to my home page as a welcoming. I have now realized that creating websites are not as hard as I thought it was going to be. I find they are time consuming, but once it is finished I think it will be rewarding. I will have a site that parents and students can go to at anytime to contact me and find any important material they may need for class.

I think class websites are beneficial. At first I wasn't to sure about the idea, but now that I am creating one I really like the idea. Parents and students have a way to communicate with me at any time or any day. They can see any important dates or events coming up on a class calendar I can embed to the site. I can post assignments or class readings right to the site. I like the idea of handing out hard copies still, but if anyone loses their homework or class material it will always be available online. There will be no more excuses of "the dog ate my homework!" I think this will also help parents stay involved with their child's education because they will always know when something is due, when the next test is, etc. Parents like knowing what is happening at school and I think this could be a great way to keep parents informed.

So even though I was leery at first about creating my own website and using it the classroom I have completely changed my mind and love the idea. I will use a class website in my future class with my students. It takes time to make a website, but there are many positives to having one.