Final Post

Today was the wrap-up day for our ET class. The amount of information that we covered truly does match a semester in one week. I am glad I took notes to be able to refer back on. I enjoyed the hands on activity and being able to experiment with the new technology. Probably the best compliment I can pay to the ET class is stating that it truly is relevant. I was forced to step out of my comfort zone and was exposed to new ideas. I am excited and anxious about trying to integrate this into our district’s curriculum.

As far as the presentations go everyone did a great job. The wikis that were prepared by other groups did were well done and there were some excellent presentations. I enjoyed the opportunity to work with my group. Just by working together and problem solving I thought we put together a great project.

Video Day

Video Day
Today we took a look at video creation in education. As a teacher of technology I am very excited about Jing, which is no relation to Ning. Jing is a video creation tool that you can use to record your computer’s desktop. One constant throughout my year was the need to repeat instructions to both students and teachers. This year I plan to use Jing to help with this. Example – how to set up JMC, how to upload grades, how to insert a picture into Word and get it to move, etc. I also think it would be a good idea to have students create their own Jings for other students in upcoming tech classes.

We also have a review of iMovie. I was able to pick up a couple of tips on iMovie such as cropping clips and copying clips to keep the original clip intact – good job to Jesse on that one.

Other sites and tricks
Thisisdanielcook.com – thanks Zebra
Snapzpro

Podcasts and Voicethread

Today we explored more ET that holds some great promise for classroom implementation. After some group time Theresa and Seth gave a great demonstration on using voice thread in the classroom. Using this program a teacher could post video or photos and have students leave comments via voice or text. Some application ideas include having students analyze primary sources, have students reflect on pictures taken from a field trip, have students analyze works of art, etc.

The second half of the day we spent working on Podcasts. I have heard the term used a number of times, but I never really looked into it. Creating Podcasts is extremely simple using Garage Band, and podbean.com makes posting them a snap as well. Using this teachers could record lesson segments, verbal quizzes, assignment expectations, etc. I also like the idea of being able to embed the podcasts on a school ning to come back to the idea of having a central hub for emerging technologies. Asynchronous educational communication that students have access to at all times – Good stuff! Brent and I also created our own Podcast dealing with Ning. You can listen to all our group podcast at Beyond2e.

Second Life

Second Life – Today was spent primarily looking at Second Life. I didn’t have much of an opportunity to use this before so it was nice to get a hands on tour today. I was very impressed with Second Life and had a great time going through the tour of Iowa and learning the basics of inventory, appearance, and movement. To be able to turn myself into a booty shaking Darth Vader still provides me with amusement. It was nice to have Dr. Powers in class today to show us his endevous and some of the business possibilities in this virtual world. Overall an amazing concept and holds limitless potential for education. Someday students will be able to go into a Second Life type application and have access to a virtual library, virtual 3D math lessons, virtual tour though a battle field, etc. Programs like this really make the ICN obsolete. However Second Life itself could not be used in the K-12 classroom. Age requirements and easy access to adult content make integrating this into a middle school not possible at this time.

Google

Google – Today in class the pace was pretty fast and let my head spinning a couple of times. I have jotted down some brief records of integration ideas, tricks, websites, etc. On day 1 we went through some of the advanced options in Google. I had seen Dr. Z overview Google Docs at iTech. Getting a chance to work with them in class has been great. It is such an easy tool for collaboration, I wish I would have had it when I was writing up tech standards and benchmarks. Besides working on documents there is also the opportunity to upload presentations which we would later use in class. I see this as a definite for introduction at next year’s inservices. Google Pages was another useful tool we covered. Talk about making websites easy. I wish I would have had this for technology class when I was looking at introductory web pages. I used Microsoft Word and iWeb, but I feel this is a far superior product for middle school students to be working on.

Some of the tricks today that were useful included the zoom option using Cntrl + Scroll. I will make sure this is enabled on all the teacher machines this year. Woot also had a USB missile launcher that would have been a nice piece of technology to have available in the classroom. Picnik.com is also a nice little site for editing images that I think students will enjoy.

Next Week

I am sure excited to start our class adventures for Emerging Technologies next week. I have felt a little lost as of late trying to nativgate the WebCT for two classes. I missed the chat again, but after reading the log it sounds like you had alot of fun, and I am bummed that I missed out. We had Sauerkraut Days in Ackley last weekend and they have wrist band night on Thusday nights. Earlier that day I took my son Cale to the Dinosaur Exhibit at the science center. It was a fabulous time if anyone is looking for something to do with their kids during the summer. The rest of the week I will start the process of getting our technology ready for the upcoming school year. Plans include:

Recycle our old computers - go green!
Setting up and exploring our Promethean Software for interactive whiteboards
Developing a new computer lab for the elementary
Ordering new iMacs for the elementary teachers
Setting up our Easiteach Software for the interactive whiteboards
Developing technology inservice plans
Upgrading to Inspiration 8.0
Working on Joomla project

And there is plenty more as well!