Video Editing

Multimedia in the Classroom

The are a number of different types of resources and tools that educators can use to incorporate multimedia in their classrooms. The most popular might be powerpoint slide shows, youtube videos, and pod/screencasting. My goal is to find other types of resources that are out there, yet not very well known. Please keep in mind that I am special educator, so I geared my research towards my population of students. The first tool I found was a website call Second life.  This site is more for entertainment/socializing, but has recently added an educational account that many universities and k-12 schools around the world are accessing. This is also a good place to post lectures and presentations. It is basically an educational sims game. Currently some multimedia that I use in the classroom includes pbs teachers (for lesson ideas and videos/games) and mathematical Interactivities (games for all levels of math)

Slideshow

Article Review

There are a couple of different educational technology resources that contain useful information to those who support the use of technology in the classroom.  These include Edutopia, T.H.E. Journal, and Computerworld. The article that stood out the most was from Edutopia, and explained the importance for educators to step out of old practices and dive into the digital revolution of teaching. Knobel, the author, expresses in the article about the idea of digital literacy, and how all educators must digitally evolve in order to educate all types of learners. “Digital literacy is key to this new way of thinking. It is a catalyst and an enabler of the kind of collaborative, participatory learning we all need to embrace. Enormous numbers of people are already seamlessly practicing a range of digital literacy’s in their personal and professional lives. We as teachers — and those who train teachers — must weave such practices into what we do as well.” Whether you agree with this Knobel or not, one thing is for certain our students will be left behind if they are not prepared for the digital world. “It feels risky, I know. But it’s time for us as educators to simply jump in and give things a go to see what these tools can do. If we hang back out of fear, we — and the teachers we prepare for the classroom — will be distant figures in this century’s rearview mirror.”

My Article

Other important articles:

Technology Integration

One Size Does Not Fit All

The Power of Digital Integration

Should Schools Shift Print Dollars Toward Digital Resources?

The world of E-Learning

Copyright/Fair Use

Copyright is a protective law that gives authors/artists original work exclusive rights for a particular time period. This pertains to any type of written imformation and/or expressed information throught the forms of music, art, and theater, as well as their publication and distribution. With this in mind, there is also what is known as Fair Use. Fair Use allows a limited amount that one can use from copy write materials with out having to receive permission. Just make sure the work is cited. One way to open the doors of creativity without breaking the copyright laws , is to use the Creative Commons website. This allows the creator of a piece of work to receive a free licenses and other legal tools with the freedom of allowing others to recreate from it. To get a better understanding of this, feel free to check out some of the videos about the site.

Creative Commons

Mind Maping

According to Wikipedia, a mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing. With this being stated, there are a few different programs that make mind mapping fun and easy. These include FreeMind, Inspiration, mindmeister (click on each to get to the link). In my opinion, the inspiration seems to be the easiest to use because it gives a more picturesque view of the mind map. Because it has the best visual representations of a mind map, it would be the better program to use in the classroom; However, it does cost money. This is the same with mindmeister, and it seems to be up to par with Inspiration if you have the upgraded account that contains a yearly fee. Check out the live demo, it’s pretty cool.

Check out this video about a new mind mapping program!

Voice Thread

Using the voice thread program was relatively easy to create a simple document with a narrative explanation. Because it is a simple tool to use, I envision it as being easy for my students to access. The only difficult part to figure out, was how to use the differnet tools to make a more advanced voice thread. Overall, I do like the program, and am anxious to explore the different things that it has to offer (at least for the free version).

My first voice thread

Academic examples of Voice threads:

Voice Thread 4 Educators

Grades 3-5 examples

AUP Documents

An (AUP) document  is know as Acceptible Use Policies. Accordding to the School AUP 2.0 website, This is a dynamic document designed to support teachers, school media specialists, and education leaders in developing, maintaining, and enforcing policies designed to:

1. Promote the most effective, productive, and instructionally sound uses of digital, networked, and abundant information environments.
2. Provide safe digital environments for learners and to instill safe practices and habits among the learning community.

Since there is  a large variety of imformation accesseble through current technology, it is important for school districts to protect themselves and their students from the inappropriate content, that can be just as eaisly found. An AUP document allows school districts to communicate their policies of current technology to parents and students.  To relate to my particular classroom setting, I researched different elementary schools AUP’s, as well as websites that can help to coummunicate safety strategies which students of my classroom/grade level can comprehend.  Check out the following links for good examples of AUP’s, as well as some teaching tools that teachers can use in their classroom.

North Arlington Ele. AUP

Minor Ele. AUP

NetSmartz

SafeKids

Web Wise Kids

Action Research in Education

Action research involves three different types of approaches. First there is individual teacher research. This is done by an individual teacher who seeks information through surveys, student data, and school/district wide data. Next is collaborative action research, which is usually completed by a volunteer group or organization. The third approach is a school wide  action research, which requires all staff members to participate in. The purpose of action research is to help improve the conditions of the school, classroom instruction, and help to discover problems is teaching methods. For my individual action research project, I’m floating between two different ideas in which I will collect data to determine which idea would be most useful in terms of technology. The first idea focuses on collaboration with staff members in my building on integrating technology in their lessons. The second is using a teacher website for communication.  Once I determine which topic I will focus on, I will collect school data as well as use an online survey for teachers, parents, and students to participate in.  The following link is an example survey that is similar to what I will use for my research. The topic is on my favorite past time, so feel free to take it. Just remember it is just an example.

 

Click Below for survey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=5szyf8II3Ond4s9DQFQP_2fw_3d_3d”>Click Here to take survey</a>

 

Problem Statement:

With the evolving world of technology, it is important for our students to be prepared for what the world has to offer. As educators, we’re already so overwhelmed with trying to fit in all of the grade level standards, as well as every other expectations that is required (i.e. parent communication, staff collaboration, IEP’s , and etc.) . So how do we find time to teach uses of technology? And, how can we motivate educators to incorporate technology in their curriculum. These are two big issues that cause teachers to avoid using technology. This is especially true for the staff at Idlewild Elementary School in Lakewood, Washington (Clover Park School Dist.) When the idea of any type technology enters into a conversation, a common reply/reaction seems to be the same, “That sounds good, but I don’t have the time”, or “I would like to try, but I don’t know how”.  

Screencasting

Screencasting is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. In other words, it is really effective to use when giving guidelines, instructions, of how to steps of documents, lessons, images, creating computer documents, and how to use different computer programs. My personal goal of screencasting is as a communicational piece to parents, that explains the process of an Individaulize education program (IEP). Each piece of the document, will contained detailed information in simple terms that parents can easily understand. These documents will be accessable via my classroom website. If parents have any additional questions about the IEP screencast, they can post them on the blog or email me. Belwo is the link to downloading and using screencasting. I highly recommend it! The site offers excellent video directions (subnotes) on how to use the program and navigate through all is has to offer.

http://www.screencast.com/ : After you set up a free account or a professional account (paid) go to the link below that adds more feautures to screencasting.

http://www.techsmith.com/jing/default.asp: The jing program is the swiss army knife of screencasting. It give you all sorts of cool options to use while working on a screen capture.

http://voicethread.com: Just another way one can share images, documents, and videos. Similar to jing!