6 Hours Straight - New Record! - Activity Reflection #5

 

6 hours Straight! New Record – Activity Reflection #5

There are definitely not enough hours in the day for the things that I want to complete.  This week for my graduate course Fundementals of Technology for Educators we were to create a curriculum page of a storytelling activity for our students to complete.  I got very excited about this and felt that it was going to be an easy task.  I have heard of wiki spaces, but have not ever had the opportunity or reason to actually create one before this week. I already had the activity decided so I thought I was just going to be writing up the details of the activity and linking the URL’s I had collected the prior week in my Diigo account into my newly created wiki space.  However, this was not the case.  Over the weekend and on Tuesday night I looked through all of the links that my professor had provided for use to look at to get ideas for setting up our own curriculum page.  I was overwhelmed with the amount of information and ideas.  One project that caught my attention was a webquest created by Jessica Levene on 21^st Century Poets.  After viewing her project I decided that I must present my curriculum page the same way.  This task alone took me 6 hours.  In PBworks wiki spaces I created 3 pages to explain the activity: Introduction, Task, and Process.  All three of these pages have links for my students to research the activity, link to tutorials to teach the students how to present their project, and links to examples of final projects for students to view.  I tried embedding Youtube videos into the wiki spaces, but I was unsuccessful.  With the amount of time I had spent creating these pages and getting all the URL’s, I decided to hold off embedding these videos until I have had more time to practice and research how to correctly.  I feel that if there were more hours in the day or if I had better time management skills this assignment for my graduate course would have been less overwhelming.  It is hard to manage my time when I get so excited about the technology and I do not want to stop an assignment until I have completed it. I need to learn how to walk away from a project and reserve time throughout the week to complete assignment.

 

Well, here it goes…My final rough draft…Please check it out The Golden Ratio

or try The Golden Ratio

 

We are "Golden"! - Reading Reaction #5

The question we were asked this week was “What kind of digital storytelling project do you wish that one of your current or future students would be able to turn in as part of your curriculum?”  When I think about middle school mathematics the last thing that comes to mind is “storytelling.”  I thought this task this week was going to be very difficult until I did a google search on Digital Storytelling of ideas that other teachers have done.  Some of the ideas presented were Geometry walk, math around the town, acting out math problems and the history of mathematics.  The one example that really caught my attention was from a Pythagorean theorem digital story.  After watching this I thought that this would great for when I talk about “The Golden Ratio” to my students.  They will be able to create digital stories about where the golden ratio originated from, what it is, pictures, art, and clip art of examples of the golden ratio.  Also, there is a theory that says that people that’s bodies are closer to the golden ratio are more pleasing to look at.    The students could create a story comparing different images of celebrities that they think are pleasing and some that are not so pleasing to compare and see if the theory holds true. 

If the students in my class were to do this project they would need to have access to a lot of different media.  The students could take digital pictures of examples of “the golden ratio.”   The students could research via the Internet what the golden ratio is and what examples there are for the golden ratio.  The students would need access to different forms of creating their digital stories from as simple as Microsoft Powerpoint and Prezi to more complex presentations including video editing software like Camtasia and iMovie. 

For students to be successful in creating quality digital stories I think it would be helpful to create a curriculum page of resources for the students including the example that I found on the Pythagorean theorem and other digital storytelling examples.  Also on this curriculum page I would include different types of ways that the students could present their projects like Prezi and Camtasia.  Both of these programs, along with others, also have good Internet resources for tutorials on how to use these types of programs.  Lastly, I would make sure that on the curriculum page there are resources of what the golden ratio is, where the golden ratio came from, and who discovered the golden ratio.  An activity that would connect with this project is having the students measure parts of their body and see how closely they are to the golden ratio.

I particularly like this project idea because it allows for students to explore different venues to create a product that may look totally different from the other students in the classroom.  According to Edutopia, these types of activities allow for students to retain more of the information and develop critical thinking and communication skills.  I think this project is something that could easily be integrated into my curriculum and I am excited to actually have my students try.

 

The Dizzy Future - Activity Reflection #4

Our assignment for this week was to create a presentation in Microsoft Powerpoint, Google Docs, Keynote, Open Office or Prezi that explained the benefits of digital storytelling and embed it into our blog.  Before I could even begin to explain the benefits of digital storytelling it is important to explain what it is.  A YouTube video that we had to watch explains it better than I could ever tell you just in words (how ironic)

There are a lot of benefits to digital storytelling but the one that I feel is the most important is that we are presenting material to students in a way that they can relate to in the 21^st century.  Secondly, while reading our textbook Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom I was amazed to read that when students are presented with information that they can see, hear and interact with they retain as much as 80% of the information compared to 50% when they just see and hear the information.  All the other benefits I highlighted in a Prezi that I created.

I decided to create a Prezi instead of a Powerpoint presentation because I had never worked with Prezi before and wanted to become more familiar with the program.  My only experience with Prezi before creating my own was a presentation I attended for one of my other UCF classes.  Unfortunately, the paths were not working the way the presenter wanted and it made for a very dizzy experience for the audience.  I found the Prezi to be very easy to create and edit.  However, I did struggle with creating the paths and frames.  I spent approximately 5 hours on this assignment on Wednesday and finally gave up for the night because there were some Internet errors I kept receiving.  Today I went back to Prezi to complete the assignment and make any necessary changed before I embedded it into my blog.  I had no Internet errors and the paths I created went the way that I wanted them to.  If I am to create another Prezi again, I think I would make sure to have a few days to create so that if I have Internet errors while working on the project, I can walk away from the project and then go back later when I am less frustrated.  I also believe the philosophy “Practice makes Perfect.”  The more presentations that I create in Prezi, the easier they will become to create.  

Resources:

Shelly, G. B., Gunter, G. A., & Gunter, R.E. (2010). Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom Sixth Edition. Boston, MA: Cendage

New Software!

Camtasia Requirements:	School Computer:	Does it meet the requirements?
Operating System: Windows XP or Windows Vista	Operating System: Windows XP Service Pack 3	Yes
Processor: 1.5 GHz single core but recommended Intel 2.0 GHz dual-core or better	Processor: 2.26 GHz Intel R Core (TM Duo CPU	Yes
Screen Resolution: Display dimensions of 1024x768 or greater	Screen Resolution: Min. 800x600 and Max 1600 x1200	Yes
Memory RAM: 500 MB RAM minimum ~ Recommended: 2.0 GB	Memory RAM: 1.95 GB	Yes
Video Card:	Video Card: Mobel Intel® 4 Series Express Chipset Family	Yes I think
Removable Media Options: Dedicated Windows-compatible sound card, microphone and speakers	Removable Media Options: 6 USB, internal microphone and speakers the option to have external	Yes
Microsoft DirectX 9 or later version	Not loaded at this time.  Need permission from Technology coordinator to load onto computer	No
500 MB of hard-disk space for program installation	Hard Disk space: 148 GB, available 126 GB	Yes

 

I went to JourneyEd to download Camtasia onto my school laptop.  I did not actually try to download this onto my school computer because I already knew that as a classroom teacher I do not have administrative rights to download any software onto my computer.  If I want something downloaded onto my computer I must electronically file a Management Information Services (MIS) request to have a school based technology coordinator that is at our school 3 times a week to come into my classroom at their convenience to load the software on my computer.  They will ONLY load this software if the software is on an already established list of approved programs created by the school district.  Because it is such a hassle to have software loaded onto classroom computers, I suggest teachers should establish a great rapport with their technology coordinator at their school.  However, I had no trouble loading it onto my personal MAC laptop at home.  This is the computer that I have to use to do all of my homework for my Graduate course “Fundamentals of Technology for Educators.”  Camtasia requires the computer to have a lot of extra removable media like microphones and speakers.  This would require additional hardware to be purchased separately so that I could use Camtasia on my school and/or personal laptop.  Also, I was not familiar with what having Microsoft DirectX 9 was.  But after I went to a Microsoft website for Microsoft DirectX 9 , I left with a limited understanding that it has something to do with the graphics and video card on a computer.  Before getting stuck on doing a search on Microsoft DirectX 9, I felt that I had always had a pretty good understanding of the  “inner works” of any computer.  While reading Chapter 4 of the textbook “Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom” by Shelly, Gunter, and Gunter, I was able to review some of the hardware that is available to computers.  Some of the hardware that was mentioned that I use on a regular basis are input devices such as the keyboards and digital cameras, and output devices such as interactive whiteboards and printers.  Because I am continuously expanding my knowledge of the hardware available for computers, it allows my students to have a more interactive experience in the classroom.  For example, when talking about transformations in class we discussed how sometimes reflections can also look like translations unless you label the different vertices on the polygon.  I represented this by creating a star in an interactive whiteboard program and made instant copies of this star and showed how reflecting it over the y-axis and translating to the left looks the same until I labeled the vertices of the star.

Before installing this program, I have been working on writing a grant to have Camtasia used in my classroom to create vodcasts (a podcast with video included) of examples from the lecture.  This grant will also allow students to create vodcasts of questions from the homework that were particularly difficult for many of the other students.  These vodcasts would then be posted online for students who were absent or even students who just wanted to review a particular topic.  By using Camtasia in the classroom, the students are getting the opportunity to create vodcasts to relay their understanding of the material, which will also benefit other students who are still trying to comprehend the material.  These vodcasts will reach both visual and auditory learners.

Overall, to actually load new software onto my school computer requires me to get permission from many sources including Administrators at the school and the county office for technology.  I feel it is worth it.  My best advice is to talk to your technology coordinators and administrators to get them excited as well to make it a smoother experience.