This week I spent some time looking into podcasts. Since I enjoy the Science Friday podcasts, I would like to learn more about creating some on my own. I spent some time reading a personal narrative I created about a skating adventure that I had when I was 11 years old. To make a long story short, I fell through the ice and was almost pulled under. I would like to use it to introduce writing students personal narratives in my communications class. I have also spent a lot of time on Garage Band trying to create my final project. I had a lot of difficulty working with the sound since everything got shifted down a second. I was very frustrated to say the least.
I also had trouble uploading my podcast to Gcast. It seams that the more jazzed up I get about using some technology, the more frustrated I get when it does not work! So far I actually like my personal narrative more that I like my presentation with pictures and sound.

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of using storyboards in my classroom. I am excited about the idea but I feel I need to become better at it before I can start using it with my class. I have talked with the Business Education teacher about using storyboard format for her class next year and she was excited about the idea. We are introduced to so many different uses of technology that I just want someone to tell me a few of the best ones that I can use with my class. I felt the Joggle was kind of a pain. It took a long time to get my pictures to Flickr for some reason and then I had trouble getting some sound to go with it. If it is not easy for me to do, how could I use it with my students? For some reason Bubbleshare did a much better job of uploading pictures.

As a group, we decided to do a project on the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. We are just starting on the project, but last week it was a lot of fun attempting to add sound. Since the class I have visited with our business education teacher and she has shown me some amazing software on the Mac. It was funny that the business education teacher just got back from Madison where she was learning about the things we are doing in class. She was very excited about our project and is doing something very similar with the 8th graders starting next year. Now she is teaching me how to add music into the project as well. It is funny that last week I was asked to go with the 8th grade field trip to D.C.. I was thinking about the features for story telling that would be fun to try after taking pictures on the trip. Each year, the students pay a large sum of money to have professional photographers take their pictures but I think a digital story would be much more appealing and have more meaning to them. The students could add video and interviews on the trip and insert all sorts of interesting features by doing a story telling project on the trip.

Week 1, 531

Everybody has a story to tell. In fact, we all have many stories to tell. The more I think about the idea, the more I like it. I have thought of some of my experiences I have had that I would like to create a story about. For example, my father is a musician and I have some good recordings of him at his piano. It would be great to do a slide show with his music in the background. I also have some stories of my own that I would love to create. For example, I would love to create a presentation on our family cottage history. Since the cottage has been in the family since 1938, there is a lot of history and pictures I could share in a story-telling format. I really enjoyed some of the presentations that I have witnessed so far and I have been in the computer lab hounding the business education teacher to show me the ropes in the new Mac lab. Without a doubt, this is some exciting stuff and I look forward to creating something! Once I feel comfortable with the software, then I feel that I could teach it to the students and have them use the software for school projects.

Post 4 525

Last week we went over a number of new resources. I was very impressed with Rubistar which I hope to use with many projects I create in class. We also went over a few sites that have some pretty good webquests. I do like zunal and webquest.org but I would like to suggest teacherweb.com as well. I use that site to host my classroom website and their webquests are usually quite simple to use.
At this point in the course I am very glad that I have been able to learn so many different resources. I have also had a difficult time adjusting to course work, cohort time, and class time. I had not planned to dive into this program until the last moment so I have overbooked myself a bit. Being the cross country coach, chess coach, ski club coordinator, carpentry club teacher, and still trying to be a good father to my two children has been a challenge to say the least. If I had known that I was going to start this program earlier, I would have dropped some of those extras from my life. Needless to say, I feel maxed out!

Week 3 course 525

Last week, we started with a review of some resources that are available. I could see using the BrainPop in my sixth grade science curriculum, but the other websites seemed like they would not be very useful for me as a sixth grade teacher. The next topic we discussed was the article about the cyberbully from New Berlin. There are always going to be creeps out there and this was another example of why we need to remind students to never put something on the internet that they would not show their parents! I am also torn about the social networking as a teacher’s idea. Should we as teachers allow students access to our Facebook accounts and have them as our friends so that they know that we can view their sites? If we did that, students would know that we are watching them and they keep them clean. Or, are we going to look like creeps for viewing student’s Myspace accounts. I have opted for blocking students from my social networks just as a precaution. However, I am torn on this because somebody needs to monitor what some of these kids are doing on the net or it becomes too tempting to abuse. It is kind of like giving students shop tools and not teaching them how to use them safely.The last thing that we did was to go to a professional online network. I found it interesting to be in the network and I checked out some other sessions on the environment that were going on. I have taken a course through Blackboard and I think that it is an amazing to use tools that spark conversation and build on thoughts and ideas!

Week 3 course 525

Last week, we started with a review of some resources that are available. I could see using the BrainPop in my sixth grade science curriculum, but the other websites seemed like they would not be very useful for me as a sixth grade teacher. The next topic we discussed was the article about the cyberbully from New Berlin. There are always going to be creeps out there and this was another example of why we need to remind students to never put something on the internet that they would not show their parents! I am also torn about the social networking as a teacher’s idea. Should we as teachers allow students access to our Facebook accounts and have them as our friends so that they know that we can view their sites? If we did that, students would know that we are watching them and they keep them clean. Or, are we going to look like creeps for viewing student’s Myspace accounts. I have opted for blocking students from my social networks just as a precaution. However, I am torn on this because somebody needs to monitor what some of these kids are doing on the net or it becomes too tempting to abuse. It is kind of like giving students shop tools and not teaching them how to use them safely.The last thing that we did was to go to a professional online network. I found it interesting to be in the network and I checked out some other sessions on the environment that were going on. I have taken a course through Blackboard and I think that it is an amazing to use tools that spark conversation and build on thoughts and ideas!