Yesterday I showed my wife what I have done on my blog so far. Great idea! Or so I thought.
I am not yet convinced that blogging is for me. Yes it is interesting and I see the value that blogging can provide. I just do not know if I would be interested in blogging without the push that this class has given me. I find reading other peoples blogs helpful but have very little personal interest in creating a blog.
However, with one look through my blog my wife has seemed to form a different opinion. She seems to have fallen in "Blog Love". She has been giving me a crazy number of suggestions about my blog, asking questions about how to use EBlogger, and sharing with me all her "BIG IDEAS" for a blog. The plethora of ideas has yet to be narrowed to just one.
I guess I should not be terribly surprised as she has always been a good writer and very creative. In fact I should probably be a little bit proud that I have introduced her to a new medium of expression. I suppose that those feelings will kick in when her ideas are shared with the blogging community and not with me when I am trying to fall asleep!
Well my dearest Tamara I wish you the best on your blog discovery and look forward to seeing what you come up with. Glad I can inspire you!
After reading Richardson & Berger books, I quickly realized that Google Earth can be used for so much more than I had been using it for. Google Earth was no longer a tool for simply looking at pictures or seeing your house from a satellite or street view; it was a tool that my students could use for actual curricular topics.
I quickly learned that Google Earth has a measurement tool that can be used to measure the length of an object or building. This measurement tool can also be used to measure the area of any building anywhere on Earth. This gave me a great idea for a small, 1 week project were my students learned a great deal about measurement, units of measurement, conversion and perimeter.
"Fly to any place in the world" claims the ad encouraging users to download Google Earth which was originally called Earth Viewer (Britt & LaFontaine, 2009). This premise of allowing users to see the world using satellite imagery of places they may have never been able to see with their own two eyes. This ability to expand our little lives from our tiny sphere of influence and take in the information about far reaching destinations around the globe is at the foundation of web 2.0 tools.
Google Earth relies on the premise of showing the world to individuals from the comfort of their own homes. However, the usability of Google Earth has been ever expanding. Now Google Earth 6 can allow users to explore the world in 3D, view maps of the areas they visit with their computers, provide historical images of locations, and even allows users to explore the sky, stars, and moon (Richardson, 2011).
Following “The Art of Teaching Reading” by Lucy Calkins method, it is time for me to put Prezi in the hands of my students. After I have a talk with my principal about using online tools (which are not normally a part of our district), I am hoping to ask each student to create their own Prezi outline of the book they are currently reading as their final project. I think this would be a great project that would differ greatly from my traditional fill-in handout.
Students and teachers can use the zooming tool to focus on a particular point or section of an image (Panag, 2010). Students and teachers can create dynamic Venn diagrams using the “frame” command. Venn diagrams made using this method are able to contain images as well as text; it is also interesting to note that images can be dragged during a discussion or presentation. Another great feature of Prezi is the ability to embed YouTube videos right into a presentation. All that is required is an internet connect. Prezi is a great program that allows for user imagination during the project development process to create original seamless transitions from on point to another (Panag, 2010). Students and teachers can create Prezi presentations that are either focused on a specific topic or question, or they can decide to continue building upon their Prezi presentation as a topic is being learnt.
To help students organize their thoughts, Prezi can create mind maps to serve as graphic organizers that allow online users to add text as well as images (Yee, 2010). This tool can be of great benefit to students with unique learning needs or ones who are visual learners. This type of mind map can help students outline the progression of a story they are reading, the different phases of the water cycle, or the events that helped bring Canada together to form our country (Yee, 2010).
Prezi is a tool that can assist students to create excellent persuasive arguments using tools other than pencil and paper. Students can create superb adverts in a matter of minutes. This way students can focus on the writing and not on the technology. Students will need to capture their work using a free online tool called “Screencast-o-matic” to digitally record their work.
Using Prezi students and teachers can also upload images from Google Street view, as well as PDFs of documents that need to be either highlighted or discussed. They can also use zoomed in photographs to highlight historical or current events and can gradually reveal the wider context.
References
Panag, S. (2010). A Web 2.0 Toolkit for Educators. Youth Media Reporter, 489-91.
YEE, K., & HARGIS, J. (2010). PREZI: A Different Way to Present. Turkish Online Journal Of Distance Education (TOJDE), 11(4), 9-11.
Since I have never used Prezi before I started my exploration by Googleing the phrase “Prezi and education” and then “Prezi and classroom.” My second search term gave me a great hit that offered 17 different ways that Prezi could be used in the classroom by students or during staff meetings for presentations. After going through and reading this document, it was time for me to log into my Prezi account and start exploring all the different tools and features before introducing it to my students (Kist, 2010). I began by watching the three tutorials offered by Prezi several times and then created my own Prezi presentation titled “What We should have for Supper?” This was a really fun learning activity for me and it made my family laugh when I presented it to them. One of the features that made Prezi really fun to work with is the ability to embed YouTube videos right in to the presentation (Yee, 2010). It was interesting to note that my family had a great deal of fun and enjoyment watching it, at times they were actually laughing out loud. Watching their reaction I knew that this presentation tool was going to be a hit with my students.
After reading https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_238djxmbfhd I came up with a great idea for how I was going to utilize this amazing tool with my students. Our first unit in Language Arts focuses on reading skills and writing reader responses. I thought I would have my students create an outline of the book they are reading using both text and images. The purpose of this project was to allow students to visualize the order of events in their books, to write accurate summaries of those events, and then to write a short belief statement about a lesson that they might have learnt from the book.
Using Lucy Calkins approach to teaching reading, I began our lesson by showing my students the Prezi presentation that I made about last night’s supper dilemma. Just like my family, my students had a blast watching the presentation and even started voting on what they thought we ate (this became my anticipatory set). Our next step was to co-create an outline for our read aloud book entitled The Twits by Roald Dahl. Once again my students had a blast finding the pictures and brainstorming the order of events as they appeared in the book. Once we had outlined all the main events of the book on the board, each pod of students was given the task of coming up with a caption that would best match their event along with a matching image. After twenty minutes or so all the groups were done and we started building our co-constructed Prezi presentation on The Twits (Calkins, 2001).
Students took turns coming up to my computer (which projects to my SMART Board) and inputting their information into our presentation. This was an extremely fun activity as we got to share our thoughts about the book, the characters and the actual creation of our show. As an educator, I realized that my students had a firm understanding of the events which took place in the book along with the meaning and purpose behind each of the characters actions. I am well aware that this could have been done using the traditional pencil and paper route; however, the level of student engagement would not have been the same, classroom management may have been an issue and let’s face it this was fun for my students and I.
References
Calkins, L. (2001). The art of teaching reading / Lucy McCormick Calkins ; photographyby Peter Cunningham. New York : Longman, c2001.
Kist, W. (2010). The socially networked classroom : teaching in the new media age / William Kist ; foreword by Kylene Beers. Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Corwin, c2010.
YEE, K., & HARGIS, J. (2010). PREZI: A Different Way to Present. Turkish Online Journal Of Distance Education (TOJDE), 11(4), 9-11.
I was really interested in exploring web 2.0 tools that allowed users to create presentations. My students are very familiar with power point but the idea of a tool that allowed for creative presentations outside of the box of power point was very appealing to me. I was also looking for something with ease of use. Microsoft's suite of tools are very powerful but can be extremely time consuming when looking for ways to bring life to your presentations (Yee, 2010). "Prezi: A Different Way to Present" changed the way I think about presentations and how to give them. Prezi doesn't use slides, and doesn't require any type of installation (Yee, 2010). The simplicity of web 2.0 tools (particularly Prezi) and their ability to create individualized and interesting products make them perfect tools for the classroom.
So I started a journey to explore Prezi and all that it has to offer. I never expected to get as involved with Prezi as I did. Therefore, I have much more to say than should be fit into a single blog post. I have grouped my discussion of Prezi into a series of blog posts. For instance, this post is "Prezi I" and the next will be "Prezi II" and so on.
I hope that you enjoy the Prezi journey as much as I did. My next post will explain more about my journey. I leave you with this video about Prezi for now.
References
YEE, K., & HARGIS, J. (2010). PREZI: A Different Way to Present. Turkish Online Journal Of Distance Education (TOJDE), 11(4), 9-11.
On Friday October 14th I attended a full-day professional development hosted by the 2Learn group. It was an amazing day and I learned so much from them. One of the tools that was introduced was "Photosynth," a free online tool that can be downloaded on most mobile devices and desktop computers. The main premise of Photosynth is to allow users to stitch photos together in order to create a 3D rendition much like those found on Google Maps.
In my blog "We Got ipads!" I promised to post some of the instructional videos I made for the teachers at my school. The purpose of these videos was to help teachers who had never used ipads before to learn some essential ipad skills. I have decided to share three of these instructional videos with you here.
I used the tool "Screencast -O- Matic" to create my videos. This tool allows you to create up to 15 minute videos for free using your browser. There is no software to download and install. I have included a link to promotional video that shows how easy Screencast-O-Matic is to use. Screencast-O-Matic Video
The school site where I work just purchased iPad 2s for all staff members and a set of 30 that teachers can sign out to use in their classrooms. Needless to say I am so excited about this and have started to download many great apps. However, I seem to have forgotten the greatest lesson that Richardson suggested, “before you attempt to bring these technologies to your students, first be selfish about their use in your own learning practice” (2010). While this statement refers to teachers ability to learn the technology before extending the use to their students, I should have transposed the lesson to be role as tech mentor and used the technology before giving to my colleagues. In my excitement, I quickly activated all the teacher iPads assuming they all knew how to use iTunes and how to connect the iPads to their iTunes accounts. I quickly found myself creating Podcasts to show them how to create email accounts and how to download apps.
"The Cloud" is a phenomena that can expand upon the already expansive uses of web 2.0 technology. Various different tools allow users to post information in a virtual space in order to be able to access their files and information from any hardware device regardless of their location. The term "Cloud" has a history in the telecommunications industry but is used currently to describe the Internet. In fact "A Cloud" is mainly just a group of servers at a certain location. The information and software in the cloud is housed on those servers and users access the data over the network.
The application of the cloud to life is vast as each user may have a different way to use their "cloud". Business's may use the cloud to allow a community of users to access the information, retailers can use a cloud to allow distribution of product straight to a customer's computer, and individuals may use the cloud to ensure that they can access music, data, and calendars from any of their many devices.
The following are short descriptions of my favourite uses for "The Cloud":
