Week 8 - What now?

I think my biggest Aha moment was in creating my podcast with video. I had previously created audio podcasts, but had never ventured into video. I think the biggest reasons for this were:

1) I’ve never liked the way my voice sounds on recordings, and 2) I worried that it might turn out to be more demading than I was able to manage. As far as the sound of my voice, I came to realize that it doesn’t matter too much how it sounds to me, because I don’t have to listen to it, except to verify that it recorded properly. And, the fact of the difficulty of creating this podcast was that the most difficult part of it was being able to get any peace and quiet long enough to be able to make the recording. After all, with a very rambunctious five year old boy in the house, there is no such thing as peace and quiet, sometimes even when he’s sleeping.

In my philosophy, I mentioned that I believe we should do our best to make use of any technology that we possibly can, so that we know more about our students’ world and also so that we can help guide those students in their own use of technology. And, in the spirit of that statement, I have made choices of technologies and projects such that I would be able to explore not only the technology/website/etc required for the course, but also some other technologies and sites that I have heard students talking about. For

example, I had heard some students talking about something called Meez last semester and wondered what they were talking about, but didn’t get a chance to ask them about it. Then, when it came up in the early part of this class, I decided to go check it out and see what it was about and how complicated it is. As it turned out, it was a really simple site to use. And, when it was time to create a technology lesson plan, I got over-enthusiastic and created an entire online lesson on how to create an animated avatar with Meez before I realized that all we needed to create was just a basic plan of what the lesson would be,and that it should explore some of the Google tools that are available.

In the future, I will be much more active about researching technologies and ways to use them in teaching and professional development. Technology is the way of the future of industry. Therefore, it is imperative that technology also be the way of the future of education. And, in the spirit of my technology philosophy, I intend to work to make this transformation happen as thoroughly as I possibly can.

Week 7 - Reflection #7 - Start Picniking

This week you had a chance to think about delivering instruction through a technological lens. Why did you develop the learning objective you developed and what was your rationale for selecting the technologies you selected for integration?

When I saw this week's technology project, I knew what I wanted to do, or I thought I did. First, I went and created a full-blown lesson on how-to create an animated avatar to use on blogs, Facebook, etc.

Then, when I realized that we were only supposed to create a basic plan, and preferably on one of the Google tools, I thought of Picasa, but realized that I didn't know of anyone who really has a use for Picasa who does not already know how to use it. Suddenly, I remembered all the physical and digital photos that my mother-in-law has but does not know what to do with (especially the digital ones), and realized that what was needed for people like her and my mother is a simple, point-and-click photo editing software that almost anyone can use. That was about the time that I discovered Picnik. After playing around with Picnik for a while, I realized that it was exactly what I was looking for. Once I decided on this objective, I realized that many of the teachers at my school are at about the same level of technology use as my mother and mother-in-law, so I decided to put the lesson in my "Communication in Education" wiki so that it would become part of my professional development tools.


What are your expectations for the learning outcome?

Short-term, I plan to teach my mother-in-law and mother to use Picnik so that they can start using some of the pictures that they have laying around. Long-term, I want to use this program with my teachers in professional development sessions so that they can start making more creative use of the materials that are available to us and also so that they can start teaching it to the students, especially the students in art and technology classes.

How are you viewing your instruction differently now?

I am finding more and more tools that I can use to deliver basic and/or repetitive information and instructions, freeing myself to focus more on the deeper levels of learning. I now perceive many more efficient ways of teaching many of the basic items that I have previously spent inordinate amounts of time on.