Week 14 - ED 566E.1

Tonight's class offered a neat opportunity to interface with a book jobber representative from Follett through technology. Through Skype and a Microsoft program, we were able to hear an audio presentation and view the screen that the representative was manipulating as well. There are also other formats for this, but it was nice to see it in action. Bookmarking was also a good topic for inclusion in the class and I like how our professor made it understood that the method to implement this in a word document would be the same or similar to a website. I thought that was a concise and effective way to teach bookmarking. Bookmarking has implications, not only for us, but also for our students and it's important to understand how to communicate that. Finally, our group stayed after class tonight to complete our paper and work out the rough edges. We compiled our paper on a wiki and I thought it was really a successful way to use one for this assignment. We also created a link for our gaming piece through www.imagechef.com. It was nice to create an image instead of borrow one. I'm really proud of our final product, how much we've all learned and how we applied it. I'm excited to present next week and enjoy two weeks off before my next class begins!

Unit 5 - ED 668c

This PBL was an interesting endeavor for my partner and I. When I first read the assignment, I thought we were creating an annotated slide show, and when I re-read the assignment, I realized we were creating an annotated photo essay. I had never created a photo essay before, so I hope we did it right! The annotations portion was a neat aspect of Flickr, and one that was well explained in the Richardson text. Annotating the photos was simple enough. I wasn’t sure if it was best to use creative commons photos or to take our own, so we stayed on the safe side. Rosemary’s school is very close to center city, so she was able to get some great shots. I found some interesting facts about the different sites she shot and incorporated those into the annotations, sort of like a pop-up video of the pictures. Flickr was a little different for me and I don’t know if it will be my photo sharing site of choice in the future. When I added the annotations, the boxes and annotations would only appear when you clicked on the picture so that it was the only one you saw. Similarly, when I entered the pictures into a slideshow, the annotations weren’t viewable when viewing the pictures in that format. I grew somewhat frustrated with this, because at the time, I thought I was creating an annotated photo slide show. When I viewed the pictures in the slide show format, they were very small and centered near the top. Since I didn’t upload these pictures myself, I wasn’t sure of the reason for this, but I did try to enlarge them in adobe photo shop, but then they were very blurry. If I had uploaded the pictures from my camera, I might have had more success with the size of the photos and the details included. Again, when I looked back at the assignment directions, I realized it was intended to be a photo essay. Then, I looked up information about photo essays and found some examples out on the web. The examples themselves were varied in format as well, so I went with my gut on this one, and again, I hope it was a good gut feeling. I added annotations in a trivia type of format. For example, each one started with “Did you know…”. My partner had added some details to the notes of each photo as well. I understand that the whole point of problem based learning is to try things out and experience the process of solving a problem, and I definitely felt like I did that! What I could not figure out how to do seamlessly was cite the information I found and add a works cited to a Flickr photo essay, so Ken and anyone who’s reading this – if you’d like to know where I got some of that information, you can feel free to email me, because I certainly wouldn’t want to not attribute those sources. Overall, the assignment was very good for me to play with Flickr’s capabilities and learn more about this application. You can check out the final product here: Flickr Philadelphia Photo Essay

Week 13 - ED566E.1

Wow - last night, I was made aware how close we are to the end of class and to presenting our final project. The time has really flown by - you know what they say about that when you're having fun! I feel like I've really expanded my knowledge of current technology applications and their applicability to my classroom use. I am excited to complete our final project and share it. We are utilizing a wiki to input our information for the final paper portion of the project and we've incorporated a LOT of applications into our website. I did end up creating a podcast with my class and it ended up being not too painstaking. Check it out here: http://www.lmtsd.org/145520719151045403/lib/145520719151045403/President.wav I was really proud of the students and I'm planning to do another podcast about Earth Day this week.

Earthle

Something I forgot to include in my post below - I read a blog entry (through my Goggle Readers RSS on my igoogle page) titled "Build It Back" from Bob Sprankle's blog, "Bit By Bit" (which I will add to Links I Love to the right) which included information about his reflections of Earth Hour and his daughter's friend's brother's use of Earthle - a modified Google search engine designed to use fewer megawatts with a black screen as opposed to white. Now, since sending out information about this to others already, I have some skeptics -but I figure it can't hurt to try. So check it out and use it instead of Google - you'll get the same hits. I'll add it as a Link to Love.

Week 12 - ED566E.1

At last night's class, we delved further into Skype. We discovered some new capabilities to personalize our skype accounts such as changing the background and adding a character. In fact, I just took a look at my wee mee again on Skype just now (tee hee). I think I'll try to add it to the sidebar so you can see it! We also experimented more with audacity, an audio input program, which I learned is open source. I learned more about podcasting from my Independent Learning Paper about podcasting. Through writing this paper, I explored already existing podcasts, including "Bobby Bucket" which is linked through "Links I Love" on the right hand side of this page. This podcast was created by Bob Sprankle a few years ago and it is fantastic. I hope to be able to do something similar in the future! We also discussed some of the technology planning issues addressed in reading and if it is relevant for us to be part of the planning issues in the school library. Overall, if I have a future in the school library, I know that I will be an advocate for technology, its availability and its use and usability. I am an advocate now and if anything, that would only increase in that new role. Hopefully I'll get the opportunity to find out one day!

www.imagechef.com

Image Chef rocks! Check out me "waving" hello below on the sidebar...technology for technology's sake, yes, but it's really fun!

Week 11 - ED 566E.1

Last night, we created a conference call on Skype. Now, the trick is to convince others to Skype so I'll have someone (besides all of my fun friends and professor from class) to talk to. This is definitely something I'll get my husband on board with before I go to Africa so that hopefully I can Skype from there. And my sister is going to Chile - I'm not sure that she'll have access, but a girl can dream.

It was good to have some elements of our writing assignments, inclusive of our final project, clarified. I'm excited for my group to present our collaborative website. I think we've incorporated a lot of elements that I'm really proud of and I'm excited to incorporate similar elements into my school webpage for current applications. One of the widgets I embedded into our group webpage is a countdown to the end of school - thus ensuring that students, teachers, and parents alike will visit this homepage! I also included a poll to be used in conjunction with our "author visit" a staple of any school library program.

I'm going to attempt to include my Warhol-ized self as a component of this page from Flagrant Disregard's Flickr Page otherwise known as www.bighugelabs.com . Enjoy!