Use of Web 2.0 Tools - EDLD5398 - Week 5

As an educator I have been able to try a great variety of technology in my classroom, both with my students and with teacher colleagues. During this past year I was able to implement the use of Web 2.0 tools as part of my lessons. These helped me extend the learning experience beyond the classroom walls through the creation of a class blog. In the classroom, my students learned how to use tools such as Wordle and ReadWriteThink applications.  With my co-workers I was able to share thoughts and ideas through the use of Google sites and wikis.  As an aspiring administrator I can see the benefit these tools bring to the table, and I am glad to know that our district has taken provisions to offer the implementation of Web 2.0 tools in a secure manner.

I can see our campus effectively moving towards the educational environment of the 21^st Century through the implementation of technology and Web 2.0 tools.

EDLD 5366 - Week 5 - Reflection

The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (1999) established that, “Learners combine experience (action) and thought (reflection) to build meaning. Both parts must be present to support the creation of new knowledge.”  (p.1). Such combination has proved to be quite right in my own experience learning throughout the course of the program. The opportunity to a hands-on approach to learning followed by a weekly reflection has enriched my experience learning as an adult. I cannot recall a time when I reflected upon my learning in a conscious way, at least not as a requisite set by a teacher. If I carefully reflect upon my previous learning experience I do find that I was somewhat aware of my learning process all throughout elementary, middle and high school, but it wasn’t until college and now graduate school that I am required to reflect upon my previous knowledge and the one gained through a course or class. 

During the EDLD 5366 Digital Graphics course I found myself realizing how things have changed for the good in the technological and digital realm. A couple of years ago I would have had to learn how to code HTML and program the whole website from scratch. Now, with the advantages provided by the Web 2.0 tools available online, creating a website becomes a simple thing to do. Easily teachable to young children, it brings a whole new array of possibilities to the classroom setting. I have to confess I was a bit worried about working on creating a website in collaboration with a remote team, where we would only meet through the use of social networks, email and sites on the cloud. My worries disappeared after the first week working with my team. Communication was prompt and efficient, everyone was on task and I was able to really feel part of a team, even when we barely knew our faces. Seeing the involvement of every member of the team and their performance throughout the four weeks previous to submitting our assignment, gave me an extra encouragement to perform above my abilities and motivated me to work harder on both the collaborative assignment and the individual ones. I can only surmise that working on a team, though remotely, would only bring positive results when all members are highly motivated to work together. 

In the educational classroom, we see that students work better in collaborative, hands-on activities and language-rich environments. The dilemma is now how to bring the digital media into play. Nonetheless, what we see when we participate in professional development is described by Gerstein (2011) as “the students… get in small groups to discuss these questions.  They got in their groups and just looked at one another with baffled looks on their faces while remaining silent.”  As an educator I must change my own perspective and attitude towards reflection. I know it is hard for me to share my thinking, even when it is right there, at the top of my mind. It is not possible to teach students to reflect upon their knowledge unless I do it myself! I have tried to fix this in my class by implementing a “Learning Cycle” chart that allows me and my students to understand our background knowledge before we start a lesson, as well as propose a learning goal and predict an outcome. This year I shifted the use of the chart towards online activities, such as using Wall Wisher for students to post their reflections.  

For the past two years, my class has worked on creating a blog with the activities we participate in at school. Though it has been really successful, I would like to implement the same effort towards creating a class website. So far, this is only wishful thinking, since the blogs are provided and secured by our district, while the website is still to be approved district-wide. The risks involved in “putting information online” are still being considered by our district. Parental permissions are required for any publication and online safety is always an issue. With the blogs being monitored and protected by our district, it seems I am limited for the time being to the exclusive use of the gBlog before I could move to working with my students in creating a class website.  One of the most helpful tools I could utilize with my class is a wiki, which would promote “creativity, collaboration, and communication” as described by Solomon and Schrum (2007).

I foresee all these will change in a near future. Educators will be able to enrich the classroom experience expanding the wall of the school beyond geographical borders with the help of Web 2.0 tools, bringing true meaning to education in the 21^st Century.

References

Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. (1999). Learning as a personal event: A brief introduction to constructivism. Retrieved on February 20^th, 2012 from http://www.sedl.org/pubs/tec26/intro2c.html

Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0: New tools, new schools.

Gerstein, J. (2011). Where is reflection in the learning process? Retrieved on February 20^th, 2011 from http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/where-is-reflection-in-the-learning-process/

EDLD 5366 - Week 3 - Animation

Public Service Announcement

Week 5 – Reflection

At first I was very wary about working with a team in which I knew none of the members personally, but after we started the collaboration it all seemed to flow quite nicely. Our first task included selecting a theme for our PSA. It did not take long before we started agreeing with each other and composing a script that we all liked.
We selected to warn about what to post in the internet on our Public Service Announcement. Considering our audience to be high school students about to enroll for college or even apply for a job, we wanted to raise awareness that any posts or pictures online might harm their advance in their careers. This made all of us aware of our own postings online and let us share the importance of being careful revealing “too much” of ourselves on a media such as the internet.
Overall, working with the team in an assignment of this importance was an amazing experience!

EDLD 5363 - Web Conference - November 27, 2011

It was very interesting to visit the web conference live. It provided a lot of insight on many issues we all were confused about. Mostly it helped me to better understand the structure of the next three weeks in the course.

It also explained in detail about the publication of the podcast for this week's assignment.

It was a shame that the connection got lost!

Podcast - Windows Movie Maker Tutorial

If you are interested in creating your own videos, whether for family consumption or for work reasons, Windows Movie Maker is a great tool that you can use for free.
It comes with Microsoft Office or you can download it from the web.

Here is a jumpstart tutorial to give you the basics.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Windows Movie Maker Tutorial by Ana McKinney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Video Editing Software - Windows Movie Maker

As an educator in the 21^st Century I am challenged with how to implement and use technology in the classroom on a daily basis. During this week’s assignment I was able to learn, or rather re-learn, about video making and editing.

Having studied multimedia in the early 90’s, I felt confident I would understand this new acquired knowledge about digital video editing. I was half-way right!

The concept of editing in itself has not changed a bit from the early days of video making. It is rather the accessibility and user-friendly features of the digital editing software that have brought another dimension to the art of editing.

I selected Windows Movie Maker for Windows 7 and Vista as the editing software to work with.

Even before reviewing the available tutorials on the web, I was able to play with the software and understand its basics. In reality it is a very simple and easy to use program, but what drew me to it goes beyond its capabilities.

I made my selection based on the characteristics and requirements of technology in my campus.

Windows Movie Maker comes with the acquisition of Microsoft Office therefore it is perfectly acceptable to use it in the classroom. Other free and open source software might pose a conflict either due to installation problems and licenses or simply because the district does not approve the use of said software.

As all Microsoft Office products share the same characteristics each and all very user friendly and there is almost no need for tutorials to start learning the basics. In the case of Windows Movie Maker the most useful feature is probably the “drag and drop” that would allow the user, specifically the students, to easily import and load video clips to start composing a project.

Another feature I thoroughly enjoyed was the synchronization of video and audio length. It really saves a lot of time and effort to be able to manipulate the audio to the length of the video with a simple drag of a window.

Overall, Windows Movie Maker is a great editing tool for any classroom setting.  

References:

Lonnquist, J. (1994, November). The art of the edit. Videomaker. Retrieved on November 25, 2011, from http://www.videomaker.com/article/1691/

Stanford University, Palo Alto, Library. (n.d.). Proposed educational guidelines on fair use. Retrieved on November 25, 2011, from http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright _and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter7/7-c.html#3