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This week in technology in education, we viewed all of our classmates' PSA's. I particulary enjoyed watching what other people came up with, and the result of their editing styles and creative ideas. It was fun to watch our final product of our PSA that took us two class periods to complete...and it was only thirty seconds. Thursday, we listened to a podcast about online learning and the importance for preservice teachers to be prepared for the changes that will come about in today's school systems.

This week in educational technology, we proceeded working on our PSA's. On Tuesday, we went around campus and recorded our PSA. We decided to go outside and video tape in some places around campus. Thursday, we loaded our clips onto the laptops and began editing. It was my first time ever using iMovie, and I personally really enjoyed it.. I wasn't sure how to operate the program, however once we started experimenting and trying to navigate around the program, I realized that it is actually very user friendly. We were able to edit out background noise, and add some transitions. It turned out well and I'm happy with my group member's participation in the project.

Week of March 24

As the semester wears on, we are now into our final few projects. Jena and I are working away on our powerpoint that is on the 5 senses and observation. I personally really like creating links and different options kids can click on to explore the powerpoint. I remember doing something similar to this in middle school and it really gives students an out for expressing themselves. I think our powerpoint is going to turn out well, and could maybe even be used in one of our classrooms one day.
Also, we have created our script for our PSA and are ready to record it on Thursday. We are doing a psa about not using drugs. we are comparing 3 people who have found success because they have avoided drugs, and one who has nothing because of his use of drugs. I'm looking forward to editing out psa and making it a great commercial.

Week of March 17

This week at Pine Island went much more smoothly than last week. The student i worked with, Aaron was very excited to use this program. It seemed that most of the kids in the class were really excited to explore with photo story. I was very impressed with Aaron's story about what his life would be like if he was a dog. It seemed that he was very confident when it came to navigating around the internet. He knew how to find pictures on the web, and how to save them. I think he really liked hearing his own voice on the head phones once he had recorded. I think it was a really good experience for us to see how this program can be used with a different group of kids.

This week in ed 205 we did a webquest on webquests. I found out that each webquest can cater to different learning styles for individual students. I also saw that these webquests can be very helpful and useful in the classroom. These sites force kids to put themselves into someone else's shoes to explore and learn about something. On thursday, we went to Pine Island again to help the students create a photo story. Getting images went pretty smoothly, but when it came to recording sound, the child became easily frustrated and distracted. However, i feel it was worth it when she could hear her own voice talking. I think it was a positive experience.

Feb. 26-28

This week in ed 205 we worked on our interactive poowerpoint idea and we also visited Pine Island. I've discovered a few things about doing internet research with kids. Primarily, things need to be very well labled. Our Delicious website is slighly unorganized and it makes it difficult to navigate through the loops to find information. I've also discovered that the teacher needs to explain exactly what the child needs to look for. When the kids are looking at websites, they see everything as being important, when really not everything is. The kids should have a specific goal like: find information about 2 animals from the Tundra. Tell what they eat, where they live, where they are found, etc. The internet is too wide and complicated for them to just look at a webpage and try to pull information from it. I will keep this in mind if i ever create a Delicious page for my class.

This week, we had time in the lab to work on our podcasts, and to work on our interractive powerpoint. My partner and I did our podcast about podcasts. We explored why they can be useful in the classroom and across all areas of education. We also added a small clip of a kindergarterner talking to her teacher about why she likes kindergarten. I have begun working on my interactive powerpoint
Thursday, we attended Pine Island Elementary School. It was a great experience to be in the classroom along side of many small minds that do not have much experience working with the internet. It was helpful to hear the kids' questions and to help them navigate through the internet while they researched binomes. I'm looking forward to going back to Pine Island next week.