Here’s my review of the IT 645 learning tools:
Blogs
By now, I have used blogs for several classes and with some of the same people. It’s now one of my strengths as far as technology skills. I like how one can make a blog unique just by choosing favorite colors or themes. It was a nice way to get to see each other’s personalities come out. The post reflections and comments we shared were insightful and light hearted at the same time. Now when I take a class that calls for a blog, I’m ready to start a new one and see where it will take me.
Podcast Clips
I guess it’s a good thing they no one in our group was planning on a career in broadcasting. I think the overall opinion was that we do not like the sound of our recorded voices. Using it in classroom would be a great way to let show areas of improvement for oral presentations and as well as asynchronous instruction set ups. As experienced in the audio project for this course, it took me several times to get my recorded segment to sound correct. I had carefully scripted my information but adding in the proper voice inflections was time consuming to say the least.
Video Clips
I think are a great alternative to boring slides that just list information. We are in an age of technology where students want some sort of animation in presentations. I had used a few animation applications in a previous course, so this wasn’t entirely new to me. Manipulating the images, music and audio recordings were a little easier this time. It will soon be another strength that I have acquired throughout this program.
Google Docs:
These applications were pretty straight forward, not really strengths or weaknesses. The best part about using these is that the end products can be easily created/shared in a class setting.
*Lesson Plan: This was my very first time putting one together, so definitely a weakness but I have definitely learned along the way. The more projects that I worked on, the more ideas I had that could be incorporated into my lesson plan.
*Survey: Google Docs had a simply way to create a live survey that would assess a student’s ability to access weather information at home.
*Google Word: I created a class handout on identifying cloud types that included images as identification aids.
*Google Presentation:
While this tool was a static power point presentation, it still offered enough uniqueness to keep it interesting.
*Grade Book: The graphing of student progress is an enormously helpful aspect of grade book and something that is easily accomplished.
Vocaroo Podcast: This was a “practice makes perfect” assignment. I think I was on version #6
by the time I finished and was able to submit my recording. Chalk this one up to still being a
weakness.
iMovie: I am getting better at putting an iMovie together now that I have created a few by
myself. I may end up using this new skill again to design a training module for new employees
or graduate assistants.
Course Site: This is where I had the opportunity to bring together all of my ideas about
teaching a weather course. Some of our other projects were uploaded to pages in the course
site as it developed into a course shell. It was like assembling a puzzle and I was amazed at the
end result. I am better at the entire process having completed all of the work associated with
this one. This is one project that I will make a strength in my last course towards a Master’s
Degree.
Quiz and Forum: Even though we were limited to the number of questions that we could
enter, Weebly gave us the opportunity to create a short quiz and two forum questions right to
one of our course website’s pages. As long as the students were logged into the website, they
could participate in both of these items without having to upload any additional files. My fellow
group mates and I enjoyed leaving short forum posts to try out the features. I need to use this
more to become proficient.
Assessment Tools: Both of these tools made me assess my own instructional methods to
ensure that I provided the appropriate information for them to be successful when tested. It
was definitely an assessment of my skills as a teacher and pointed out my weaknesses in the
area of assessing student learning.
*RubriStar: I intended my rubric to be used to evaluate a student’s ability to give a brief oral presentation similar
to a reporter on TV. Putting this together reminded me that I would have to devote some class time on proper speaking techniques and attire.
*EasyTestMaker: Now this was fun to do! I knew I had to include specific directions as to how to answer each section based on whether it was true/false, matching or fill in the blank. Using the“section heading” option made that easy to include.
Web Tools:These were exciting tools to try out. Very interactive and I could easily see them as technology literacy strengths!
ThingLink: I added some amazing information to one of my favorite cloud photos that I took here in Hattiesburg. It is now a dynamic instructional tool.
Scoop.it: Scoop.it lets you create your own online magazine that includes that works of others with similar interests and topics.
My plans for integrating technology into the classroom would most definitely involve giving students the opportunity to experiment with a few applications from this course. Audio and video clips are a great way to pass along information as well as teach proper speaking techniques. Students can be benefit from seeing/hearing themselves as others do when giving presentations and it’s a good way to point out topics that need to be emphasized or developed a little more in depth. Today’s student uses technology on a daily basis and teachers need to learn how to capitalize on the skills they already have. I would also take student projects and link them to images using ThingLink and create amazing product that could be shared with parents. Scoop.it is the perfect venue for pulling together resources that the students have found online outside of class. Building a class online magazine would make researching topics a lot more fun.