March 18 2011

Movie making with Imovie is a great tool and I have not yet had the time to play with it on my mac. I really enjoyed the video of how to make it and I think with my experimenting with podcasting will carry over to using the imovie feature. I am planning on using my time when I'm finished school to actually explore many of these great tools that we've been introduced to.

Digital story telling, as I'm learning, is a really awesome way for children and all people to tell their stories or things that are important to them. I've been researching media literacy for my inquiry project and have come across some really empowering stories about digital story telling and how it is helping people to tell their truths or things that they think are important for others to know.

The drop box was a great idea. I love using google docs because you can access it anywhere from any device and drop box is the same, which is great. This is very timely for me because we are going to Australia this summer and it seems like a good idea to use drop box for our trip. (dropbox.com)

WebQuest - webquest.com. This is inquiry based learning that is using only the internet. This would be great for students in all grades. I know that my son would love to do something like this. I've been working with his class and this would be a great way to do a lesson or a unit on media literacy. Atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu/ This is a game sort of like second life or war or world craft where the student gets to explore a world that has information about a particular topic. This way the students get to learn about something in a real like context. The students have to complete tasks throughout the site, and then complete an assignment for the teacher at the end of the unit.I know that, again, this would be something that my son would love, and I'm sure that other kids would love it too.

Peer review of blogs - I always find this a little nerve racking at first but I do love it when people comment on my blog, even wen I don't like what they say. I really tried to be honest because I find that most helpful to me and my learning. So give it to me honestly!!!

Drive

I just finished reading, well listening, to the book Drive By Daniel Pink. The book is about motivation and how humans are naturally intrinsicly driven to be productive and creative, and that the world we live in is focused on externally rewarding people for work or products which is squashing our ability to produce and be creative and to achieve mastery. I thought it was a really good read/listen and could be very useful as new teachers. I can really see the benefit of schools embracing this philosophy, from the top down. If anyone else has read or listed to this book I'd be curious to hear what you think about it.

March 11, Our showcase presentation

We had a show case prior to ours today and it was great because it was about making movies on xtranormal. I've been trying to find this site to show my son because I've seen movies made on this site before and loved them and I know that my son would really like to make these types of movies. Then we did ours on podcasting. I've learned so much and have had a lot of fun making podcasts. I've made two so far that I've posted to my site, which is linked at the bottom of this site. I'm not too happy with my portion of the presentation. I really thought I had it all ready for my part today but forgetting to change the file to an mp3 really threw a curve ball at me because then I had to do that in front of the class. I guess it was good in a way as well so that I really make sure that I have things prepared properly for my teaching. I actually practiced last night but I didn't want to have too much done so that I couldn't show everyone how to do it, but then I still forgot to do a step anyway. Oh well, thanks to Sean for knowing more than me so we could still figure it out. The following is our presentation about podcasting.