Reflection

      Technology is ever changing. With those changes comes a need for teachers to be ever learning so as to help their students understand and use technology, as well as utilize tools which help students engage and, hopefully, make teaching easier. Throughout this course, we utilized various functions of technology. While most are not going to be all that useful for the preschool realm, I did learn about different applications.
 
     Having used Blogger before, most of my learning came from learning how to embed audio and PDFs. I found Google applications much easier to embed than Microsoft applications. I am still not sure how to make the dimensions perfect for the PSA audio file, but even after talking to my brother, who used to know html coding, I have had to accept that I have not figured that out. I went ahead and played with the “Pages,” as I was curious how those work now compared to when I used them ten years ago. As it turned out, not much has changed.

     I had used Google Form for work, and for personal use when taking birth predictions shortly before our daughter was due. I did not receive much feedback from peers as I did not repost my blog address. In general, I have not had much traffic on my blog (I took a look at the stats each week), probably due to that fact.
 
    My first personal tale was an experiment with the Photos app on my computer. I found it fairly easy to use, although I would have liked the ability to control animations and transitions. I also found it hard to record and sync the audio to the timing of the slides. I tried Googling the project that was mentioned in the assignment brief, but nothing informational came up. Different examples that were vastly varied came up, so that was not helpful. After receiving feedback, I realized that a story with a beginning, middle, and end was probably preferred criteria. The hardest part of that expectation was keeping the tale to one to two minutes. For the second personal tale, I chose to tell a bit about my great grandmother using Powerpoint. Two minutes did not do her justice, but c’est la vie. I found Powerpoint to have more of the features I wanted. I could control layout of the slides, animations, transitions, overlay audio and music. The best part was that I could record the whole presentation in Powerpoint and then, re-record individual slides as needed. My audio was not as professional as I might have liked, but after talking to others that have better backgrounds in recording have told me a lot of it is the quality of microphone. I struggled with embedding the video as either the audio, music, or transition and animations would not work correctly. My husband helped me realize that I could just save it as an Mp4 and upload it that way. I was quite satisfied with the overall result.

    I found myself wanting to add other features into my Google Earth Tour that were not available (mainly, looking at the 360o photos). For my own teaching purposes, the online Google Earth would be efficient and adequate. My husband and I enjoyed all the supplemental games and materials that were available through the online version.

    My dive into Prezi was not my favorite assignment. As I had actively avoided the software previously, I was working with a brand-new-to-me application. I am not sure if I found it hard to manipulate because I am more of a straight-line type planner or if the free version is just clunkier as a ploy to get you frustrated enough to purchase a subscription. Either way, I did not find it appealing. I think for a first-time use, my presentation was sufficient.

    Regarding the Tech Course Magazine article, Google Docs worked okay. I have learned that writing any assignment should be done offline and copy and pasted to stave off saving problems caused by internet connection issues. Copying and pasting from Word to Docs did not keep all my formatting, although I was able to quickly fix it. I do like how easily Docs lets a horizontal line be placed in the document.

    Overall, I learned some new skills that may be useful in the future. I also was intrigued to learn about iKeepSafe and will be sharing that site with my supervisors. As technology keeps changing, I hope to keep mostly apprised of the most important applications and dangers, so as to benefit my students.

Personal Tale #2- Mamie C. Sherman

For this personal tale, I decided to tell a bit about my great grandmother. While two minutes is a short time to condense a person, she lived a life devoted to family and is a part of my own history! I chose to use Powerpoint this time and was quite pleased with the result, however, it has been hard to figure how to get both the music and audio to play via a direct link to the Powerpoint. I realized that you can save a Powerpoint as an Mp4 and upload to Youtube. This resolved the issues! I found it easier to embed than my last attempt.



 My rubric for the presentation is below:

Prezi Presentation

   I chose to explore Prezi as it was the only presentation application of the three that I have not used. I found that it is probably great for certain kinds of presentations, but not something I am especially fond of, which is more or less what I remembered from a brief intro I had back in undergrad years ago. Prezi lends itself to those who do not enjoy straight lines and like to show interconnection between everything (which for many topics is appropriate).  I also wonder if the paid version is a bit nicer? At any rate, click here to see my investigation and trial usage of Prezi. My presentation is an introduction to subitizing-- aka recognizing quantities without counting!

PSA for Bozeman AM

I recorded a PSA about my class's upcoming Building Study Culmination Event. If I can figure out if Classtag will let me post it, I hope to actually use it! After much struggle, I figured out how to embed the PSA. The visual is a bit funny, but the audio file works!

Smartboard Lesson

Unfortunately, my assignment for this week is more of a what I would do if I had access to one! Best practice for preschool means limited use of screens, but a lesson I would do with students is sorting/classification. This skill aids in being able to make and recognize patterns, which are a large part of both mathematics and reading later on.

I would have three columns, plus a "storage" box on the bottom of the screen. In the "storage" box would be shapes (circle, triangle, square). In the first lesson, children would have to take turns sorting into the three shapes. In the next lesson, the shapes could be different colors and children would need to sort into the colors. Another lesson could involve sorting into sizes. Yet another lesson may be just sorting into upper- and lowercase letters.

Really the possibilities are endless. I love that it is versatile in that it can be a quick large group lesson, small group, or transition activity. Smartboard Exchange had many of these types of activities for free download back when I was teaching kindergarten. On the other hand, none of these would take very much time to prepare, and once done and saved, can be utilized over and over.

Here is a link to a Google Drawing of what it could look like.

Bozeman Building Study Tour

I do not remember Google Earth being so clunky and finicky. After re-recording over ten times, I fixed most of the bugs through various troubleshooting. However, I was unable to get it to keep recording after the final building, which was aggravating. Any tips?

The basic overview of the final building included me talking about how it reminded me of Jack's bedroom from If I Built A House by Chris Van Dusen, which we read last week. I, then, invited students to think about what kind of building they would want to build: what colors, shapes, tall or short, etc.

You can download the tour here.

Why Technology Can't Fix Education| Mary Jo Madda