Summary of events

December 8th, 2008 by

So I am coming to the end of my time in this class.  Prior to entering the class, I was a bit hesitant because I was unsure if any of this information would ever help me in my classes.  I was wrong!  I have incorporated Voicethread into my “do now” lessons to get my students thinking about art and critiquing art.  We have also used many of the programs like Delicious in class to expand the student’s knowledge of tools that can be used on the internet.  This technology class has really helped me to feel more confident about using technology in class.  At times, I felt that some of the things that we were learning in class were not something that I was going to ever use.  I took a leap of faith and tried them and found a lot of them to be quite useful.  I used Delicious all of the time now.  I would love to make more podcasts in the future as well as some cool non-linear PowerPoints.  I do not know if I will continue writing blogs though.  I am more of a hands-on person.  I feel like I want to learn more and make my students more computer literate so that they get more out of my lessons.  Overall, I enjoyed the class and I also enjoyed learning new things and implementing them into my cirriculum.   I know that this class has made me a better educator. 

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Turkey and Technology

November 29th, 2008 by

OK. Back again and really frustrated.  So I go to check my Garage Band podcast and everything is there except my voice and the music I implanted.  After spending over an hour on it, I was a little frustrated.  So I go the lab at school and none of them are open. Great!  I will get it done but it was just something that I did not need.  So what technology did I encounter this week?  The iphone is looking better and better as my next cell phone. The only problem is that everyone else has Verizon and this is AT&T.  Anyway, back to class. I cannot wait to get back into the lab to finish this podcast.  I am not looking forward to the Dreamweaver project though.  It is so simple yet so archaic that I would never use it to create a page.  We will see.  I guess the more I use it, the better I will get and then maybe my ideas will change.  Gotta go now. I still have the Tryptophan in my system and I am dozing offfffffffffff………………………………….

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Catching up with technology

November 21st, 2008 by

OK, so it looks like I forgot to post last week.  This is unusual for me but with going out of town, I dropped the ball, sorry.  Anyway, over the past two weeks I have found so many tools to use in my class that I feel way more confident than I ever did before.  So this podcast thing, at first, I thought was stupid.  It seems that with blogs and emails and instant messaging, all of the personal aspects of communicating with someone have dissappeared.  Most of the time, I do not care what someone thinks about a certain type of sushi or what a certain flower smells like in autumn but with these podcasts, I feel that it is more personal.  You can hear it in the persons voice when they describe their passion for the topic.  I think Garage Band has made it so simple to create these things that it could be something childern of any age could do.  I teach high school and unfortuanately we do not have this program but if we did, I would use it in all of my classes.  It would be a great program to use in my 7th grade classes.  They hate to do research papers about artists.  This program could make it more interesting for them.  I think that they would do a better job knowing that their voice is being recorded.  So podcasts.  I have done a 160 (not totally a 180 with my thinking).  I still think that there is a lot of useless information out there but there is also some great things too.   

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What the heck is a Podcast?

November 6th, 2008 by

That is the question that I asked prior to class yesterday.  I always thought that it was some sort of information broadcast of a business meeting or something and not something that would interest me.  I was wrong.  After class I went home and subscribed to 5 or 6 different podcasts that interest me.  I found one that gives a guided tour with a docent through the MET in NYC which is one of the worlds greatest museums.  I relate it to the experience of reading a book when you can visualize what the writer is trying to say without really looking at any images except the ones in your melon.  Some of the podcasts that I came across were quite boring but there were some who added music or video to liven it up.  I look forward to creating one myself. 

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Non-Linear PowerPoint

October 30th, 2008 by

So we are off to creating a non-linear PowerPoint presentation on the Pop Artist, Roy Lichtenstein.  We surely have a challenge ahead of us to try and design something visually appeasing and also informative to the viewer (and don’t call us Shirley).  I think that the non-linear PowerPoint is just what we needed for this topic because that is pretty much how Lichtenstein created his comic book style of artwork.  I am looking forward to experimenting with PowerPoint in a creative way.  Hopefully what we are trying to do with this topic can be done successfully. I will keep you updated on our progress. 

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The Impact of Digital Media in Schools

October 29th, 2008 by

When writing my paper for class, I tried to reflect on how technology impacts my classroom.  I am the type of teacher that goes outside of the box when I am trying to use technology.  I want my students to learn things like Photoshop that will not only help them in my class but will also give extra tools to them for when they are out in the working world.  Right now I am using a program called Photo Story with my 9th graders.  They are collecting images about a famous artist and will create a short film telling the artist’s story.  I am also having them use MS Paint (which is sooo basic) so that they can create text pages to insert into their movie.  Technology has made my lessons much more eye catching and the quality I am seeing is more than I expected.  After writing my paper, I have found so many more tools that I can use.  The negatives that I found when researching was that the technology is present but the teachers and administrators do not utilize it to their potential.  I am making sure that I am not part of the majority.

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The Ins and Outs of PowerPoint

October 22nd, 2008 by

Who would have thought that PowerPoint would be so interesting? I have always disliked the program because of how basic it seemed and the lack of quality imagery.  In class we got to see that this program has evolved into the new millenium.  It is no longer a cut and paste, clipart, boring page that made the viewer wish to be dead or at least wounded somewhere. I have grown a new respect for PowerPoint now knowing that I can make a slideshow that has so much technical content that it will draw the viewer into the presentation and hold them there until the last slide. The only thing I might wish was more advanced is the animation features. They are still fairly basic but for what you need to do, I guess they are acceptable.    

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To Powerpoint or Not To Powerpoint

October 17th, 2008 by

I never really was taught how to use Powerpoint in any of my classes in high school. I pretty much had to figure it out in order to create some sort of presentation.  I never really saw it as an artistic thing, just some sort of left brain Microsoft program that gave the illusion of something artsy.  In class we learned how this program can be a major copout when it comes to making a presentation.  The creator could just cut and paste information for the viewer to read like some sort of zombie (Chicken, Chicken, Chicken).  When I made Powerpoints in the past, I would intentionally only use key words so that without me, the speaker, you would not know what I am trying to say and have to listen to me. i also do not make printouts for the masses. I feel that the Powerpoint presentation should enhance your topic and not be a crutch for it.

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Web 2.0 and Beyond

October 8th, 2008 by

Collaborative, interactive and inventive.  These words describe what Web 2.0 is all about.  The stagnant, non-reactive internet is disappearing more and more everyday.  What we are seeing now is the future of the internet where anyone can be included in learning and also in teaching others.  To think that a teacher can create a wiki and then have each individual student add or delete content to create a communitive project is something that is so cool to me.  Work can be assigned and students can work on it even if they have never stepped into the classroom.  I looked at a wiki created by an art teacher where students could see the assignment and then upload their work and then add a blog underneath it explaining what they were feeling and the process that they took.  I would have never believed that there were so many different online applications that I could incorporate into my lessons.  To know that I have so many tools at my disposal makes the learning process flow that much easier.  

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Verifying the Source

October 1st, 2008 by

How many times have you typed in a web address and got a web page that had nothing to do with what you wanted?  Type in football, you get a porn site.  Type in cheese you get a porn site.  There have been times that a paper was due and I was searching for information and thought I had found a reputable source until I found conflicting information about it after the paper was written.  I have been guilty of believing everything I read on the Internet thinking that it was all factual information.  I would then get my paper back with a big question mark in some spots.  When I went back to double check the information, I found that one small error in the big picture will throw off the entire idea so it is oh so important to check and recheck just to be sure.  This was seen in class when we went to what looked like a reputable website about Martin Luther King Jr., we found out, after further investigation, that it was created by a racist white supremacist group to put him in a negative light.  What was truly scary was that it was the number three website in the Google search engine.  If  a child came across that site, it could really damage him/her with twisted views.  Now I know why some of my students would come up with some of the most outrageous answers to questions.  What I usually do when I give out an art history worksheet in class now is to write out what sites to look at for the correct answers.  I find that if I do a little research ahead of time, it makes the assignment run so much smoother and the student learns what I am trying to teach them better. 

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