Movie Making!

This week, we got the opportunity to make our own movie! Our group chose to make a video about a daily life of a student. We had filmed our video from the beginning of a students day to the time when they leave the school. We shot many different short clips from many different angles.

We were allowed to use any of the video making programs that we were exposed to. Our group chose to work with the apple computer and therefore we used the iMovie program. Mike gave us a short introduction of how to use the program which was very helpful because neither myself nor my group members had ever worked with this program. We found the program to be quite easy to edit and put together our clips.

This was a fun and neat tech task to get our hands in and experienced. This type of technology can be very useful in the classroom today and students today are much more involved with these types of programs which I'm sure they will be able to teach more to me about the programs!!

Changing the face of our classrooms!

This week I have learnt about more programs to create digital stories from several different pictures. I chose to work from the program photo story 3 which is a program that can be easily installed on the computers at school. I believe this program will be useful and meaningful for a number of different ways in my future classroom. For an example I could have students create their own digital story for themed topics in the curriculum. When I was student teaching in the fall, my cooperating teacher had let me in on a tip, when trying to plan activities and to hit the curriculum outcomes it is much easier to have "themes" behind every idea. With the advanced apps and programs today, we can collect or even take pictures at that moment and either caption it with text or even better have the students record their voices of what they would like to say about their picture or pictures. What I think would be an awesome way of using the recording system is having a picture or multiple pictures that relate to each other and show the class this with no sound or voice recording, then have your students work separately and record their own "story" of what they believe is happening in the story.  After the recordings are all finished I would have them send their videos to me and we would view them all as a class. I think this would be a very neat and engaging activity to introduce something new to the kids where it gets them thinking!!

Since iPads are a huge part of technology in the classroom with myself included using one I have listed some apps to download for digital storytelling:

Haiku Deck- is great for early years, quick access of storytelling. It can also can pictures right off the iPad and also searches images you are looking for and references the picture for you. 

Sonic pics- is an awesome storytelling application. You can put images in and record with the iPad to tell the story.  

Appsgonefree- is an app that shows you all the free downloads for the day. Is very useful and the apps can be deleted if you haven't used them or don't think you will once you check them out but can be accessed through your iTunes again for free even if they have s charge. 

Also here are some links to check out about digtial storytelling in the classrooms!!

http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-us/teachers/guides/Pages/digital_storytelling.aspx

http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/

Digital Technology

Digital technology has been one of the major changes we have seen within our schools today. From laptops to iPads and even cellular devices. There are many ways for us as teachers to deliver information to our students today. I have not been known for a person to keep up with the ever so changing technology uses and programs but being apart of this class has helped me tremendously with learning about new programs. The latest program we were introduced to was prezi, this digital storytelling program is much more advanced than your standard PowerPoint presentation. I believe this program is much more engaging and because of the special effects it includes will be something of Internet that even the students will be able to use when creating their own presentations. 

The smart board technology use has become much more advanced then from when I used it back in high school. There are many different presentations and games that are open for anyone's use. Like everyone always tips us future educators, "why reinvent the wheel". I believe the smartboard templates will Beverly helpful when looking for ideas and games to keep the students engaged. 

It amazes me how much digital storytelling and digital pictures can be that much more meaningful and really make an impact on people. Digital storytelling can be either funny or serious. Below is a link of digtial storytelling with humour that was shared in class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IjUkNmUcHc

Literacy with ICT

This week we had the pleasure of having John Finch come into our classroom to discuss Literacy with ICT. We firstly got started off by discussing the technology we used in our elementary and middle years school experiences. I remember we used computers strictly for research projects. Today's schools, the students have the privledge of using laptops and ipads. I believe that in my teaching future, the technology usage is going to be that much more advanced. The main focus of Literacy wtih ICT is choosing and using ICT responsibly and ethically to support critical and create thinking about infromation. John made a very important statement which stuck out to me the most: "We need to teach the students HOW to learn and simply not the facts". This is definitely something that will stick out in my mind when preparing lesson plans and unit plans for my students. John had said if we teach students the facts they are never going to know because the facts can change on a daily basis which is something every teacher needs to take in consideration, especially teachers that use the same material from year to year.

Our class has started to design a wiki, I have never used the program before and I cant say that I will be a fan of it especially with my students. We had the opportunity to ask another class about the program and what they disliked about it so our class had an advantage before we started to create it. The problem with wiki is that if you have each individual group working on their part of the project and they end up writing on the same page and you refresh it it can delete someones part of the project. If I were to use this program with my students I would have them first write their information in a word document and then paste it on the the wiki page so we wouldnt run into problems of deleting each others information. The part of the wiki that my group is working on is about digital citizenship which I believe is to be a very important aspect. Digital Citizenship is a very important tool to teach to our children today especially since using the computer has become almost an hourly thing. Before I introduce my students to using technology we will be discussing digital citizenship which is the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use. There has been many recent cases that are affecting young children that have to do with digital citizenship. When we look at the case about Amanda Todd, her picture who was sent to a personal "friend" was leaked across the internet worldwide that haunted her forever and eventually ended up committing suicide. We have to teach our students the appropriate uses of the internet before we give them free range of using this tool.