Post #12

This week in class we worked on our final project. For our final project we used the program MyeBook. This program allows you to create your own online book. There are many things that you can do with MyeBook. In MyeBook you can add backgrounds, images, videos, audio, files from your computer, and you can frame pictures that are already on pages. You can also put hotspots on the page. Hotspots are like hyperlinks and can direct you to other places in your book.

For our final project we had to have a cover page, a page with a picture on us and a table of contents. We then had 6 pages of writing about class this year. For each module we wrote a paragraph about what the module was about, a paragraph about which ISTE NETS applied to the module, and a paragraph about what we learned and how it will help us with our career.

I finished my project and i am done with class this year except for one more journal. It was a fun class and it was very interesting all year.

Post #11

This week in class was a short week for me. I only had to come into class one day this week. This was because my group worked so good together on our online story that we finished early. I loved working with my group and i had a lot of fun creating the crazy story that we did.

Our online story was created on Tikatok. We chose this site to create our book because it was very easy to use and it also provided all of the things we needed for the module to be completed. This was a very cool site because you could add text, colors, and pictures wherever you wanted. The only drawback about this site was that we could not find how to add music into the pages.

Our story is about three little pigs. Its based on the original story of the three pigs and the wolf but we made a lot of changes to our story. In our story the pigs go around doing bad things to three other animals house’s getting the other animals very mad at them. Even though you might think this story is childish there is a very important lesson to be learned at the end.

Post #10

This week in class we worked with a lot of different tools that allow you to communicate with other people. The main tool that we used was Twitter. Twitter is a very cool site that allows people to follow each other. What this means is that if one person follows another they can see what that person has to say about anything. Usually this site is used for stupid purposes such as seeing what a celebrity has to say about their day. But this site can be used very effectively for a professional reason. For example if you are a teacher you can see what head educators in the country have to say about the current system and what they think should be done in the classroom.

Another tool that we used in class was called animoto. This was a site that allowed you to upload your own pictures on it and make a professional slide show out of them. This site is very simple to use but you don’t have much control over how your show is done.

In class we started working with our groups and talking about what we would do for our project. We decided that for our project we would take a famous fairy tale such as the three pigs and putting a wierd twist on it.

Post #9

This week in class we started our group project. We met with our other group members and discussed possible group names and possible subjects for our online story. My group members consist of Laurie, Krystle, and Sara and the name of our group is Mccullogh’s Maniacs (which i thought of). We have come up with some good ideas for our story. some of which include a story about a stupid cat or a dumb chicken. This upcoming group project will be challenging in several ways. Communication will be a problem because this is the first project that is actually a group project. There are programs that can help us communicate though. Some of these programs are Wiki’s which can allow a group of people to talk to each other and create a document online at the same time. The program Ether Pad which we have talked about before is also a great program for communication, you can have a chat room and discuss ideas from a computer. Tiny Chat is also another program that was shown to us. This program is a chat room but it can do more than that. Tiny chat can also allow you to talk to the other people and even see them with a webcam.

The program that we will most likely use for our online story is Mixbook.com. Mixbook is a cool site that allows you to make an online book that you can put pictures and your own text in. Mixbook can also let you publish your story online so that anyone you want to show it to can see it. The other option is that you can also have the company send you a hardback copy of your book for a fee of course.

 

Post #8

This week in class we worked on our module 2 projects. This was a challenging project to complete according to how it was going to be graded. There was a lot of information that had to be provided along with a lot of graphics and shortcuts to other sites. This was hard because i had never known how to do most of this stuff before a couple of weeks ago and to put it in action was difficult.

For my module 2 i chose t0 use webspiration to create it. I was very interested while seeing what inspiration had to offer and i wanted to see what i could do with it. My module explained the three branches of the American government. These are of course the judicial the legislative and the executive branches. I chose to do this topic because i have been learning a great deal on what each branch does and how they accomplish it in my American Government class. My webspiration has about 6 graphics and the design of the whole webspiration when everything is showing is supposed to look like an american flag even though it might not.

I had a lot of fun doing the module 2 and i also learned a lot about the program webspiration. I look forward to using the program in my career as an educator.

Post #7

This week in class we learned about more programs that we could use for our module 2. So far we have many programs to choose from for example we have Powerpoint, prezi, inspiration, and word. So far i have liked many features about each of the programs we could choose from.

Word has its advantages because it is one of the most used programs on computers and it is very easy to work on. Powerpoint is also a very easy and simple program to use, its a little bit more exciting than word documents but it still isnt as impressive as inspriation and prezi. Inspiration can look plain at first because you can hide your topics and then unhide them when you are ready to present them. I will use webspiration for my module 2. It is pretty much the same as inspiration, just an online version of it. The last program we could use is prezi. This was the most complex and impressive program of them all. You can make the words as big or as small as you want them and then it will bring them to screen size when you are ready to present it.

This week we learned a lot about powerpoint and its features that many people do not know about. When people present powerpoints they are usually linear and go from the first slide to the second and so on. This can become boring, so it is better to have non linear powerpoints to keep peoples attention. You can have hyperlinks in a table of contents page that can direct you to everypage in your powerpoint. Then you can have a hyperlink back to the table of contents page. This makes your power point non linear and more unexpected to the crowd you are presenting too. You can also have actions that you can put into the powerpoint. Mouse over settings can allow you to have a sound or an animation happen to a word when you put your mouse over the word. This is the same for mouse click sounds and animations whenever you click on it. There are many features to powerpoint that allow you to have a more exciting and interesting show.

Post #6

This week in class we learned about some internet programs that can help us with group projects, or just projects that you need to do for a certain class. We learned about programs such as Zoho, Ether Pad, Cameroid and Prezi. We also learned a little about the new microsoft word and how to do some cool things with word art and pictures.

Zoho is an internet program that is similar to google docs but it has a lot more to offer. Zoho has its own mail, writer which is a form of word, sheets which is a form of spreadsheet, show which is a form of power point, it also has Zoho wiki and chat. In Zoho docs all of your material can be saved.

Ether Pad is a cool tool that allows you and many other people to control a writing pad at the same time. This can also be used for chat rooms which is a perfect tool for an online meeting or a group project when you cant meet with your partners. Cameriod was a cool program that we looked at which was exactly like photobooth on the computer. It allowed you to take pictures and manipulate the pictures to your liking.

We learned a little more about microsoft word as well. The formatting Palette allowed us to do many things with word art and clip art. You can even put 3d objects on a page and put your picture inside of it as well. You can also hyperlink one place in the document and make it go to another place in that same document.

Prezi is a cool program that is an alternate to power point. This program while harder to use than power point is a very more creative way to do a project and is very fun at the same time.

Post #5

This week in class we learned about a site called inspiration and its internet brother webspiration. We also learned a lot about what photos we can legally use on the internet and that there are a lot of legal photos that we can use on Flickr.

Inspiration is a tool that is made for concept mapping but it can do so much more than that. Inspiration can help you with many projects in school and maybe can even take the job of powerpoint in the classrooms. Inspiration allows you to have many topics on a subject and many topics on those topics if that makes sense. You can add photos, videos, and even sound to any topic that you want. This is a great tool if you need to present something in a professional manner and it is also a very easy tool to use.

Webspiration is a site that is made by the same company that made inspiration.  Webspiration can do the same thing as inspiration to an extent but it is a free version and is open to anyone that has an internet connection. This is a great way to have a classroom work on projects together because you can also send it to other people so that they can make changes to it just like on google docs.

This week we learned that it is illegal to use photos that were found on google. There are legal photos on the internet. Legal photos can be found on Flickr. All you need to do is go to creative commons and see what rights you have to change or use that photo.

Post #4

This week in class we learned about more sites that we could use for module #1. We also explored these sites and saw what they could do in general and what they could do for us in the classroom as students and teachers.

Some of the sites that we talked about were flickr, Delicious, Gimp, and a couple more. Flickr is a photo sharing site that allows people to share their best photographs with the world. People can comment on the photos and also tag certain things in the photo. Delicious is a social bookmarking site where people bookmark internet sites with great information so that people know that it is a reliable site to use. This site is very helpful for students doing research papers. The last one which was Gimp is a photo manipulating site. This site is like adobe photo shop but its free. It allows you to take any photo and change it to your pleasing.

In class this week i worked on and finished module #1 which was our first big assignment. It took me about 2 days to finish. But even though it took me a while and it was homework so of course i didnt want to do it, i learned a lot about the different kinds of tools that are on the internet and what they can do to help us just not in the classroom but with everyday online stuff.

Post #3

This week in class i didnt think that google had anything left to offer. I was really wrong. The world of google is endless in my eyes. We learned about google’s advanced search, and google docs. Also we learned about Rss feeds and how they can help in the classroom and open source applications.

Google docs is probably the best thing that you could use in a classroom. It has everything that you need to succeed. It has microsoft word, powerpoint, spreadsheet and many more all packed into one site. The amazing thing about google docs is that you can share it with anyone that you like so that many people can make changes to one document from many different places. This can help if you have a group project and you have scheduling problems about getting together. With google’s advance search you can find the best sources to what you are looking for. When you search on google you usually dont find the best you find the easiest found sites. With advanced search you could put in a domain or site or even putting in quotes would help you find the best site to use.

With Rss feeds you can get information from one site and it will transfer you to other sites to get more information. I still need to learn more about rss feeds and open source applications still.