Working with PowerPoint

This was another productive day as I began to design yet another unexplored technology tool, PowerPoint. Although, I have required a PowerPoint presentation from my students for years as an exiting collaborative learning activity, I had never actually worked on one myself. This was a satisfying accomplishment to explore the templates, coloring and fonts and to finally choose the right one that will also reflect my sense of style and what I have learned about the purpose and content of a PowerPoint presentation. I kept in mind that it is used as a guide to enhance and assist the audience through your talk. I followed Brittanie's advice that I must tell the audience what I will tell them. Then tell them and conclude. Everyone suggested to 'keep it simple' yet interesting, entertaining and informative. Brittanie also suggested to make sure I have the content. Do I know what I want to talk about? Do I know where to start and what my logical development plan will contain? Do I have a conclusion? Oh..no...this is turning out like a paper! It became a challenge to 'keep it simple' while including the pertinent information that will reflect my presentation on the 'wiki'. After working with a pad and pencil and back and forth selecting slides, positioning text and pictures, as a first attempt, I felt satisfied. I now want to place a few links that will take me to my wiki during my presentation.

A Virtual Experience

Part of my July 4th week-end was traveling to the Met without the frustration of traffic, sore feet and complaints from a hungry family! Although a virtual visit isn't as emotionally moving as the 'real thing' but it can be the next 'best thing' and a powerful learning experience if it is effectively implemented within the context of a lesson! This is what google lit trips and google earth can provide and more for the traveling enthusiast and learners in a classroom. Students are able to access places and to visualize historical travels in an interactive way. When I taught Zinn's, "Columbus, Indians and Human Progress", I used to bring in maps of Columbus' journey so students can be given a visual, a platform for discussion, as well as a deeper understanding of his explorations. Google earth can easily make journeys tirelessly accessible. I thoroughly enjoyed both tools and often explore through these sites European countries, the wonders of the world, parks, my own plot of land, or the country I have yet fully been able to explore, the United States of America! I would like to use these tools during the fall to offer students much needed schema before plunging into some of our transcendental authors we will be actively reading about, e.g. Emerson, Thoreau and more. I would like them to feel the sense of a literary community that existed at that time in Concord, Massachusetts. There's a lot of work to be done to prepare for this course but the tech tools that I will bring along, should leave a lasting impression on us all!

shoes

shoes

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Pod Casts- I just arrived from the land of this trendy but interesting way to enhance, maintain, evoke student interest while teaching any given subject not just language arts. While listening to the clear voices of the sales people/announcers, I understood that this is yet another tech tool that may be used in the beginning levels of education. However, when I began noticing the array of possibilities in even higher education, I was again drawn to its 'limitless' capabilities, possibilities and outcomes. I am certain at any age, students like to hear their voices, interviews, presentations and to refer back to them. Pod casts show creativity and an exciting way to present final projects. In an ESL listening/speaking class this could be so influential to promote language skills, improve communication, pronunciation and more. Students can hear themselves. In a writing class, they can hear themselves read their own writing and others. This may help them edit surface errors but especially to notice the way meaning and content is understood. However, as Sean(the voice that came to life from my computer) reminds educators that we must provide background information and to model what we are asking our students to do. We should not "cram our curriculum in the new technology". We must be aware of the 'outcomes' we want to achieve with our students. Do we want our students through podcasts to: "read aloud to create meaning, express clear responses to related material, express learning to evaluate or reflect on oneself or others?" Whatever the reason, we must also let the students know how and what they will be evaluated on. Is it how well they "retell, relate reflect interview or critique". This is quite an interesting tool along with the "flip camera" that is so 'easy' to use according to all the techies!

Wiki and more....

The ongoing wiki project has been a dominating force on my mind to learn and understand more about its capabilities. While I was pondering over editing issues and hitting dead ends, I decided to become more resourceful and returned to the IT lab at the Healey Library where I found Christian DeTorres who greatly helped me, not only to delete that horrific salient image on the home page, but also answered every question I had concerning the summer wiki. First, I transferred my old wiki to the UMB wiki site to avoid the annoying ads and because I was told it had more features. Then we proceeded with the cleaning up process after week 5's web design readings. I wanted better alignment, navigation, fonts, heading, images, videos, discussion threads, and hyperlinks to authors and more. I joined "Disqus" that allows me to view and manage the student responses better. I also was introduced to "Refworks" that supposedly is more convenient than "Zotero" because I can access it from anywhere and it is easier to embed onto the wiki...I think! Then I was advised about "Get.live.com" to manage my photo gallery and "Robo Form"that plugs in with your browser and is password protected. This program stores all your passwords and user names so that you can immediately retrieve and fill in the appropriate info for $20.00. I got a bit confused as dinner time was approaching and had skipped lunch. He mentioned something about "Google Reader"...but then decided on "Disqus". Again "RSS" feed came up and Christian added his views to its function. It is a way to get "updated" related articles of interest. My wiki looks a lot better now and I especially liked the links to the authors we are discussing in class. My only hope is that I can continue using what Christian has shown me so patiently when he is not by my side.

Post 5-Reflection: The Wiki at Work and Website Designs

This week I was not satisfied with my post as I was focused on my students’ learning more than my own. I was particularly anxious to their reception of the class Wiki. With great anticipation and enthusiasm, we went to the computer lab. As some students were quite familiar with this tech tool, they signed on rather quickly and assisted those who needed more help. I then asked them to post their favorite paragraph and to respond to one other student in the class. This was done fairly smoothly as we would announce during our “eureka” moments, who we found, and what we managed to accomplish. There were a lot of laughs, a few kinks but addressed, and some realizations. After the lab session swiftly ended, I felt as a class we had bonded even more. In honesty, I discussed my naivety and sought out assistance from them as well as patience and cooperation. They were extremely accommodating and enjoyed viewing the teacher in a ‘lower’ position rather than the holder of all knowledge. I share with them my own frustrations and learning process and this creates a trust. For that reason, I welcomed the Wiki along with all the Web 2.0 tools I managed to imbed, such as, a PowerPoint presentation on how to create one, (thanks to Brittanie for her innovative creation) YouTube video on “Education and Technology”, (Who knows why this can’t be accessed from our 613 class wiki because I have double- clicked on the video-tube and it opens), pdf files, photos and more. I also liked the fact that the students could view my reflection on revisions for 613. They were quite curious to see my writing and thoughts; some students even responded. We were all enjoying this medium and the multi modal functions and uses it provides can be productive towards their own thinking and learning process.

I also was enthusiastic when I was able to project a few paragraphs from a student’s paper onto a large screen in the classroom. Together we looked at all the positive aspects we liked and then began shaping it to make the language flow or to elaborate on a kernel idea or to reorganize the development more coherently and logically. As the students were critiquing, our tutor was making the changes instantly for everyone to see, read aloud and hear the difference. This was amazing! The students were so attentive and the more we revised, the better their advice. Even some of the shy students wanted their papers on the screen so that they could see their work in order to hear the reviews. Of course, we all enjoy positive criticism and we gently remark on ways to improve the writing by starting out with a “what if” question.

Zotero, SFX,Libx,GoogleDocs,WebQuest and more

Today's hands-on at Healey Library Brittanie and I met Jeremy who was about to give a presentation on the uses of SFX, Libx, and Zotero that are electronic services and databases. Along with Ellie, Michael, Lisa, Ashley and a few librarians who also wanted to be up-dated, we were all amazed at, once again, how technology has advanced. For example, according to my notes, SFX links citations to databases and allows you to get the full article from any interlibrary that SFX can run through. This service works really behind the scenes with Libx. I was very interested to join this site through firefox to access to search Healey Library for any article or book I request for my students for next fall. It contains abstracts and full catalogues and e-journals but open access is not allowed to alumni unless they come to UMB and use the computers. This site can drag key words from an article and drop them to the toolbar and it searches for you any world wide catalogue for related information you may need. Isn't that amazing? World news can arrive at an instant but is is also a way to easily stretch your thinking by including international authors that could add another perspective on pertinent issues that concern the society, such as, 'reducing the carbon footprint' or better known to non-chemies "going green".
Zotero is a storage house, organizational service, and researcher that not only can keep a record of your books, articles, pdfs, images, and webpages, but also can pull subject headings for your on-going research. For example, when you find a particular article with the topic you are researching, it will list other current/past authors who have contributed works on the same topic. This research service also provides a space where you can "tag" the material and even create or compose notes as you access a reading. It will export citation to word processing programs, and even access your library from anywhere, so you don't have to lug your laptop. All you need to do is get a "Zotero" account and log in your user name and password. That's routine! Creating a Zotero Sync allows you to group memebers who are collaboratively working on the same project in a public form or private by sharing your password to a selected group. To install this miracle,you just type "Lib.Webpage/Zotero or email Jeremy for a "widget" (I remember that), but(there is always a glitch) you need the newest version of 'firefox' installed. If you don't know if you have an up-dated version, go to the 'help' icon and check 'updates and if you are running a current one, it will tell you! Then download HLFF(I think this means Healey Library Fire Fox) onto your firefox. Open "TOOLS", check on 'add-ons and drag HLFF there. You will then be asked, "Do you want to install? After all that work, you say YES. Hit 'restart and VIOLA! It is installed! Now you have Zotero and you can also program it to clean your house too!
Delicious is similar to Zotero in that it saves information from the web to your account. Therefore, you can visit this site and find whatever you have stored inside. Jeremy has his 'trout', Ellie has her hiking ideas (of course, we know that's not all), and I will begin to store my Greek authors, music, newspapers, books, magazines, theatrical and cultural events and latest real estate listings! Wow! All this can instantly be found and accessed from this "delicious" place. In a way, this service is sorting and cleaning out all my cluttered bookcases . Supposedly this is a quick and easy place to store and download. You can keep track easily , tag right away and is a great way to social network too since you can share your sources and notes with anyone.
Finally, WebQuest was fascinating in that this tool has great learning potential for students. It looks like an organizer where you can add 'buzz' words to help the student along with his research process. I visited a few sites and the possibilities are endless. I just need to go exploring some more so I can figure out how to lead students through a certain task and build material, videos and written assignments effectively. It was a great afternoon once again. Total Hours:3