weekly post 2-26

What a week! I thought everything had went smoothly enough with the digital imaging activities, but I was wrong. The activities themselves were not difficult at all, but uploading the zipped files into the assignment drop box was quite a project. I thought I had found the problem and fixed it, but somehow all my files were empty. At least I turned them in early so I had a chance to resubmit. Somehow, there was an error in my comprssion application (no clue about the details). Once I realized this, I used winzip and everything turned out okay.
Off topic though, I love to read. I have been in a slump lately though, with nothing really interesting me. I started a few titles, but never finished them. Then last Thursday, one of my students let me borow a book they thought I may like, Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins. I loved it. There are 5 books altogether that create the Underland Chronicles. I am already in the middle of book 4. I am really enjoying the characters and stories. So, I thought I would share in case any of you read the young adult fantasy/adventure books.
Kelli

Weekly Posting 2/18

I have been working on the digital imaging activities. The hardest part of the beginning activities was getting my family to sit still or smile instead of being silly. Whenever we have family photos taken, we have to have a "silly" one taken before everyone, including my husband, will be still and smile.

Technology wise, I had a difficult time uploading my zip files of the activity photos. It took me awhile before I figured out that the file somehow had an extra .zip at the end of the file name. Once I deleted the extra .zip, the file uploaded nearly instantly.


Kelli

Weekly Posting 2/11

I started the digital images activity this week, using the trial version of Microsoft's Digital Image 2006. I had no problems downloading the trial version or using the program.
I have done scrapbooking for years with my photos. Some pictures were great, others were not, but I included as many as I could to save memories...I was amazed at what could be done with pictures with this program. After playing around with the features I realized that I could have saved many of those pictures that were not so great to begin with. Thank goodness I am about 3 years behind:) I can take advantage of enhancing my photos now before creating the scrapbook pages.
Kelli

Weekly Post

Well, I was an over achiever last week, by accident, of course. I finished all the Emerging Technology activities a week early because I did not pay attention to the due date. I used the extra time to my advantage and got ahead in my other class.
I was not as excited about the virtual world as some of my other classmates. It was different to walk around the site for awhile and warp to Yellowstone, Mars and Atlantis, but I was not all that impressed by the experience. I can see how it may be new and exciting to my students. They would most likely enjoy meeting in the world for class discussions. But I teach math, I am not sure I would have any effective discussions with text only and no visuals.... I need to jump into the world again and play around with the options. Maybe, I can find something, or create a scavenger hunt, that will benefit my class.
Kelli

Weekly Posting

Everything went pretty smoothly this week. The Emerging Technologies activities were all very straight forward and the directions were easy to follow. I have participated in a Blog before, so posting an image was not difficult. I was a little frustrated when tried to save the homepage of a website into .jpg format. With the help of a co-worker, I was able to do this quite easily using Photoshop software. I have created a wiki in a previous class, so adding the links and information to the class wiki was not a problem. I was a little nervous with the Social Web and the Virtual World activities. Signing up and creating bookmarks with Del.icio.us was a very user friendly experience, unlike what I had expected. I felt very overwhemed when entering Active world.
I have never liked communicating through anything besides letters (yes, handwritten and mailed), the telephone, and an occasional e-mail. Working within the Educational Media program has gotten me used to other forms of communication and sharing, but I am still not sold on the virtual worlds...

Emerging Technologies - Blog

Safari Montage-Video on Demand is a visual instructional technology that the district wants teachers to integrate into our curriculum plans. The site has seemingly endless educational videos for all subjects and grade levels. There are many different publishers to browse through, like National Geographic, PBS, A&E, Disney and more. The lessons come with downloadable worksheets and guides. The site gives you the ability to create your own playlists to be able to revisit or save for the next year. Close captioning is also available along with the compatibility for use with electronic whiteboards.

I have used a few of the math lessons with my students. Their responses were mixed. Some students loved it and others thought the lessons were too "cute" or too slow. I think it is a great idea, and in some subjects, the wealth of information, and videos of real life, scientific, and historical happenings are unbelievable and can improve learning exponentially. In math though, I am not sure just watching a video and pausing to discuss problems is the answer. A few of my co-workers and I are slightly skeptical. Some of the department use Safari Montage resources daily and others intermittently. School wide, this product is used daily in many classes. I will keep searching through the many videos for what will work well with my students, and use this to technology to teach and supplement the grade level curriculum.

Troubleshooting Reflection

Let's see, I am sure there are plenty of better examples I could use, but my mind can't seem to recall any major instances unless you count the red ring of death on my XBox 360. That brought a tear to my eye...when was I going to be able to finish Fallout 3?

Anyway, back to the real world. This reflection is about the time I created a Jeopardy game for my math students. I spent over an hour creating the question and answer slides. The next morning I was exited to play the game with my advanced students. They were exited also. The first few questions played out smoothly...

Shortly after starting the game, the question slides did not match the answer slides. Everything was a mess. I was so mad at myself for not previewing the whole game before introducing it to the class. I tried three times to move the slides around and get the correct placement for matching questions and answers to no avail. The students still had fun because we played using my hard copy of the questions. Technically, it took about 24 hours to resolve my problem because I gave up and waited until my co-teacher came in the next morning. She was able to fix everything within five minutes by copying and pasting information. I felt silly, but at least I had the game saved for future classes.

What can you do to alleviate stress and frustration? Take a deep breath and count to ten, go with the flow, be flexible, laugh a lot...use the help desk if applicable or computer savvy friends. Or just try to balance on one foot with your knee raised for 20 seconds..suprisingly enough, you forget about that stressor or issue bothering you for awhile.