Digital Storytelling!?

So what is it anyways?  Well, Digital story telling is the practice of using computer based tools to tell your own story.  Digital stories typically contain computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips, and music.  It can be as simple, or complex as the author chooses. These videos typically last between two and ten minutes, and can range from personal stories, to historical stories, to made up fairy tales.  It's just a new way to tell a story!  To learn more,  watch this video!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKZiXR5qUlQ

Global Connections

There are so many options out there for how to connect yourself and others into the outside world, and communicate globally.  Just typing into google "Connect Globally," so many options come up.  I chose to look at TakingITGlobal. This is a social network that connects you to global issues that connect us all.  

Although we live in all different places, and have different backgrounds, we all have some things in common, or have at least heard of these things.  You can go to the left menu on this page and choose a topic you're interested in communicating about.  Some ideas include: culture, environment, global warming, health, politics, technology, sports, and many more!  On this page you can click basically anywhere in the world, and click on different peoples profiles and read about them, and their area and what they do. 

I think this could be useful for a teacher to use as a resource when studying different areas, and pick out certain people they may want to study or contact.  It would also be fun for the students to just surf around the website and maybe find a pen pal!  Within this website there are many more programs that support global communication. 

I also found EPals which is a network for safe connection to over 200 different countries and territories.  It makes it easy to connect learners locally, nationally or internationally.  There is a different section for teachers, students, and families.  I think this would be an awesome website to be able to find pen pals for all of the students in your classroom.  They can connect classrooms for the age groups Kindergarten - 12th grade.  

http://www.epals.com/

http://www.tigweb.org/.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8940619-reading-globally-k-8

Bloggers Afterthoughts.

      I read through many of Joanne's blogs, however 3 stuck out to me and seemed to go hand-in-hand.  I read, Laying off the Least Effective Teachers,  Teacher Quality Trumps Class Size, and Same Schools for All?  The first two were talking about how if you lay off the least effective teachers, your school could afford to buy a couple new things like computers, books, etc.  Rather than laying off the "newest teacher"  Figure out who really is the least effective teacher, just because they have been there longer doesn't mean they are more efficient.   She spoke about how a P.E. or Health teacher is much more likely to be layed off than a math or science teacher, but really, if one is doing a great job, and the other performs poorly how can this make sense.    
      Her next article talks about how sometimes class size doesn't determine it all.  Would you rather have your kid be in a small class with a mediocre teacher, or a larger class with an excellent teacher? If you fired the least effective teachers, and let class sizes go up about 5%, your children may have a better outcome.  She also speaks again about how you could save money and buy things that would positively impact the classrooms.   
      In her last article she talks about children needing the same schooling, or different schooling.  While her article was interesting, I found that the comments and discussions afterwards were even more interesting.  She was saying in a way that black children need different schooling than latino, which is different from high class, as well as low class etc.  In a way, perhaps she has a point, parents have different expectations, and the children may have different needs, however, it's unrealistic, you cannot create schools that only allow students of one class or race into a classroom!  The comments were saying it's not so much about who is in the class, but that the important part is to have individualized lesson plans, add something for each student.  Then another teacher got on and commented:

"I have 35+ kids a class, six classes a day (we are on a 7 period schedule), and four subjects to teach.

Just how in the hell do you expect me to come up with 200+ different lesson plans…let alone teach them?" 

      I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this comment, at first I laughed, but as I think about it, I feel like it is our job to connect with each and every student in some sort of personal way, and make it applicable to their life.  It's like we talked about learning styles in this class.  Maybe just teacher things in more than one way would be your method of connecting with each children.  I don't know.  

     Overall I found these blogs to be very interesting, and I enjoyed reading the comments/ arguments that came afterwards! :)

Assistive Technology

Assistive technology is technology that is used by people with disabilities to help them perform tasks that might be difficult, or impossible for them.  This can by any item, piece of equipment, or product system.  It can be found commercially off the shelf, modified, or can be customized for the person.  Different devices such as walkers, wheelchairs, computers, and other technologies are recognizable assistance to people.  Those a just some general examples, however there is a huge variety of assistive technology that is available today that provides assistance to nearly any disability. 

Just last month, my Uncle was mauled by a bear, he is now down in the Seattle Medical Center getting extensive reconstructive surgeries, and help from many wonderful doctors. When he got mauled, the bear ripped across his face, and while doing so, the bear ripped out my uncles tongue.  Without a tongue, you can’t speak, or eat…  They have tried to put some sort of extension onto his tongue hoping that he would be able to speak, but tissues keep on dying, and he has to go back into surgery.  The tongue idea hasn’t been working, and as of right now, he can’t speak or eat.  He still must be able to communicate however.  His left eye was damaged, but his right eye has good vision.  As many of us have come to know, we can type much faster than we can write, so right now a computer is a huge assistance for him.  However, there is a new handy dandy thing called and IPAD!  One of his nieces raised enough money to buy him an ipad because it’s easier for him to carry, he can hold it closer to his face, and it has many applications that he can download to help him with quicker communication. 

On this ipad is a program called GoTalks.  It is for people who can’t communicate by speaking.  Other people record messages that the user will likely need, and they can overlay these with images, words or symbols.  The user can “talk” simply pressing on a picture to play the message for others to hear.  After these messages have been created all he will have to do is push one button for a command, or whole sentence. 

This will also be easier because it’s all touch screen, and with so many applications that he will be able to download specifically for his new disability that he will have to get used to.  Thanks to the assistive technology, he will be able to communicate a little bit easier, and probably a lot faster with the people around him!  






http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/05/31/new-assistive-technology-research-focuses-on-ipad-communication-skills/


http://www.washington.edu/accessit/articles?109


http://www.kidstogether.org/at.htm

Teaching the Tech.

 I chose to share the technology videos with:
My Mother, (a preschool teacher for 25+ years)
My Boyfriend, Jasen ( Always figures out problems with technology)
and My Neighbor, (Needed to know how to resize her pictures)


I sent my mom that "Care Package" full of videos, and she called me and said, "Bri, I got this e-mail from you with some videos, but I don't know how to make them play."  All I could do was laugh... of course she didn't know how to make them play!  It's one simple button, the one that means "PLAY" on almost everything.  We laughed on the phone while I explained to her how to make her technology helping videos begin to play.  We just got new smart phones, so I sent her a video about how to send picture messages. I have been trying to get her to send me pictures, but she just doesn't understand how.  Now that she watched the video, she sends me about 3 pictures a day, which is pretty nice!  She said she is gonna learn the "edit copy, edit paste" tricks maybe next week!  :)  Ohhhh, I love my mom.

I tried to make Jasen watch some of the videos with me, and he said that he already knew how to do all of these things, and that he didn't want to watch them.  I looked through a bunch of them and when I saw the one about podcasting I knew it was perfect.  Last semester I had to listen to PODcasts all the time, and he didn't understand why I listened to them, or really what they were.  After watching the Podcasting in Plain English he seemed a little bit excited. I thought it was because he had learned something, instead he said, "See I knew about that too, that's why it was Jasen who knew all about it," Because the character in the videos name was Jasen... so, this was not such a successful time of sharing videos, but funny nonetheless. 

It was so random, yesterday, I was sitting outside in the back of my car reading a book, and soaking up some sun, when my neighbor decided that she wanted to meet me.  We got to talking for a little bit, and just talking about education, children, and the weather.  She then invited me into her house to show me her new throw carpet, and also show be the waisted space above the stairs that could be a storage room.  (LOL)  then she showed me a couple pictures and I told her that I love photography, and I have a pretty new big camera.  Right away she turned around and said, do you know how to re-size some pictures?  So I showed her the website picnik that we used in class, and walked her through the steps of how to resize her images.  She was really grateful, and I was excited that I got to share one of my new resources with her!

King Fishing!

I caught my first king today!  :) It was so exciting!  Today was the fifth day in a row that we went fishing, but it took us until today to actually have the hooks set up right, and have everything working!  My boyfriend was getting cranky however, because the weight kept dragging the bobber down and making knots.  So he would reel it back in, and I would undo them, I told him "I hope I don't catch a King, cause if it somehow gets off the hook you are gonna be so mad at me!"  I was also freezing, so after sitting down at Ship Creek for about 2 hours and getting no bites, I decided to pack my stuff up and wait closer to the car where it wasn't so windy.  I asked Jas if he could watch my bobber while I packed my things, and he nodded.  I began putting my chair away, and when I turned to randomly check my bobber, it was gone!  I grabbed my pole, and started reeling! I HAD MY FIRST KING!  It took almost 5 minutes to get it in, but I was so excited, and now Jasen had his big handsome smile back on his face!  Here's a picture of my fist King Salmon :)

Tux Painting

Today I played around on a program called Tux Painting. It was a really quick download, and has different things offered depending which kind of computer you will be playing off of.  It only took about a minute or so to download and be read for use!  So if you're wanting something now, this is it!


 I love playing with random apps on phones for painting, so I figured it would be more fun on a computer since the screen is about 20 times bigger!  When I first clicked on it, I didn't think I would really play with it that long. However, once I started playing with the different brushes and tools I started having a lot of fun!  I think this program would be great for children!  It seems that children love using technology, and if they could do painting projects on the computer, that's one less mess around the house!  Although painting with a brush and paper has it's own fun aspects, this computer program is also a lot of fun!  This was a neat program, and I did spend an hour playing on it, however I don't know how many more times I would really use it considering I'm 22 with no children, so I plan to also look at some of the other tools, sites that were offered by our teacher! I hope you can have as much fun on Tux Painting as I did!


I don't know how to save the photo from tux paint into a place so that I can upload it onto here, but I will work on that and get up my MASTERPIECE! :)


http://www.tuxpaint.org/download/

Blog Observations

I chose to follow Christine, JJ, Ariel and Marina!  I wanted to find more blogs that were easy to understand, so I decided to read through everyones blogs that they had found.  I noticed that all four of these girls chose to follow a blog that was easy to follow and understand, and I also realized that each one of them mentioned that the blog would be a really great resource for when they are teaching!  I think it's great that our minds are now focused on "What would be good for teaching?"  We will always need helpful tools as young teachers, and if our minds are open to using others ideas, I think things will be much easier!  These ladies are all getting close to finishing up school, and have their mind focused it seems, and I was glad to look at their blogs so that I too could use these resources. 

Careful Copyrighter

I read Copyright 101 for Educators: Winter 2003.  Copyright is a basic protection that is provided by the laws of the United States.  These protect an author or creator of something original from their work being copied without permission. Copyright covers everything from paintings, photos, poems, novels, anything you create.  Copyright happens as soon as it is available to others whether it is published, or unpublished.  I will definitely be more careful now about the things I use off of the Internet.  So many times I use a picture, sentence or idea off the Internet without giving it proper reference.  I now know that even all the billion images on Google must be referenced.  This seems like it would be hard to do, and for some definitions it’s hard to re-write the meaning because that may change it, but a quick reference will do. 

The Teachers Act is an important thing for us as educators to know about and understand.  This law, signed in 2002, allows educators to copy documents or use copyrighted materials openly in a face-to-face classroom setting. There is also the idea called “fair use,” this allows a person to use a small amount of copyrighted materials without getting permission.  The four factors that must be evaluated to determine if it’s fair use include:

(found on http://tlt.its.psu.edu/dmd/teachact/teachactFAQ.html)

1.      The purpose and character of the use

2.      The nature of the copyrighted work

3.      The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the work as a whole

4.      The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Knowing about the teachers act and fair use laws will help me better reference necessary things, and understand what things are okay to use in my classroom.  It will be important to know about this so that I can teach the next generation about these laws. 

Blog Stalker...

http://elemenous.typepad.com/weblog/

This was a blog about “A Teachers Life.”  She has several different blog posts all the time about different things going on.  The one I read was “Why don’t schools get rid of the crappy stuff.”   I read her top 10 ideas about things we could easily get rid of in a school, and I really liked her point about teachers needing to stop complaining about parents, saying some parents are way to involved, while complaining about others not being involved enough.  She had some good points for a new teacher to think about.  I was surprised at how many blogs she had, and how busy her website was!

http://blogs.makingitcount.com/yearone/

This was a blog from a girl in her first year of college.  I enjoyed reading through her blogs because we have all been there, and felt like we were in too deep with all of the new responsibilities.  I think this would be a great blog to share with high-school students who are getting ready to go off to college.   I really liked how easy it was to navigate her website, and I was able to easily figure out what things were where. 

http://www.leekrausonline.com/

This blog has all different posts about the role technology plays.  The blog I read was called Home vs. School:  The best 21^st Century Learning Environment.  She was talking about how at school children have limited time to computer access but at home many children have at least 1 if not more like 5 or 6 different types of   internet access and technology at home.  They have many devices connected to broadband access.  The children at home have a constant feedback loop with repeated opportunities for reading, listening, and watching content and on-going collaboration.  I thought her points were very interesting.  I was also surprised, because  to me it seems that too much technology could also be damaging if that’s all children do.   I think that providing a “free time”  on computers for children at school would be a great idea so that they can explore things like youtube.

http://www.joannejacobs.com/

I really liked this blog website!  It’s called Linking and thinking on Education, but Joanne Jacobs.  She covers so many topics, and her writing is very clear.  I really liked on the left side all of her topics are in alphabetical order, so it’s easy to navigate.  I think this would be a really neat site to follow as a teacher because she has so many open thoughts for me to think about.

Overall- I was amazed by how many blogs there are to follow that are about education!  It was almost overwhelming because every site had the “top 100” and so many of them were really good.  I was quickly turned off when the pages looked hard to navigate.  I think these will be very beneficial to know about because  it’s always nice to know about teachers who may be going through the same thing you are going through, and to read about their experiences.