Finale (Blog Assignment #3)

I guess I should just start by saying that I loved this class!  I'm not trying to kiss butt, but I learned so much more from this class than I thought I would.  Anytime I saw people using Adobe anything I immediately became intimidated and hoped that I would never have to use it.  Then it was assigned in class.  But it really isn't as bad as I thought.  There are still a lot of buttons that I don't know how to use with Adobe Premier Elements, but I get the basic gist of a basic digital story.  I'll link you to my second one because it was an improvement!

We then learned about podcasting.  This was much easier than using a digital story, but before we began the assignment, I didn't even truly know what a podcast was or what it was used for!  Whenever I heard the word podcast, I really just thought that there was a more convenient way to get news out there, but podcasts are more useful than I would have pinned them to be!

Finally, I had NO idea that there were poster templates for PowerPoint.  In fact, I wasn't even aware we would be doing a poster on the computer when I first looked at the syllabus.  Until a few weeks ago, I thought we would have to go out and buy a posterboard and become a fiend of arts and crafts, something I don't like to do too much.  The poster templates were very easy to upload, use, and edit, and it makes being creative a little easier!  Here was my finished product.

Finally, RSS feeds and Google Reader were a nice little addition to my arsenal.  I'm not sure I'll use them too much in my teaching career, but I can now stay up more on current events than I previously could.  I NEVER read the news, but now it's almost like I don't have an excuse NOT to when getting news right to your Reader is so easy.

As a final reflection point, I do still see how teachers not familiar with technology can be affronted by the implementation of it in their schools.  It can be a lot to take in and can be sort of intimidating.  Once given a chance, though, technological resources in education are not that difficult to use.  It just takes a little creativity and an ability to read directions!

Using Really Simple Syndication

Below is my poster assignment, done on RSS Feeds.

RSS Feeds

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For this presentation, I focused less on the information (though whatever information was used, I took from Will Richardson's book) and more on the design. I chose to cater more to the Information Processing principles of color coordination with text, making sure that it was easy to read. The original PowerPoint template had green and red as the background colors, but I changed the red to blue because I felt the colors flowed better together. I also made the boxes where text exist a little less transparent so it was easier to read. I also used the principles of symmetry and order found in the Gestalt Principles. All of the columns are the same size and color, with the same formatting for any other aspect of the slide. I also gave the title a box so that everything was similiar. I placed a green apple on either side of the title so that there was symmetry as well as more color coordination.

Hope you enjoyed it!


Source:
Richardson, Will.  Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts: and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2009.

CODE BLUE CODE BLUE

Again, I decided to get on the Freshman Studies bandwagon and make my podcast about a University Life lesson we've previously done.  This time, I talked about Public Safety's new website Code Blue.  Like always, I used music from Bluelaguna but I unfortunately could not find who the artist was!  The song is titled Sakubo: Big Sis and Me (yes, it has no relevance to the topic, but I thought the song gave a curious mood).  I played around with the sound of the music this time.  I actually slowed the song down so it would take up most of the podcast, and I changed the pitch a little as well.  This podcast was definitely easier and more fun to do than the last one!



Hopefully I improved a little :) I guess I just need to work on my "uhh" and "ummmms" haha.

How to Register for Classes!

As I explain in the podcast, I decided to be dorky (surprise surprise...) and just do a little spiel on some of the basics of registering for classes at Seton Hall.  Many freshmen forget how to register for classes since they've only done it once, and all University Life classes teach a segment on pre-registration.  Many of my students were absent so if I have no time to instruct them in-person, I might just direct them to this podcast.  I likely won't though because it's hard to cover all of pre-registration in such a short time.



Image Source: Elliott, Sam. "Know Your Opponent - Seton Hall." Photo. Scout.com. 7 Mar 2009.  Accessed 3 Nov 2010. <http://cincinnati.scout.com/2/845133.html>.

I Regret to Inform You

So just a little disclaimer before watching my digital story: I have to apologize because it's depressing and a bit uncomfortable.  However, I chose a topic like this because the repercussions of anti-gay bullying is very near and dear to me.  I also sort of end up keeping most of the emotion more in the music rather than the voices used -- that was done on purpose.  And I know October 20th has already passed, but those who wanted to show support for the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender, Questioning) community wore purple that day.  Raising awareness was more my educational intention than anything else (rather than instructing or teaching).

As for the information, I pulled the article about the four teens from the New York Times, written by Jesse McKinley.  Music was again taken from bluelaguna.net, and the song "Dive into the Heart ~ Destati" was written by Yoko Shimomura.

I approached this digital story a little more differently than last time.  I still made it in Adobe Premiere Elements, but I mixed the song with the narration in Audacity first.  I found that it made the project go a lot faster when I was finally working in Adobe, and it took less hassle.  I also made every image in PowerPoint this time, something I didn't do at all in the previous digital story, and Tim helped me figure out how to get the pictures to slowly move in (THANK YOU!), so that was a cool effect I am proud of :)  I know the digital story isn't as flashy as it could have been, but then I thought a simpler story would be cleaner and smoother, and the subject of anti-gay bullying isn't really flashy anyway.


Credits for Pictures:

Seth Walsh:
"Gay Teen Dies After 10 Days on Life Support, Following Suicide Attempt over Anti-Gay Bullying." Photo. My Purple String. 22 October 2010. <http://mypurplestring.com/category/news/>.

Billy Lucas: 
 "Bullying Drives Student to Suicide." Photo. The Advocate. 22 October 2010. <http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/09/14/Bullying_Drives_Student_to_Suicide/>.

"The Principal with His Head in the Sand." Photo. Project Honest. 22 October 2010. <http://projecthonesty.org/tag/billy-lucas/>.

Asher Brown:
"Bullying Brings 13 Year Old's Suicide." Photo. DoSomething.org. 22 October 2010. <http://www.dosomething.org/news/bullying-brings-13-year-olds-suicide>.

Tyler Clementi:
"Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei." Photo. Freedom Eden. 22 October 2010. <http://freedomeden.blogspot.com/2010/09/dharun-ravi-and-molly-wei.html>.

"This One is for You: Tyler Clementi." Photo. Human For Human's Sake. 22 October 2010. <http://humanforhumanssake.blogspot.com/2010/10/this-one-is-for-you-tyler-clementi.html>.

Questions for Will Richardson

Hello!  My questions are pretty simple, and I don't really have anything to preface them, so here they are:

1. What moment did you realize you wanted to gear your career toward the technology facet of education?

2. How do you think wikis can best be used in a math classroom (middle/high school)?

Thank you!

Land of the Rising Sun

I did my digital story on my hike up Mount Fuji with my family.  All of the pictures were taken from my Facebook, and the music was taken from Bluelaguna.net but was written by Junya Nakano. 

There were a couple of snags that I hit with this story, though.  I could not seem to figure out why my narration was echoing so much!  I decided to just let it be since I was talking about a mountain, and I thought an echoing would be appropriate for that kind of a subject.  Also, I few of my picture effects did not take.  I tried to put in the "Earthquake" effect for the pictures of the descent to help emphasize the mood, but it did not come out in the final video.

Also, something I tried to do with the music was set each piece to the mood that I was feeling during the climb.  "Welcome Elder Sage Mica" was used to sort of make Mount Fuji look glorious and grandiose while we were ascending.  "Those Who Come Closer" gives more of an subtle urgency and foreboding as we descended the mountain, though.  Mount Fuij looks majestic going up, but when going down, it actually looks pretty scary and barren!  Toward the bottom of the hike, I picked a song like "Daughter of the Grand Summoner" to be a little more peaceful.  The songs come in that order in the video.  And when you hear them, yes they're a little dorky because they're from a video game, Final Fantasy X...

And BOOM. Another sharing moment.

I edited the PowerPoint a little so that the title for "foreshadowing" wasn't on two separate lines, and I experimented with SlideBoom this time!

Basic Theatre Vocabulary

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A Look at the Theater

I decided to step outside my comfort zone for this assignment.  Rather than do anything related to math, I did this Visual Vocabulary assignment on terms used in plays.  I went ahead and put the PowerPoint through SlideShare, but two of my slides got messed up!  The titles for the slides for "foreshadowing" and "pantomime" came out a little skewed; the "g" got sent to the next line, and the title for "pantomime" blends in too much with the background, which it did not do on PowerPoint.  Nonetheless, here is the finished product!

Basic Theatre Vocabulary

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Trials and Errors in an Epic Galapagos Digital Story...

Here's the experimental phase of my digital story telling journey...

What a Load of...

In the field of psychology, cognitive load theory generally describes the relationship between the short-term memory and the long-term memory.  Just like it appears in the name, the short-term memory is capable of getting "loaded" with too much information at a time.  The theory states that people learn best in an environment when this kind of structure is realized and learning is catered to it.  That is, teachers can teach students best when they are not expecting students to grasp too much material all at once.

                                    


Also in the theory is a way for people to create "structures" known as schemas to make learning easier.  The easiest way to look at the term "schemas" is to think of them as categories.  For example, if a student is looking at their notes to study for a big unit test in history, it might not be wise to tackle it all and memorize it all at once.  Instead, breaking these concepts into "schemas" can help them stick in the brain better.  That is, a student can try and break down the concepts into categories like pre-Civil War, during the Civil War, and after the Civil War.  It can even benefit a student more if they associate these categories with pictures or music.  Personally, when I'm studying for a test that I'm not too confident about, I try and pick a few songs to associate certain material with, and then I recall the songs when I'm actually taking a test.  It's a schema (sort of) of mine!

So how can teachers use this theory to their advantage?  Basically, the way Sweller (the source of my source) describes it, teachers need to design instruction in a way that reduces the working memory load (in other words, the short term memory) and can facilitate the creation of these schemas.  As a future math teacher, this means getting kids to not memorize the formulas, but helping them to apply them in examples and using them more in the long-run.  This means having concrete examples on quizzes or tests rather than quizzing for definitions or formulas.


Source:
Soloman, Howard.  Cognitive Load Theory (J. Sweller).  Accessed September 16, 2010.  Found at http://tip.psychology.org/sweller.html.

Image from http://davebirss.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/frazzled_brain.jpg?w=400&h=234

PIC LITS!!!

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Intro

This is (sort of) my first blog post. Testing.... 1... 2... 3...