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

View more presentations or Upload your own.

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.