CEDO535 Week 2

It's been great learning more about blogs and wikis! Not only are the examples I've found in Richardson's book really good, but further research and links from these sites have given me even more great examples. I just created a twitter account and have found several tech educators to follow. In regard to wiki's, I have to admit that after reading the book, I think I may let go of the reigns a little bit when it comes to my students using Wikipedia. I like the idea of having them make an update to wikipedia and maybe putting in some false information. I'm curious as to how quickly the "wikipedia guru's" will find the false info and fix it.

CEDO535 Week 1

What I learned this week is that my blog needs help! It needs updating. As usual, finding the time to keep it fine-tuned is difficult. In Chapter 3, Barbara Ganley is quoted as saying that a teacher who is confident in their tools is bound to rub off that excitement to their students. She is so right. If I can get myself excited about blogging and use is on a daily basis, then I think I can have real success with teaching it to my students. I really want to teach blogging to my students this year, so this class is coming to me at the perfect time. If I can get a good blogging schedule down in the next few weeks, I think I'll be prepared to teach it to my students beginning second semester.

CEDO530 - Post #5 - Creating Pecha Kucha

Okay, so in my last post I was pretty excited about creating my Pecha Kucha. Now, not so much. I have to say, while it is a good concept for presentations, it takes way too long to create! In my previous blog entry, I stated that the storyboard was easy to create from my handout. My handout only took about 30 minutes to create. The handout was what I would originally do my presentation from during the board meeting. However, the Pecha Kucha has taken me over 10 hours to do and I'm not even finished yet! There is no way I could or would spend 10+ hours for a presentation that only lasts 6 minutes when a simple report would be just as effective. I understand that digital storytelling is a great way to present, but in this situation, when reporting to a school board who has limited time, I just don't have that kind of time to put into a "quick" presentation. However, not all is negative. I could definitely see students using a Pecha Kucha for different presentations, but typically, students are given several classtime hours to work on their projects, unlike teachers who have very little time to try anything new.

CEDO530 - Post #4 - Creating Storyboards

Sorry this is late guys...

I just finished a draft of my storyboard and I have to say what worked best for me was to organize the presentation around the handout. My Pecha Kucha is my technology/LMC updates presentation to our school board meeting...which works out really well since I only get approx. 10 minutes to speak...the Pecha Kucha (6+ min.) design fits in nicely in my alotted timeslot. Anyway, I had a handout already created. So, I went off the handout and pulled out the pieces that I would attached pix to. Much of the voiceover text comes directly from the handout. This process worked great for me - first, create handout; second, create storyboard; third, create presentation. Much easier than I was expecting!

CEDO530 - Post #3 - Picture Superiority Effect

In the book Presentation Zen, I really liked the chapter on Design and Techniques. The image examples on pp. 133-152 were fantastic! It really hit home with me how less is more. I would have to say that 99% of presentations that I have viewed are not good. Too many words, too many graphics, just plain out too busy looking. The book gave me great ideas on what types of graphs are visually attractive and yet get the point across. I also like how many of the examples showed images taking up the entire slide and putting only short phrases over the image...again very powerful.

CEDO530 - Post #2 - In What Ways Can I Use Digital Storytelling in What I Do?

In Digitales, a story idea that was suggested is to "create the story of the impact of a grant on the students". I really like this idea. Throughout the last few years, our district has been part of a consortium with 6 other districts where we write for large grants that focus on technology integration in the classroom. Since participating, our district has received over $8,000 in technology purchases that we have used to assist us in incorporating 21st century skills into our classrooms. Every few months, I have to report to the school board on technology updates throughout the district. Instead of just giving a report on what we've been doing, wouldn't it be cool to create a short digi-story showing the board members how teachers/students are using the technology in their classrooms? Most board members never make it into the classroom and several aren't aware of new educational technologies. I think they'd appreciate a visual story rather than my boring report.

CEDO530 - Post #1 - What do I hope to learn?

I hope that I will learn to break the habit of using powerpoint simply because it is easy to use and is the most common media presentation software available in schools. I have to admit, watching powerpoint presentations is mind-numbing. Almost all of the teachers in our district use powerpoint for their's and their students' presentations. Before I became a teacher, I worked in the private sector and have had to endure 50+ slide presentations during staff meetings, workshops, etc. I had a hard time staying focused during many of those presentations, and now it troubles me to see so many of our students being taught that powerpoint is the only presentation software available. I loved the 2 articles we read for class, especially "Powerpoint is Evil". I agree completely with these articles. However, I am a typical teacher with very little time to learn a new "tricks". Powerpoint is the old standby when there is no time to learn new ways for presentations. So, in short, I'm hoping to learn new presentation techniques in this class so that I can put powerpoint in the past.