Teaching in the Digital Age" by Brian Puerling was a pretty fascinating book. Who knew how much Technology could do for parents, students, and teachers!!? Overall Puerling stated how technology simply enhances learning, development, interactions, connections, and collaboration. We as educators need to incorporate technology more often and it as a tool to measure, assess, record, plan, and even share with others! We can teach ourselves and more importantly OUR STUDENTS how to use these hands on tools to enhance their overall life learning. We can provide meaningful and purposeful learning environments for our students with the vast range of tech tools that are available for us. From whiteboards, to cameras, to Ipads- these tools are all positive to the learning environment in ANY content area! Although, we as teachers need to take time to introduce to our students exactly HOW to use the various tools and WHY we bother using them! Creating or Using your schools tech team is a great resource to enhance your students minds, your own, or your school as a whole! It is also a great way to keep parents involved!! Technology in Education is nothing but a WIN-WIN!
Teaching in the Digital Age" by Brian Puerling was a pretty fascinating book. Who knew how much Technology could do for parents, students, and teachers!!? Overall Puerling stated how technology simply enhances learning, development, interactions, connections, and collaboration. We as educators need to incorporate technology more often and it as a tool to measure, assess, record, plan, and even share with others! We can teach ourselves and more importantly OUR STUDENTS how to use these hands on tools to enhance their overall life learning. We can provide meaningful and purposeful learning environments for our students with the vast range of tech tools that are available for us. From whiteboards, to cameras, to Ipads- these tools are all positive to the learning environment in ANY content area! Although, we as teachers need to take time to introduce to our students exactly HOW to use the various tools and WHY we bother using them! Creating or Using your schools tech team is a great resource to enhance your students minds, your own, or your school as a whole! It is also a great way to keep parents involved!! Technology in Education is nothing but a WIN-WIN!
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The web 2.0 tools I chose to vent about are VOKI and VIMEO. Lets begin with VIMEO. This is essentially "JUST LIKE YOUTUBE" but has a few differences. For starters, VIMEO has less adds down the side of the webpage as YouTube. VIMEO also has better quality videos that are HD. I seemed to notice that once I go onto YouTube I end up clicking the VIMEO style videos anyway because they are better for viewing. The only thing about VIMEO which is similar to YouTube is the random advertisements and additional videos that may pop up before or after you are done viewing a video. Often times these adds or additional video examples are inappropriate and have no censor what so ever. I prefer using VIMEO over YouTube solely because of the quality of the videos but I would use either. Nothing too exciting. VOKI
Voki is a very simple tech tool to use. It is basically a cartoon or character chosen that you can add sound/ words to. The cartoon or avatar that you choose will speak any text you write in the text box. For instance, you can choose an alien avatar and make it say something silly like "greetings student earthlings". The avatar will move its mouth to the words you are having it speak. I would personally use this for a very short introduction to a new lesson or project. I find it tough for the students to focus on because they are paying more attention to the animated character then what is actually being said by the character. I would use this as a quick attention getter at the beginning of class or maybe as a quick wrap up/close to the end of a period. Definitely more entertaining for the elementary level students but focus is lost after a few minutes. Voki also has a search box where you can search pre-made lessons or content area topics. There aren't too many for ART though. You can also record your OWN voice to really make your VOKI personalized for you and your students. Here is an autobiography I made about myself and my family using www.animoto.com This is a short video that includes moving pictures and music with a pre-planned out theme. Students can use these in any content area to make their own autobiographies, biographies about others or artists, videos on a specific topic, art term, movement, period, or even a technique. They can also just use this program to show off pictures of their own creations or things they simply may love. All in all, the program is free, easy to use, and easy to share! It is a no fail lesson that easily relates to technology AND the arts. WIN! I created a lesson for my 4th Grade Art students concerning the website tool www.tagxedo.com . The students were learning about Expression and Emotion in a piece of artwork. Through the use of tagxedo, the students were able to create a project that used literal text, color, and shape all in one to depict emotion. Throughout the completion of this lesson, students were asked to sketch, think, collaborate, compare, synthesize, act out, and categorize. Although this particular lesson focused on the use of Tagxedo, I also had to focus on incorporating at least 4 ways of differentiated instruction for my students. From the sketching and labeling, to the creating process and acting-my various students were all able to grasp the project in their own way of understanding. Tagxedo was a very simple website to use that allowed my students to be creative via the use of image and text together. They were using so many skills that it almost did not feel like learning to them!! The project was to be completed in one day where next time I will take 2-3 days as they could have used more time to save/print/share etc. The students really loved individualizing their final products and seeing all the different accomplishments and takes on one specific emotion. The students were able to see how there is not one right way to create art of the same focus or topic. I really enjoyed teaching this lesson and will definitely use it again in the future with a few adjustments. I would change the time constraint and allow students to either print out or add their final product to a collaborative google doc page of some sort to keep a collection for my students to refer to. The website was easy for my students to navigate and they really had fun "dressing up their words". All in all I think it was a success for using tagxedo for the first time in Art class!! Check out some of their accomplishments below!! Pinterest has been such a great addition to my teaching life!! I love every aspect of it from the ease of navigation, to the convenient organizational features!! Pinterest has saved me so many times I cannot thank it enough :) Not only is it free and easy to use, but there is an App as well!! It is basically a virtual corkboard that you "pin" ideas to. The ideas you would like to "pin" or save are organized by group titles that YOU create. For instance, I have an ART category, FOOD, Future Home/Wedding, and Exercise. Being able to organize your ideas and quickly being able to refer back to them is the best part. You can send pinned ideas to friends/co workers/etc. I am able to save links AND visuals to projects and search simple words/terms to find exactly what I may be looking for. I would say I use pinterest on a daily basis. It is great for teachers in any content area as well as just normal human beings :) You can search things from yoga, to science, to DIY crafts!! It is great for kids or parents to use as well. I can use it for all of my grade levels and even search specific art terms when trying to find a specific lesson or unit to focus on. You can "follow" people that may have similar categories or interests as you making it easier for you to find more and more pins! All you have to do is sign up, create categories and a username with picture, and begin pinning!! It is instant inspiration right at your fingertips! If you haven't created one, I highly suggest you do it ASAP! Above is a screen shot of the pinterest app on my phone. Download you app now!!! The instructional model I chose to explore was Internet Workshop. I found this instructional model the most entertaining because I could personally place my students in this type of practice. I can completely relate to this model of instruction concerning my 4th grade Art students. For starters, the workshop basically consists of students going out onto the Internet and gathering information on a specific topic/focus given to them. This is having the students use research skills. Next, students will be able to gather information on that specific topic. The students will then come back together to SHARE out their information gathered and findings. This research activity uses the students research skills, basic computer internet skills, as well as literacy and reading skills. The students can also work in groups to improve their collaboration skills. One challenge that I could possibly face would be an age appropriate topic that has appropriate internet images/informational findings via the internet. This topic or focus would have to be researched first by me to ensure that when the students go out on the internet on their own to research, they are not faced with inappropriate findings of a "similar" topic or focus. I think the one thing that drew me to this type of workshop over the others was that these can be open ended assignments for students. Essentially this is the same thing I am teaching the students in Art. There is not ONE answer or way to complete a specific project. The outcomes are endless!
As a project, I created an Informational video on "Texture in Art" to show my students for a project coming up. The video was created using Final Cut Pro software. This was a very difficult tool to use for the first time as there are many different alterations and steps to be done before making the video transitions seem smooth and effortless. I almost believe that I needed a workshop in this program before using it. It took ALOT of time and effort to do simple things like match up music with pictures and video. I think it is appropriate for any level and any teacher's content area although I do not recommend using it when in a time crunch. You can basically add music, voice, video, pictures, and written text. I think my final product was pretty successful although I feel as if I could have used a similar tool and have finished my project a lot sooner. I would definitely use a different program next time when trying to create a similar presentation. It looks very effortless as I mentioned above but it took WAY longer than expected to complete. If I were teaching possibly a high high-school level computer class then I would possibly teach this program to students. Other than that, I highly suggest teachers using this program with an instructor or someone else that already knows how to use the program well. I enjoy how the video is very high tech and can show my students how to make things using their own pictures and videos instead of Google images/videos. I do not suggest students using this software due to the difficulty and time factor. The video I created could technically be for any art class and grade level. The video focused on various textures in Art ranging from Soft and Rough, to Smooth and Bumpy. The video shows many artists that use texture in their artwork in addition to viewing texture in photography and nature. I think the overall product came out really well but the process is where I ran into the numerous problems and difficulties. In the end, the students really enjoyed viewing my video and I believe it helped them get a better sense of what Texture is. From the attention getting music- to the videos and images- the students were definitely engaged throughout the entire "digital story". To view the video on my YouTube channel simply click the link below. Enjoy :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFap4AfYrWo&list=UUA-AdU3b6wa5qopCUbHsGVQ&index=1 |