The ghosts and ghouls of Halloween came out to try and scare me away from investigating some emerging technology, but they did not prevail. This last week I had the opportunity to explore some up-and-coming technological tools and write up some reviews via my own wiki page that I created. The tools I investigated where Qtopia.com: a platform that offers activities, games, avatars, homework access, and online grading and Visual.ly: a portal for creating and sharing infographics and data visualizations. Both technologies had their purposes. Qtopia was setup to hit the ground running today for a teacher which was great. Lesson plans and activities where easy to search for and download. Visual.ly, on the other hand, has wonderful potential to be a great tool for a teacher, but it needs a little bit of time to develop it's technology so the common teacher can create some visually stunning infographics. To see the thorough write-up go to the following link:
http://squelette.wikispaces.com/Mr.+Quelette%27s+Homepage
Prior to this past week, I was able to assemble an interactive Powerpoint presentation and develop my own movie which I uploaded to Youtube.
Powerpoints I had done in the past but this was no normal Powerpoint presentation. This one required the incorporation of non-linear links, web links, and animations. It was a great way to expand my understanding of the capabilities that hide within the Powerpoint software. I believe Powerpoint will become one of the more popular tools for me to create my instructions. In my recent field experience, my mentor teacher composed every lesson on Powerpoint and uploaded the file to Smart Notebook for use on the Smart Board. I imagine I may take a similar approach if I have access to and wish to leverage the benefits of a Smart Board.
The movie making experience proved to be an interesting one. I'm not going to provide a link to the movie for good reason...I'm not really that proud of it. I quickly discovered from the start that it is not easy to create a respectable movie with an older, slower computer which runs an outdated version of iMovie. In addition, when you lack certain peripherals that aid in the movie making process like webcams, microphones, and external video cameras or do not possess screen capture software, the movie making process becomes a genuine challenge. I pulled something together, but the production quality was poor at best. Movie making can be a great tool to engage your students, especially if you have them create the movies, but again, they would have to have access to the right tools to make it work. In the future, I will only attempt to create a movie if I hold those proper tools and have a guaranteed successful plan in place. Otherwise, I'll simply search the web to find a similar movie created by someone else. Chances are I will find something that fulfills most of my expectations and in the process spare a ton of brain cells and save money on Ibuprofen.
Is it Thanksgiving yet? I need a break...and some turkey.
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