Sam’s blog

I thought for my final post i might search for some pictures on blogging, but i found something much better. I came across a students blog. His name is eddie and his blog is connnected to that of his classmates, he has called it Eddies Rainbow of Thoughts. He has work samples from class throughout his blog and has even posted a great mindmap on what his thoughts on blogging.

I thought this was great as it encompasses all i have been talking about and shows just how much students can enjoy blogging.

Hope you like it.

Tim made an interesting post on an online program called Mathletics. It is an interactive mathematics program for students.

“……It involves mathematical activities and problems which they have to solve online. There is also an emlemnt of competing with other students all over the world. One child today was telling me that they had beaten someone from Japan last night and also played against someone from Singapore.”

It sounds like a good way to approach Maths, opposed to simply pen and paper and the international aspect of it makes it more enjoyable I think.

It sounds great and I am interesting in trying it out, thanks for the post Tim!

Seeing as i had so much fun with the program i thought i would share some of the photos we took.

Enjoy!!!

Coloured Pencil Effect

Bulge Effect

Seeing as i shared some digital artwork, i thought i may as well share my own, its not great but it was my first attempt.

It was done last year in visual Arts and was made using Photoshop on an i-mac. It is a self portrait of myself, and it required me to scan a background and then use photoshop to put in photos of my self and make layers and use filters to change the appearance of the picture, and then flatten it down to make it a single layer. It was not easy at first but as i became more familiar with the program i enjoyed it.

Here it is…..

photoshop2.jpg

Creating digital artworks is not an easy task as I learnt last year in visual arts. Yet it is a different way to do art, and encourages students who aren’t confident drawers or painters to create artworks.

I have a cousin who is a digital artisit, his art is quite unusual but these artworks cantake months to complete due to the skill required to complete them. While I would not expect my students to be able to complete these kinds of artworks I would use them as inspiration for creating digital artworks.

Have a look for yourself at Vic Baretto’s site to see some amazing artworks and possibly get some ideas!

In the last 2 weeks, i got some insight into some of the problems you can face when using computers, and particularly the internet!

My internet was being really slow, which sometimes happens in the last few days of the month, but it was not yet this time and i was getting really frustrated with it! When I was trying to access Edublogs and UTSonline, the pages would not open.

So after trying to fix my internet settings and contacting my service provider, it became evident that my internet was just reeeaaaalllly slow, and it would not open the pages at all. This made it reallly frustrating for me, and I realise that this could be a problem that could happen in classrooms or at home with students which could make using the internet in homework tasks and assignments difficult, so it is important to take these issues into consideration when preparing tasks, as well as when you are planning and completing assigments.

So this means that its going to be a busy week of blogging for me!

This is an i-movie made by Talia and I on what we believe to be a metaphor for learning

Download Video: Posted by Sam29 at TeacherTube.com.

On Wednesday we made i-movies based on  what we believed to be a metaphor for learning. To begin with we searched for images on metaphors for learning. We chose to use an image we found  of a construction site as well as an image of the sky. we belived a construction site to be a metaphor for learning because of the levels and process involved.

We used these images in i-movie, having had experience with this program i thought that making a 30second movie would be quite simple, however we had to use a new version of the program which took some getting used to. We added voice overs as well as a video introducing ourselves in our movie. We also chose to include background music.

The end result is not great, but we were happy with the result, perhaps finding a picture that had a better resolution would  have madethe result better as the picture looks a bit distorted but overall we were happy with our result.

taliasam29.mp3

On monday night our homework was to write half a page about either our great past or our wildest dreams. I chose to write about my passion for learning. We were then to use this as a script for our podcast in Tuesdays session. This was a bit difficult at first as it is quite challenging to record yourself talking, but once we got over the initial embarrassment  it was fine. We used Garageband to record our podcast and had to use different techniques to achieve a clear recording.

On our first class, i was unsure what to expect from this subject. I chose this subject as an elective as i had enjoyed previously completing the mandatory e-learning subject. I do not consider myself to be challenged in the area of technology and computers as i have being using them since i was in primary school myself. I do not really find technology to be challenging to use. However, i do realise that technology is constantly changing and no matter how confident i am with technology there is always room for improvement and new skills to be learnt and updated. Also, i own a PC not a mac, and i have to admit that it was a bit of a challenge to become familiar to the way macs work in the e-learning subject, and i am aware that different schools own different computers and it is important for me to become familiar with both systems and not limit my skills to only one. These are the reasons why i chose to enrol in this subject, however i came to class not really knowing what to expect.

With the name Current Issues and Applications in Educational Computing, it was my understanding that this subject would simply focus on issues in computing. However, i soon realised that i would learn many new skills, and how to use different applications in my teaching.

In our first class, we learnt about blogs, and created our own blogs on Edublogger. We learnt how to manage our blogs and alter the appearance of our page. We also learnt how to create a post and how to upload files onto our blogs. I found this task to be quite easy as it is not too different from what we completed last year in our learning portfolios. However, this application allows us to modify our pages to suit us easier with the pre-designed themes. I chose the bluebird theme for my page. We saw some examples of blogs also and i think they could be of great use in classrooms, as students can use them as a way of creating an online portfolio which they can keep a record of their work and achievements and they can access it at anytime and show it to their family and friends, class blogs could also be made as a way to record the class achievements and blogs.

Another application we were introduced to on Monday was Photobooth. I had never seen this program before and i have to admit it was really  fascinated by it. As the Macs have a built in camera, all you have to is launch the program and look at the camera to take photos of yourself, we soon discovered that we could also put effects on the photos, so that before we even took the photo we could see what it would look like with the effect. This did provide us with many laughs and we found it to be quite entertaining, maybe a bit too entertaining! I think this application would be good for students to take photos of themselves, either to put on a blog, display work they have done, or even use the effects to take photos they can use as inspiration for art activities. It could also be useful for students who do not have access to digital cameras, as they can take photos at school if needed.

We were also introduced to LAMS which is a site that allows you to create online learning sequences, we would be using this site later to complete our first assessment task.  I think this site is a great idea and can promote independence as well as an opportunity for students to become more familiar and confident with technology. It provides teachers with the opportunity to integrate computers in their normal lessons, which makes the lessons more interactive and enjoyable for students.

So for a first day, i learnt quite a lot, and got many ideas on what i could do in my classroom to integrate technology more.

Hi. my name is Samantha. I am currently studying Primary Teaching at UTS. As part of my course I am studying Current Issues in Educational Computing. I feel that this subject will be useful to me as a teacher as i will hopefully learn more about technology and how to use it with children. As technology has become such a major aspect of out lives today. Technology is constantly changing and improving itself, and I feel it is important for me to keep myself informed in this area. I hope to learn how to implement computers and technology into my classroom teaching.