Open Source Applications

I looked at three different open source applications. I explored Zoho, Picnik, GIMP and Phixr. I am also familiar with Picasa and Open Office. The school I work at only uses Open Office. We no longer have access to Microsoft programs,althought we do have Adobe Photoshop. We also use Picasa to organize and print the photos we have taken throughout the year. Here are my thoughts:

Zoho: This application seemed to be pretty comprehensive. I played around with it some. It seemed to offer many user friendly applications in one area. I am wondering if a school could operate on this system as we are operating on Open Office. It has definitely saaaaved the district money. It is interesting to think that you can share documents instead of emailing them. I also found that you coudl work collabratively on a document.

Picnik: I really like this application. It was pretty straight forward and very similiar to Picasa. It seemed to have all the editing tools that I needed and was easy to download and get started. As with other applications, I could send it the edited photo to my flickr account.

Phixr: This is another photo editing application and is the least favorite of the one's I sampled. It didn't seem to have the tools I was familiar with although I could send it to my flicker account as I could in Picnik. It was fairly simple to download my picture and was just as fast as other editing programs I have used.

Open Office: As I said before, our district no longer uses Microsoft Word, but only uses Open Office for our word processing needs. It did take some getting used to, but most of the applications are similiar to Microsoft. It doesn't really offer a user friendly way to make a calendar or produce labels, but it can be done. I do all my lessons and newsletter in this program and it works fine. It has saved our district some money. It will convert other programs to Open Office as well. It has worked out well and I use it at home also.

Picasa: I do love this photo editing program. It is user friendly and has all the tools I need. It has some other features that I didn't notice in the other programs. I made a collage of my students to put on my web page and it allows me to do quick slideshow. This is great! My students love it when we come back from an event and I can show them the pictures right away. The slide show does not allow me to play music with the pictures, but it allows the students to see the pictures quickly.

What was your favorite activity of the semester and why?

It is hard to choose just one activity! I enjoyed creating the blog and the web page! I also enjoyed learning about a variety of programs! As a representative of the District Technology Group and am constantly wondering what type of programs are available and how these programs could help us with educating our students and preparing them for the job market. I realize that I teach first grade, but you would be amazed at what they can accomplish! I really enjoyed being exposed to new programs, especially those of the Open Source nature. My district is all for using technology, but it is even better if it won't cost them any money! Thanks for a great experience!

Reflection 13

What most made you say (or think) "that's so neat!" Why?

I was mostly connected to The Application of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Performance Tracking. The Application of Artificial Intelligence was the I-PUSH and I-PULL. It is exciting to think of a technology that can "actively guide learners toward achieving expertise within a given content area". The idea that it could diagnose the learners errors is GREAT because then the instruction can be designed to meet the individual needs of the students!

The Advanced Performance Tracking is almost more than I can comprehend. It is amazing to think that one can improve a task by the diagnoses of a computer. This seems to be most relevant for those who desire to improve their performance in a sport. I am interested to know how this would benefit the world of education.Any ideas?

Reflection 12

Describe two tangible take-aways that you think you could apply in your work, In other words, what are two ways you believe you can apply ideas in this chapter to improve your teaching/instructional design work?

This chapter was so interesting to me. I really connected with their explanation of how the brain works in the section, "How Humans Learn The Cognitive Components of Learning". Since having some training in the Garner's Multiple Intellingences, I have always been quite curious as to how the brain works. This was a fairly simplistic outline of how the brain learns. This information is imparative, if we are to teach children effectively! As I was reading about the visual media, I kept thinking about the way I use technology and if there are other ways I could use it to help studens reach their potential. I found the section that talked about the students prior knowledge as an important one. This is something I will keep in mind as I work with my first grade students and my colleagues. I have been working this summer to help integrate the use of technology into our curriculum and have been using some of the concepts in the book to help me design lessons. Teachers can only use technology in which they have been exposed to and had experience with! As I right the lessons, I have to keep my audience in mind, making sure they are working within their comfort zone and at the same time stretching them a bit. I am also excited to share the information that stated taht the Rich Media benefits the low-knowledge learner. In the past, I have worked with kids who struggle in writing. I am going to be looking for a program (tutorial?) that show/teaches kids how to hold their pencil, what their posture should look like and how to form the letters. I am wondering if with the right media instruction if these kids will be able to make the connection they are lacking. This will be an interesting experiment because the act of writing is also a very developmental activity. A student needs to have the ability to grasp the pencil correctly before any of the other things can take place. I loved this chapter! I am excited to see where media will take my students (first grade and colleagues)next year!

Screencasting

Well, I am quite excited about screencasting. I downloaded Camtasia and watched the tutorial at the beginning of the download. Unfortunately, I did not make the actual tutorial. The program I needed to download the images were at my school. I actually thought of two applications where this program would come in handy. One is to make a tutorial for my first grades that taught them how to do our Acclerated Reader program. This is a program were children read a book at their level and then take a comprehension test on the computer. Many schools use this program. At the first grade level is where many students are introduced to the program. The tutorial would take them through the steps of how to get logged on. This may not seem to difficult at first glance, but we are a big school and there are lots of steps involved.

The benefit of having this tutorial is that each student could view it when they are ready. First graders vary in their abilities. Some are ready the first day of school, some in January and some in April. The tutorial would allow the student to view it when they are ready or for review.


The second idea was to make a tutorial for our staff members as they learn how to add pages to their Schoolwires account. Schoolwires does provide some tutorials for the basic stuff, but it would be nice to add some that would include some of the more fun and creative stuff.

Google Webpage Design

I have to admit, I was feeling nervous about creating this webpage. I have created a page for my school but was feeling overwhelmed at the thought of doing it without any support from my colleagues at school. As I begun the process, I found that after I got signed in the process was very similiar to the design my school chose. I think I have mentioned it before, but we are using Schoolwires as our webpage design. It should be active in July. For this assignment, I added a direct link to my page and then another link that takes you to our school website as it looks now.

http://llballard23.googlepages.com/ballardboulevard

I would not use this with students because it would be too difficult for my first graders. At first, I thought it was easy to use, but then I got into a problem were I was finished with my design and it would not let me save. I went to google help and apparently it has happened several other people. The computer thinks that your are disconnected from the internet, but you really aren't. As I searched, no one had seemed to solve the problem yet. I had to start over

Reflection 11

Reflect on what you perceive to be your own areas of strength and what competencies you feel you need to work hardest to develop given your professional goals.State and describe at least three compentencies you'd like to develop and why.

Strengths:

I think my strengths lie in the fact that I am not afraid to try things I am not familiar with. I know enough to figure out most applications if I am given enough time to do them. This comes in handy in the public education field because training doesn't always happen.My school has implemented several programs such as photo story, open office, novell:groupwise, Infinite Campus, picasa, Schoolwires and several others.One of my other strengths is that I enjoy helping my colleagues with learning how to use and implement them into their curriculum. They seem comfortable to ask me for help and if I don't know how to do something, I will try to figure it out. I guess I could categorize this as staff development.

Weakness:

My weaknesses lie in the fact that I have been exposed to so little! This class has forced me to explore new programs and think about curriculum development in a new way. There is so much for me to learn. The hard part, but yet exciting, is that I will never know everything in the field because of the way it constantly changes.

Competencies:

Training Manager
I would love to develop my competencies as a training manager as helping my colleagues is one of my passions. I desire to help them be excited about the technology that is available to them to enhance their communication and their teaching. I am currently on the TAG (Technology Advisory Group)team and am developing curriculum for first grade. The development of the curriculum is challenging,but what I really enjoy is sharing it with the staff.

Instructional Designer
Out of necessity, I would like to develop the skills needed to better design. As a teacher in the public sector, we often design our own lessons and put together a curriculum that has been mandated. This isn't my passion because organization and making sure every aspect is considered is difficult for me. I often can see the end goal, but have trouble figuring out how I will get people there.

Evaluate the Design
As a classroom teacher, I always find myself questioning why we do thing the way we do. Is it best for kids? Does it make sense for the teacher? Are students learning the key concepts? Are the key concepts clearly defined? My experience with this is only in the education sector. I have served on several committees that try to redesign the way things are working. It seems like we are constantly doing things in a trial and error basis. I would like to work on how to do this with the methods introduced in the chapters we have read and become a leader in this area.