Week 4 Web 2.0

This week I have to reflect on Podcasts and screencasts. At this point I cannot say to much. I have watched the screencasts that were done by fellow students in my class. I think that they are great. I love how they are interactive and that you can actually "see" what is going on. The "voice" part however was rather dull and boring. I guess that more excitement and pazazz can be added as the used gets more comfortable. When it came to me using the screencast I have had nothing but trouble. I can't even utilize the screencast website. I will continue to look for other options.

Week 3 Web 2.0

This week I worked with RSS feeds. I have to say that personally I am unimpressed. I can easily see the use of this tool for some people. There are a lot of people out there who need updates and important information that changes quickly. I, however, am not one of those people. I have a couple of sites on there that I check occasionally but I do not see the need to check them that often that I would require this tool.
I also have been playing with my Twitter account. I must say, and excuse me for being blunt, what a stupid concept. It is like an IM but even more annoying! I don't expect anyone to care what I'm doing and on the other hand I don't care about what anyone else is doing. If you have something important to tell me... for Gods sake... pick up the phone.

Week 1 Web 2.0

This week I did a blog comparison. On one hand I did learn a lot but on the other I did not. All blogs seems to be pretty similar with slight differences that clearly impact others more than myself. I use blogs for the purposes of this class and for that reason only. Occasionally, I will read a blog online but honestly not that often. I personally do not care much for the opinions of others. Id rather use the internet for research on factual information. Some people use blogs regularly and/or for business and rely on the content. For those people the technical applications are important. I guess these tools are similar to anything in life. Some things are suitable for some and others are not.

Week 2 Web 2.0

The number one topic that I could utilize the most this week is the nice list of photo sharing sites. I recently took upon the job of yearbook coordinator at work. This has proven to be a bigger job than I could have ever imagined. To make my job easier I have created a panel of students to help take pictures and organize the yearbook. They also get the privilege of editing the photos before they actually paste them into the yearbook. I personally work with Picasa to do this however I am not that impressed with it. My students seem to like the Photobucket site and another introduced me to a site called Picknic. This site serves as an editing site as well as an online storage site. Overall I am impressed with a lot of the online photo sites.

Week 5 Story

This week I really enjoyed making the Petcha Kutcha. I have learned that 20 seconds is actually a reasonable amount of time to explain a slide. I found that it was actually more time that I initially needed. I found myself going back so that I could fill in the slides with more of my voice. I believe that Petcha Kutcha was an excellent way to create my presentation: an autobiography. However, I teach science and I feel that 4 minutes is just not enough time to explain some things. I believe that it is effective only of used at the right time. 

As far as the rubric is concerned, I decided to use Rubistar. I use this site a lot because it is free and I can customize the rubrics as needed. Although, generally I find that I do not need to make many changes. 

Week 4 Story

I can go on and on forever about how great Prezi is. The concept is great! It is not like PowerPoint where we would have 58 slides. Everything is located on one page! It is interactive for both the teacher and the students. It was very simple to create and the navigation is easy. The one downfall that I can see is that there is not much offered to make the presentation more aesthetically engaging. What I mean by that is there is a lack of background designs and the text feature is seriously bland. Why are there only three fonts available for this feature? Other than these two quirks, I think the program is great. I can't wait to use it in my classroom.

Week 3 Story

This week I learned about a lot of new programs. My personal favorite was animoto. This is a great way to make quick presentations that can easily be personalized. Too bad the site is not free!

I also leaned about presentation principles that make the presentations more aesthetically pleasing and more importantly more manageable to teach and learn. While reviewing these principles I learned a lot about myself. All along I though that my presentations were done well when in actuality they could use some work. My slides need to be slimmed down a bit and I could include handouts for my students. My issue is that my students will not utilize the handouts nor will they pay attention to me if they are not required to follow along. Any ideas, please share. ..