Digital Story Week 3

Today we worked on day 3 of Digital Stories. Unfortunately I was not at class and at a funeral for my Uncle Phil.


So using the classroom website it said to keep working on our digital story for field. My partner and I are doing ours on the Roseta stone for Egypt. He wanted to use a program on his computer at home. I love to learn new things, so I am excited to learn about the program he uses. I feel like using photostory or imovie will be something to benefit me more in the classroom. That is why I am using them to make another digital story and learing the ins and outs of those programs. I think that it does not really matter if I mess up as long as I learn from my mistakes. I am planning on teaching the cooperating teacher imovie since she has a mac.


This means that I am probably going to teach my students things about technology, I know that this class has increased my schema on Technology. As much as I am learning I have to keep in the back of my mind that todays elementary students probably know more about technology then I did before this class. Last week after the funeral we helped my grandparents hook up there computer. My grandpa was shaking the computer tower looking for the mouse to fall out. He said people told him they come with mice, when I showed him the mouse he thought it ran in the tower to make things work. I know that things learned today are way more advanced than my grandparents day. Things we have just shock them.

Digital Story Week 2

Today was week 2 of Digital Stories.

It was really interesting to learn about creative commons. Being yearbook editor in High School I knew about cc, but I never knew what it really was. I was under the impression it had the meaning carbon copy. This lesson was really helpful because now I know what it means and how to find things with and open cc licenses. Now in my other classes when I have to use images off the web I am very careful to use ones with an open cc license. I believe this is a very valuable thing to know in the classroom and it is something I am going to teach my students. It is something that they are going to need to be aware of everyday.

Well knowing this changed my schema cause I totally had an experience of disequlibrium. Now I know what cc really is. Knowing this information will help me abide by cc laws and only use cc approved things in the classroom or going to proper places to get un cc things approved for class use. I believe I can give my students a similar assignment as what we did where they learn a thing about cc and teach it to others in the class.

Digital Story Week 1

This week was week one of our digital stories that is a key assignment for the program.


I am excited to be learning this as a teacher this will be one more trick to add to my bag of tricks. I believe we are doing this as a way to hook our students into the content we are working on at the time. I was looking for a video clip on youtube for creative arts and different ones I was watching would say this is our vidcast or podcast and I found it interesting to hear that because before I learned what those were in class I was like wow there is a technology term again, but now I can say there is a technology term and through schema I know what it is with out pulling out a dictionary. 

I believe that this will benefit my future students, but when I show it to them with how advanced they are today they will probably increase my schema on the subject. I just hope that my Elementary students wont be more knowledgeable about stuff then me. When I was at Snow I was required to take a computer class and it was a shame the professor would come in and we would do powerpoint presentations and the professor would not know how to view a presentation. I kept thinking and she is getting paid to teach us. I felt like I was doing more teaching then she was. I kept wondering why do I have to pay for this class I am not learning anything and not benefiting from this at all. This was right when I was out of high school, but now I dont know where things are located in powerpoint with the changes. I am sorry to say if I were teaching I would have looked at it before class and figured out how it worked not just showed up and said the school wants me to teach this but how about you show me what you know. I might have done something like that to see what they know but I feel like I was not learning anything from that class. I would hope when I teach that when students leave they at least feel like they learned something from the class or anything at all. I felt like I never learned anything from that class.

Vidcast Week 2

This week and last week we worked on Vidcasts. My partner wanted to use a program at home so I joined Shellie and Debbie and they chose to do there research on the underground railroad. It was interesting doing this as a teacher in training because I have read the quilt books but doing this really hit home.

I think it hit home finding out about each square and what it all means for those slaves heading for freedom. Doing this I got to put myself in the slaves shoes for a bit, without all the horrible things they went through and learn more about the under ground railroad. I think that we did this Vidcast more for the sake of learning new content and things we have missed over the years. I know that things my elementary teachers wanted our class to learn are different from my beliefs of what my future students should learn. I was also glad like I said last week to work with a group using Apple Computers because of all the things that I learned from the apple computer when my husband bought us a new computer last Monday night he got an apple. He was as excited about the cool things that the computer could do as I was. It does help that he took a computer programing class in High School that allowed him to learn Java, C+, and other things. I think that this technology will be a great way to review content for a test or to present new content. Like I said I have heard about the underground railroad, but doing this was more of a review of content for me and it also allowed me to learn new material.

Like I said before this technology will help my future students because in the event that a sub is present all the sub will have to do is play the video and the students are in a way learning the content the way I want it presented. Although every persons learning style is different, the material could be presented in a way that I would do it myself if I was there. This information only increased my technology drawer  in my schema and I learned this on an Apple so that pretty much doubled my knowledge because I got to learn Vidcasts and some of the ins and outs of Apple Computers.
This information will let me teach this knowledge to my future students and as a type of assessment I can have them create one on a curtain topic from what they create i will be able to see if they really know the content or just coasting by pretending they know the information. I know teachers believed I knew the content. For example in Fifth Grade my teacher had us do those comparing and contrasting things where she would give us a word and say it is to another word like this word is to blank. I never knew what she wanted. I would ask and she would do the first one with me and still not explain it. I just coasted by by using a partner for help. I was crafty in choosing my partner, I chose the one that I did because she would always get the answers right. She would be like I have this what did you put, but I never really had it done so I would just give her a word and she would say that I don't think that is right. it was not until Social Studies Methods class this semester where I actually understood what she wanted back then.

Vidcast Week 1

Today in class we started working on Vidcasts.

My partner had a program at home he wanted to do his on so I joined Shellie and Debbie. I am kind of glad I got to join them though cause I am more familiar with PC's and both of them have Mac's. I am getting the opportunity to play on a Mac and learn things I did not know about Mac's. I believe this will help me in my future classroom because most of the teachers I have observed use Mac's, so I am learning to use a Mac and increasing my schema about Mac's. Also the things I learned about the Mac were so cool I had to tell someone.  So I told my hubsand who wanted to get a new computer cause he wants more up to date stuff we have 2003 stuff on our computers. Now he wants to get a Mac. I will agree with that it will be cool to have a Mac and get familliar with things that I am not familliar with.

I was on yearbook staff in high school and knew the PC's pretty well but with the new 2007 stuff I have trouble finding things where they were before in 2003. Plus the look is totally set up different.  The first time I used the lab to print something out it took at least 20 minutes to find the print button. Now due to incresed schema it take less time. I only have to use it when my compatabilty pac on my computer wont pull up things created in a new version of docs.