Week Eight: March 8-14 (QuizYourFriends)

The assignment we did today in class was first to..

1. Get in a group of 3.  
2. Your group will be responsible to come up with a creative commercial advertising a new invention of educational technology.  You may come up with your own props, script etc...  
3. For the first 20 minutes, brainstorm your ideas 
4. You will also come up with your own rubric of how you wish the assignment to be graded, provided that you have at least 5 criteria on a 1-4 scale rubric using Rubistar.com
5. Video should be 2-3 minutes long only.

We also did a quiz from the site of QuizYourFriends.com, where we had to create quizzes for our classmates to take. I choose mine on the facts about Cats. It was really interesting to know all these different facts on cats, and there are some that I really did not know.

If I was to rate this site, I would rate it as a 6. It was a fun site and assignment to do. I would not do anything differently. It was very user-friendly. My experience with the site was very good, I would not mind using this in my future classroom.

Week Six: March 1-7 (Pixton)

Today we will finish up with any additional web-quests that need presenting and then we will answer questions for the blog as well as posting pictures and screen-shots on your blog site.
We also took a look at a fun comic-creation website and gave some experience with story-boarding and heard ideas of how the site can be used in connection with a lesson.  


First we had to..1) Log onto www.pixton.com and sign up for "fun" account (not school).
2) Create a 3-6 frame comic that would promote technological literacy to students.
3) Use as many characters and editing tools as possible.
4) Share with the rest of the class and explain also how you might use this site as a learning tool for your future classroom.  How will you connect it to a lesson? Explain your ideas!

We were given the option to work by ourselves or with 1 (ONE only) partner.

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate the assignment as an 8. I would do the assignment again. I would not do the assignment differently. Just wished we had more time to work on it because I know the comic would be a lot more animated. My experience with using the software was good, it was very user friendly and the challenges at first was it was complicated to get the cartoon to what we want them to look like. Overall, I would use this site in my future classroom.

Week Five: February 16-22 (Webquest)

Today in class, we worked on our webquest sites. I partnered up with Loremel and we came up with the cutest idea have our topic be about "The Teenage Life of an American Butterfly". Our original idea was the life cycle of a butterfly. We logged on to Zunal.com. We worked on the site and tried to complete it. On a scale of 1-10, I would rate the site as being an 8. I actually enjoyed working on this site. It was really interesting to include videos and what not. If I had to do things differently, I would not. I like how the site was. It was really easy to use. My experience with the software turned out great. I can picture myself using this site in my future classroom. It was very user-friendly. I would use this site again. There really wasn't any challenges upon completing this assignment. I would use this site in my classroom is create lesson plans for the students with different topics to choose from. Once the students have understood the concept of the lesson, I would not mind having the students create their own lesson plans just like how we did in class. Overall, this was a great assignment to use!

Week Sixteen: April 26- May 2 (Final Week of Classes)

Learning Language in the Digital Era on Prezi

The video above is a presentation of our teach back in the using technology to assist language learning. Feel free to watch and scroll around to learn more about language learning in the Digital Era. This site Prezi, would be helpful to me as a future teacher because of using a paper copy lesson plan, you can do it online. There are many features to choose from to make learning fun and educational. Some of the assignment ideas for using this site is being able to create a lesson plan. Have online assignment for the students etc. I would rate this software as a 10 because it was very convenient. It would be great to have fast internet access to be on the site. If I had to do it again, I don't think I would have done my presentation slide any differently. I like the way it turned out. But one thing I would like better is to be able to show the videos from the presentation. The given software was very user-friendly. I would use it again. Some of the challenges that I was facing was how the site was made. It gave me a headache because it would be moving around a lot. But overall, this was a great site to use and I would use this as a future reference or activity in my future classroom.

Week Twelve: April 19-25 (Prezi)

Today in class, we discussed our final exam teach back presentation. We went through the presentation rubric and other points that are needed to be in our Teach back. The two sites that we are to choose from Prezi and Slideshare. The website that we decided to use is Prezi. It's a more up to date site where you can down load videos. Our topic is: Leaning Language in the Digital Era. So right now we're just putting together our ideas and brainstorming on what to lay down for our teach back. Since we're working on our teach back as our final exam, it's helpful to me as a future teacher to make lesson plans more easier to understand and be able to implement them in the classroom. We're looking at videos on YouTube to help put into our presentation. So far, we're just gathering ideas. I would rate it as being an 8 for now.

Week Eleven: April 12- 18 (Weebly)

My Weebly Online Portfolio

The assignment was a personal site where you describe yourself from all the different areas such as: experience, education, skills and awards, hobbies and interests, references and an additional link of our very own blog site as well. You fill in all those categories with your information, together with a picture for  a more visual understanding.

The benefits of having an online portfolio is that anyone can be able to access your site using the internet. It totally beats a paper copy of your resume. You can be more creative with the site, while with a paper copy is usually just plain and boring. You can tweak your site to your own individuality as well as how to make the site more educational for your future job applications.

Some of the features that I liked with this site is the different templates available. I know that we were supposed to make it educationally based, but it really would be more of yourself adding a picture to whatever description you came up with for your information links. I liked how the links were just based on simple things about ourselves. It is very straight to the point and really easy to understand.

One challenged that I faced was editing the layout. I added the information and picture onto the site, but I really didn't know how to fix up the setting. Like I wanted the information to by on the right hand side of the page, and the picture on the left hand side of the page but it was not cooperating with me. So I basically just left my information on top, while the pictures were left on the bottom. It didn't look messy at all. I just would have preferred to be able to change the setting around to how I would have liked it to be.

I would use Weebly in my future classroom, by having my students be able to do what we did in class, personalize their own online portfolio for future job applications instead of wasting time on typing up a boring resume. I know that the students would be able to enjoy more creating their online portfolio with the different features available. I would also have them present it in class and maybe if it were up to them to publish it and use it as a future reference as well.

Week Ten: March 22-28 (Multi-media Movie)

The assignment for the class was to get into groups to create a multi-media movie about an educational technology. I worked in a group of 3 with Bonny and Loremel. We were given a flip camera to help record the movie. It was really fun using the flipster and coming up with really creative ideas for an educational device. We chose to have a device called "Smart Speed Athletics" where learning and being fit can be fun all at the same time. It was pretty cool to come up with different settings as well as trying to be persuasive as possible.

Some features that we used for the movie was the switching from one slide to the next, it's somewhat hard to really explain what to do but I know it was pretty fun coming up with the different sound effects and the different slides. We used different background sounds as well as the news liner under the news reporting. I really liked working with the different features you can use with the movie maker. One thing I did not really like was there not being a pause button for the flipster. But it was okay I guess because we had time to edit our movies. There was a lot of time consuming with the editing, but it was worth it. So many different varieties to choose from. I personally really like other class' video as well. It was a taste of different personalities.

I would definitely use this iMovie in my classroom. The students will be able to be creative just like the rest of the class has made and also it can help students be able to handle technology at different levels. Other lessons I would probably use this as would be powerpoint presentations, slideshows, creating movies as well as recording any important event in the classroom. Using the flip cams were fun. The quality was really nice as well. One thing that would be cool is if the cams had other special features like the background effects. Different scenes or types of frame settings for the movie.

My overall rating for the assignment would be an 8. I really enjoyed working with my partners and creating an cool invention "Smart Speed Athletics". Definitely something I would consider purchasing!