Last edtech blog

Last day of class and we are finishing up our claymation projects. Actually, since Amy was the technology expert, she had the resposibility of getting all of the pictures onto the computer and create the pictures into a mini movie. I commend her in her efforts by taking on most challenging part of the project. Overall, I have learned a lot from this education technology class. In the beginning of the course, the only thing I used the computer for was to check my e-mail, research, writing papers and downloading music. The essentials for what I was doing. I know that technology is advancing everyday, and that means that most of the young children coming into public schools are very literate when it comes to computers. My three nieces, who are just starting to go to school already know their way around the internet. A friend of mine informed me that her fourth grade class has a set time in their day to be on the computer. This day in age is about technology and it is essential for teachers, and future teachers like myself to be knowledgeable about the subject. I feel that it is important for us to know this information because these students are going to be coming to us about new information, and it would be better if we were able to help them in some way. Or at least point them in the right direction. So . . . overall, I feel that this class taught me a lot about the computer and all the cool stuff you can do on it. In one of my other blogs, I mentioned that photoshop was my favorite program. I had so much fun doing the pictures and I know that I will be using it time and time again.

Claymation

Claymation. For those of you that haven't done this before, let me warn you: it is very tedious. This is a project that was assinged for my education technology class. Claymation is basically making a mini video through taking digital pictures and then transferring them onto the computer for the final product: a movie. Even though I had to be very patient for this assignment, it was actually more entertaining than I thought it would be. The first thing that my group had to do was think of a story. After the brainstorming process, we had to break out the play-dough. Okay, I haven't played with play-dough since the days of elementary school. The texture and smell of the stuff automatically brought me back to those childhood days. Since our theme of the movie was sharing, we decided to make the movie about a little girl, who gets all of the clowns balloons. When she recieves the balloons, there are so many that she floats away in the sky. The little girl is very scared but she realizes that if she lets the balloons go, she will gradually head back to the ground. Left with one balloon, she sees a little boy on the ground and gives him her last balloon. After the girl leaves, the little boy sees the sad clown without any balloons, and ends up giving the one balloon back to the clown. In order to make this movie happen, we had to create all of the characters and props from the play-dough. When the props were finished, we then had to take pictures of these characters' movements. In order for it to look like a motion picture, we had to slowly move the props, and each movement called for a different picture. It is a very long process just to get a sixty second clip. The project is not quit finished yet, but I am very excited to see the finished product after all of our work that we did today.

Progress

This is the end of the third week of my education class. As I said before, I didn't have much experience when it came to technology, but to my surprise, I have been improving . . . slowly. I have become very fond of photoshop. I have never used this program before and it is very entertaining. For anyone who doesn't know what this is, photoshop is a program where you can take pictures and digitally enhance them. This can be from getting the red out of people's eyes, making an image sharper, and to even cutting and pasting people into a picture that they were never in. As I'm telling you this, it seems easier than it is. In fact, it is quite easy, the hard part is remembering where all of the tools are. When you get that figured out, it gives you free range to manipulate pictures all you want. This is not just limited to digital photos, as most of you know there are such things as scanners. So this means we are able to take old photos and enhance them so they are sharper than when they were taken in the first place.
Powepoint is another program that I am learning more and more about. Yes, I have used powerpoint in presentations in the past, but they were all very basic. I was never taught how to use it in high school, so when I went to college, I taught myself the basics of the program. This class was able to teach me how to make the powerpoint more exciting. I finally learned how to make words fly in and out, pictures fading, and even putting sounds within the slide show. Now all I have to do is practice, and try to make my presentations more interesting, because no one wants to sit through a lecture where the powerpoint has a basic outline on it.

My ed tech

Technology has never been a very big part of my life. I was first introduced to computers in the ninth grade where I was required to take a keyboarding class. This was actually the first time that I had used a computer. That year I took keyboarding was the last year of the "old" computers. I'm not sure exactly what kind of computers they were, but all I remember is the screen was black and the letters were green.

It was the next year when my mother created an e-mail account for me. We did not have a computer at home at the time but I was able to use the computers at school and the university for e-mail and the purposes of typing papers. In addition with using the Internet for research purposes, these were the only things that I would do on the computer.

Fastforward, three years when I am attending college. I am still solely using the Internet and computer for e-mail and research purposes. But, I am forced to learn how to use Powerpoint because most of the presentations are required to use this type of style. I used this program throughout school but I don't consider myself an expert on it. It is not until my senior year in college when I finally learn how to download music. I was forced to learn how to do this because I bought an i-pod. I have broadened my range a bit with the help of my love for music.

Now that I am in graduate school, studying to be a teacher, I am very thankful that I am required to take this Education Technology class. I am very open minded and willing to learn the ins and outs of technology. Children nowadays are very computer literate and I feel that it is up to the teacher to move along and learn about technology, because if they don't, they are not going to be able to teach to their full potential.