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You know, this really does feel like we are ending a trip in a way. I've seen so much that my brain struggles to remember it all! Yet it has certainly been one of those "trip like" experiences wherein your outlook on things is altered in some way. I would definitely say that my outlook on the use of technology in the classroom has changed.

Before taking this course, I primarily used technology to present material to students. There simply wasn't must interaction to it. In essense, it replaced the chalkboard and the overhead projector. While it is nice to be able to show the kids a polished presentation with eye-catching pictures on an LCD screen, I now see that is such a limited use of the very expensive technology the school system has invested in.

Two of the applications that we have learned that I feel confident I would use frequently as a teacher are Captivate and this blog site! Actually, I've already been using blogs with my students on a limited basis and am about to delve into an end of the year project that will allow all of my students to use it. To date, I've used it as an extra credit assignment. I helped interested students create their blog sites, and then every week I post a new discussion topic on my class web site. I try to do things a little off-beat for them, such as asking them what George Washington would think if he were somehow magically transported to 2006 in Titusville, Florida. I've asked them about voting rights for teens, about their favorite quotes, and many others. Each topic requires the kids to visit links on the Web and then respond, demonstrating that they in fact did visit the links.

I've been so happy with the results of this assignment. First of all, I couldn't beleive how many kids were interested just because it was a Web assignment. But the best unintended consequence is that I've really gotten to know some of my students. Susanna, for example, is one of those quiet little girls who never says a word in class. Yet she has such a striking, opinionated personality in her writing. This activity has definitely helped me to understand her better and has helped us develop a better teacher/student relationship. And of course the intended consequence (getting them to think and write about history) has been a smashing success!

I also really like Captivate. I would like to say that I will continue using this, but our school does not own the program currently. However, I had to develop an informative/instructional Web site for another class and had the opportunity to use it there. I developed a site for our Media Center. Our Media Specialist loves technology but is the first to admit that she is a "book person" and a "Librarian" at heart. She was thrilled when I offered to develop the site for her. I included a Captivate demo on using SunLink. Provided that my trial period doesn't expire before I get to it, I intend to create several other demos for her as well. As a teacher, these would be useful to me as I don't always know how to use some applications and the Media Specialist doesn't always have time to step in and show the students.

Using the audio and photograph techniques that we've learned is more of a challenge for me. I did use them in the development of the Web site (even creating a virtual tour of the Media Center!) but I have a hard time imagining how my students will use them as they don't have access to a lot of the needed equipment. Some of my students do, and when I assign open-ended projects they often utilize these tools already. But the majority of my students are from low-income families and just don't have access. Unfortunately, the school does not have the equipment either. I certainly see the potential for it, but at the moment can't find a way to use it.

Having said that, my career goals are to go into instructional designing. I just took a position with Florida Virtual School as an instructor and hope to move into their Instructional Design department one day. I imagine that many of the applications I've learned will be quite useful there. In particular, I'm glad that I chose to do the open choice on WebCT course management. Though FLVS uses Blackboard, I know they are similar in some ways. So I am just thrilled that I already have a bit of knowledge to take to this new position!

I've certainly appreciated all that I have learned in this course. This class combined with my Multimedia Instructional Systems class with Dr. Orwig has certainly challenged me! Yet the two have been an excellent compliment to each other. It seemed that as soon as I learned something in one class, I could apply it to some degree in the other class. What an excellent way to learn technology!

Captivate & WebCT

Since I missed the last blog date, I need to write about both of these challenging experiences.

Captivate was a really cool program! I am almost tempted to buy it for myself to use with students. I found the tutorial easy to follow and the program not too difficult to use. The real challenge I had was synchronizing the audio (which I imported from Audacity) with the visuals. I did the import because I THOUGHT I would get a better quality audio, but that ended up not being the case. So in the end I recorded the introduction with music and the conclustion with music in Audacity, and then recorded the audio for the tutorial in Captivate. That made the synchronization a lot easier.

WebCT was also neat. The manual on-line helped with the couple of things I just didn't have any idea of how to do, but for the most part playing around with it was enough to figure it out. The one big stumbling block I had was when I deleted something from the course menu only to discover that once it's gone, it's gone! I'm sure I spent at least an hour trying to add it back, all to no avail. But other than that it was actually pretty easy. I love designing things like that and I really do get a charge out of making it work!

Audio

I did a 'trial run' of the audio assignment this week. I didn't have any trouble with Audacity since I had to learn to use it for another course. But I did find it interesting to try to verbally explain how to do something with no visual. The detail that is required is amazing! I can't imagine getting much more than snipets of instruction in a purely audio format. But I am interested to being exploring capativate and combining the visual and audio.

Picture and Video Editing

I haven't worked too much on assignments this week. I did try to work on the digital slide show and as Ms. Kirkley knows, I got very frustrated. My frustration was that I was using the wrong application for the job. I think that is a problem when learning new technology. You don't know always what it can and can't do. In my case, I spent a ton of time trying to get a program to do something that it can't do! And because I'm stubborn and am always convinced I should be able to figure it out myself, I waited an awfully long time before asking someone for help! That is perhaps a good lesson to learn!

Digital Photos

I spent a great deal of time in the past week working on the digital photo activites. I enjoyed the activity, but it was more difficult than I originally thought it would be. I learned how to use things on my digital camera that I have never even tried before. Some with more success than others! And though I've read some about photography techniques before, I have never paid much attention to applying those techniques. I, like most people probably, take pictures on the fly--I've never spent much time posing my subjects or even taking pictures of things beyond my family and friends. But I actually had a few pictures that I thouht were really neat looking. I'm not sure that I'll ever have a professional need for these photography techniques, but they were certainly fun to experiment with.

Panoramic Pictures

This weekend I spent a gross amount of time trying to figure out how to make a 360 degree panoramic picture. Oh, I can make a panoramic picture, but the 360 loop is kicking my rearend!

What I learned about learning technology--everyone has a frustration level, just like in reading. Once you stray too far into that frustration level, the learner is going to shut down and probably get a bad attitude (I sure did!)

The reason for my difficulty was my own fault. My instructor provided excellent directions that I didn't follow real closely. I wanted ot use my own software and was just sure that I could do it. Guess what? I was WRONG! ha!

So I'm eating my humble pie right now and will go back to trying to figure out this assignment soon. I have to get past the block of "I can't do this" first!

PowerPoint Activity

I've just completed the PowerPoint quiz. Though I've been using PowerPoint for years, I had never used the hyperlink or action link features. I really thought that they would both only link me to the Web--I didn't realize PowerPoint could be used for a quiz! This reminded me a lot of HyperStudio, which I assume is probably an antiquated program by now since I never hear anyone mention it!

Since I recently got an LCD projector in my classroom, I'm already dreaming up ways of using this newly discovered feature in my classroom! Thanks!