Our group discussed several positive and negative experiences we have had with technology.
Kaycie contributed this positive experience:
My positive experience with technology just occurred last semester in my Children's Literature class. We had to do a group assignment where we had to research an author/illustrator and create a power point that include some elements like scan pictures from a book, read several pages of the book and in include them in your power point. One of the computer tech ladies (I think her name was Debbie. She is the nice lady in the ed tech center) was very supportive of our assignment and taught us how to do many ways to "spice" up our power point. I learned so much from her and realized how much more I could do with power point. By the end of the assignment, I was so happy with my final project! I learned how to record my voice and create a button to click on to hear me reading several pages from a book. I also learned how to put youtube videos in my power point. I didn't have to include a video, but I learned so much about power point that I wanted to really have fun with it!
Lauren contributed this negative experience:
A negative experience that I have had with technology is often with trying to find certain information on certain websites. There is always the option to "google" information online but I have found that many times more than one site will offer different (and sometimes) incorrect information. It's difficult to find credited websites.
Jennifer Beach
Kaycie Coleman
Lauren DeGuglielmis
Ellon Scherer
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I'm glad to hear that Kaycie had such a positive experience learning about powerpoint, and it is great to know that there are resources out there available to help us become more proficient with these programs.
ReplyDeleteAs for Lauren, I too have come across this problem while researching. I usually start with wikipedia to gain some background knowledge, and keep in mind that it might not all be true. Then I look at the bottom of wikipedia for their bibliography. I check out some of the sites that they used, in order to do more research. Then I usually go to Towson's online databases and search there. If I am still having trouble, I can go to the library in person and ask for additional help in finding reliable websites.
I can relate to Kaycie's positive experience with technology. I was in her Children's Literature class last semester and also learned several new things you can do with powerpoint. As a teacher, I believe you can give students some type of assignment to do on powerpoint no matter that grade level, whether it is very basic or something more complex such as the author-illustrator project Kaycie was talking about.Younger students in the elementary schools will find using powerpoint very exciting and new for them. They will believe doing the assignment is more interesting because they get to use a different technique to display their final project.
ReplyDeleteAs for Laurens negative experience, I also agree with the difficulties finding credited sources for your school projects. When using the google search engine to find information on a topic, wikipedia is the first cite that appears. It looks to be very useful information but many professors and classmates tell me not to use it for projects. In my classroom, I would give my students certain websites that are credited for each project they will be doing, so they will know the information is correct.
I really enjoyed reading that you can do a lot more with power point than I have seen. Most the power point presentation I have seen are so boring, where the prof just reads off the points as if the audience can't see them. I hope we learn how to do the exciting things that Kaycie learned to do with power point.
ReplyDeleteAs for Lauren's negative experience, well, I can relate. It's very easy to spend hours and hours wading through websites and come up empty handed. There is just so much information out there, it's so time consuming filtering through it all.
I often want to spice up my power points and add in exciting details but I never knew how to do those things. That is nice that the ed tech lady helped your group with the power point presentation. Most of the time the people in there don't even look at you. It is nice that your experience is so postive.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to the negative experience. In my other ISTC class we had to write a research paper and I had a hard time finding credited sites for the paper. It worked out in the end but it took me a long time to look through many different sites.
I was also in Kaycie's class last semester and it was awesome to learn all of the new things about powerpoint. It is a great way to engage your class. I would have my students make group pesentations like this in my future classroom.
ReplyDeleteIt is very hard to distinguish what is credible on the web. It is nice to have a checklist like the ones we created. As a teacher I would have my students look for certain things to athencitate the source before allowing them to use it in a project.
Posted by Michelle Richardson