Thank you!!

Jean,

Thank you for the fantastic class!  I really enjoyed it, I learned a lot, and gained confidence in technology that normally I would never touch!  When you send a grade, could you please send it to slilj@yahoo.ca.  Thanks!

Sarah 

July 13th: Day 8!

Today Jean showed us how to use a language lab as an instructor and as a student in Moodle.  The language lab was interesting and could be very practical for second language teachers, especially because it allows assessment of oral language, which is a difficult task to accomplish in class.  He also went over our final project for the course.  The criteria for our final project is the following: 

-Put the final project in your WIKI
-Record an introduction with Photo Booth
-Make a one page explanation and one page assignment (you may use hot potatoes)
-Create a video to review the concept
-Create a cultural corner (can be a little video from youtube or a link to fun fact)

Sorry to those reading this blog, I wrote down the criteria above more for my own benefit than the benefit of others reading this!


 

July 12: Day 7!

For the first hour of today's class we worked on finishing our movie from yesterday.  Kelly, Charlotte and I were almost finished our movie when we run up against a roadblock: we had somehow messed up our transitions, had saved them as 1 second long, and could not undo what we did, even with the fantatstic help of Victor and Jean.  Oh well, Kelly and I both agreed that we somehow carry a technology curse with us whenever we are near a computer!  That's alright, with a bunch of steps redone, we finished our movie (finally).
For the rest of the class, Jean demonstrated the various things we could do in our classroom with Smart technology.  It was interesting, however, it was not directly practical for me as my school does not have any Smartboards.  I did appreciate the National Library of Virtual Mathematics site that we explored; it could be useful even without a Smartboard.  I especially liked the base10 block virtual manipulates that students could play with. 

Introduction in French Movie

TPACK Assignment

TPACK- Assignment

By Charlotte, Kelly and Sarah



General Outcome 2: Indentify and explain conflict and discuss how it develops and may be resolved.

Goal:  The goal for this assignment is to write short story focusing on conflict.  They will create the story in pairs or in small groups. Once the story is written they will switch their stories with another group for peer editing purposes.  Once the editing is complete they will present their story in a picture book form.

Technology: To write the story the groups will be asked to use Titanpad or Google Doc as a cooperative process, this will enable each student to contribute equally.  For the editing aspect, the other peer group can edit and save the various changes to the document and the group can see the changes that were made.  Once the story is completed the groups can choose to either create a story book project in Flipsnack or they can take digital pictures to visually show the images of their story and use Windows Movie Maker to create a video.  They can use the audio to record their story for the audience to hear. 

July 11th: Day 6!

Today was iMovie day!  Jean showed us three short movies posted online for various purposes.  The first was a film made by a company to be accessed by students for online Spanish language instruction.  The second was a film made by middle school students for a school project (Je Suis Un Pizza!).  The third was a film made by a teacher to be used by other teachers, demonstarting aspects of a new Mathematics program.  Through our discussion we talked about how technology is allowing lectures, which used to be the domain of the classroom, to occur at home after school and practice, which used to be the domain of after-school hours, to be don in class.  Technology allows for a reversal of instrcution and practice, as it were!  We then made a short iMovie, which was lots of fun.   

July 8: T.G.I.F.!

Today my blog will be relatively short because it is Friday.  We started off today's class discussing TPACK.  Jean told us his perspective on how a school or school district's technology plan should be organized: starting with content, then pedagogy, then technology.  I think this organization makes sense although I also can see why principals or superintendents purchase technology with little consideration to its usage or its connection to curriculum: when funds are limited and staff is large, consultations can be an arduous endeavor.  We then explored various applications (wallwisher, picnik, flipsnack) and explored excellent websites that have gathered a wide variety of useful sites (Web 2.0, Bloom's Digital Taxonomy Pyramid,cooltoolsforschool).  I hope everyone in the class has a great weekend!