Love at First Bite PSA Video Project

Wow, I feel like its been forever since I've posted on my blog. I really enjoyed working on the group (partner) video project. Minus the fact that I didn't feel good last week, it was a lot of fun to create. When we first went over the syllabus and Mrs. Mislevy went over the video project, I thought it was going to be torture. I knew nothing about creating a video and putting together photos, video clips and sound clips to create one piece and to be honest I was a little nervous about the project. Fortunately, when working on the video, it was easier than I originally thought. Even coming up with an idea didn't take Melissa and I very long. Everything just feel into place. We had to do a little research to come up with our statistic but we knew the direction we wanted to take with the PSA. It took a little longer than I thought it would. The entire project took us about 5 hours between researching, creating the storyboard, finding pictures and video clips from Twilight, recording video, recording audio, creating the audio music track and transitions. We were able to make our project fun with the constant jokes and knocks referring to the movie. It also added humor to our to topic as well. Once we had our script, there were very few changes.

First we picked a topic and did the research for the statistic. We read the script and decided what parts we were going to each read. Then we picked video clips from the Twilight movie and pictures to put in our video. Then we read the script over and decided what video clips and pictures were going to go with the certain lines in our script. We put the photos and videos in order on the computer program. Then we realized there were two places in our script that a picture wouldn't cut it for. So we decided we were going to each read one of those parts as if we were news reports so we went over to Masters Hall to video tape each other. Once we were done, we came back to upload the video and put into our PSA video. Next we recorded our audio, we each read through our lines and recorded them. We had to record a few times because of the quality of the microphone but eventually we got a recording that sounded good. Next we picked a music clip from the website and tampered with it to make it sound the way we wanted for our video. Then we had to blend the music and audio together. This took a little time because we needed to turn the audio up and the music down to hear our voices on the video. Once we got that, we realized we had to mute the music and sound from the video clips from Twilight. Next we put a title and the credits at the beginning and end of the video. And we added tranistions to tie everything together.

I wish that we would have planned our tranisitions earlier because we didn't realize that it would push our timelines around to match the clups with the sound and there were places that we were not able to use transitions because it would mess up the timeline.

Overall, I really enjoyed working on the video project and it was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be.

Response to Chapter 8 Reading

While reading Chapter * of the Educause text, there were several pieces of data that come to no surprise to me. Data shows that “one study found in spite of the fact that 99 percent of K-12 schools have Internet access, as do most classrooms (87 percent), these resources are rarely used effectively.” This does not surprise me at all. Some of the older teachers have several resources of technology to use during teaching at their fingertips but they never use it. They are afraid to try new things and feel as though they cannot use technology. That is even seen in some of the classes at Albright. Some of the older teachers do not use technology even though several forms of it are present in the classroom, such as an elmo, projector, smart board, etc. Instead they use the smart board to write on as if it were just a simple white board. They do not know how to use the smart board and have not taken the time to try it so they sick to the traditional way of teaching which some may refer to as “lecturing.” Learning how to use the available technology should be a teacher’s top priority. This how teachers can capture the attention of their students and keep them engaged. These days, all students live for technology whether that is the internet, video games, ipod, cell phones, etc. So teachers should keep up with the pace of technology and become acquainted with it. Technology isn’t going to go away so it is better to use learn how to use it and make life easier.

I found it very surprising that only 38 percent of college students reported using the internet for work in classes instead it was used as a form of communicating. I agree that I use the internet a lot for communicating but I am always on the internet during research for my classes. I did my undergraduate work at Albright College and access to the internet was a necessity because professors were always giving us information to research or websites to visit or standards to download.  There is something seriously wrong that only 38 percent of college students reported using the internet for school work. That just seems so unreal to me especially because I use the internet for every single course I am taking right now for research and classwork.

If I were giving a similar survey, I would want to know which websites are most often used by students. How much time is spent using technology each day.

Copyright

I was shocked to read all that I read about copyright. I did not realize that there were so many rules and regulations regarding copyrighting. I always see the warnings when watching DVDs about not copying the DVD becasue it is illegal and you can get in a lot of trouble. But it never really occurred to me that these rules applied when using materials in the classroom. I understand the concept of fair use but the readings for this class were the first time I have ever heard about fair use.

Playing the jeopordy was very useful for me in learning about copyrighting. The rulings of some of the court cases surprised me. I think the concept that suprised me the most was that if schools are going to show a movie in school, they must pay to get a license. I thought it was neat to learn that everytime I write something, it automatically becomes copyrighted. Which I think is really nice. I spend a lot of time and energy into writing lesson plans and it is nice to know that they are protected under the copyright law so that someone else can't take them and claim them as their own.

I have observed copyrighting being violated many times and in many ways. I know people who burn DVDs and CDs that are copyrighted. I know people that illegally download music without paying for it. I also know an organization that shows a movie a few times a year without purchasing a license.  I have not witnessed violation of copyright laws in any schools.

I believe that it is the teacher's right to teach their students about copyright. Teachers spend a lot of time teaching about plagarism and copyright goes right along side with plagarism so that is a wonderful teaching opportunity to teach students about copyright. I would not go in depth with them about all the laws and ligistics but I would give them a simple version so that they understand and take copyright law very serious. I do not think that college should be the first time copyright law is taught, emphasized and has time devoted to teaching and learning copyright law.

Social Bookmarking & Excel vs. Google Docs

Social bookmarking is a way to save your bookmarks online and share them with others. All your bookmarks and tags are made public for easy sharing. Of course, you can make them private but there is really no point to that. Making your bookmarks public, allows others to use and benefit from your tags and makes sharing very simple. Sharing the bookmarks contributes to the social networking purose of a site like diigo or delicious.
I created a diigo page last semester and I use it for my job all the time. I bookmark my favorite websites and can find them no matter if I am at home, work or school because I can access my diigo page anywhere, anytime on whatever computer I am currently on. It helps me as a student becasue I have bookmarked all the websites for standards and lesson plans and I can access them anytime I need them. I have several different websites bookmarked for worksheets and lesson plan ideas that help when I am developing lesson plans for a class.
As a teacher, social bookmarking can help me because my collegues and I can share the latest websites we have found and it makes doubles or even triples our resources without me personally spending hours and hours trying to find relevant websites. The tags make it easy because I will be able to see all of my coworkers tags and be able to search for the websites on the subject or content area I need at the current time.

If my school district was switching to google docs, I would have to argue against it. I am just recently getting better on Excel and I think google docs makes using a spreadsheet so much more confusing. It is hard to navigate around google docs spread sheet. I do like that it can be shared easily with others but I think taking the extra step with using Excel and emailing it to others in an attachment is worth the little extra work. I am not a fan of google docs. For example. when I had to do a project in google docs last semester, I choose to do the pet pictograph and I could not figure out how to put a picture in my bar graph to create a pictograph. Excel was so easy to figure out how to insert a picture into the bar graph and make a pictograph. I wasted a lot of time on google docs trying to figure out how to do something as simple as insert a picture. Google docs is not as easy to work on as Excel and I do not think any school district should switch from Excel to google docs.

Using Excel in the Classroom

I have never been a big fan of Excel and that was probably because I was never trained on how to use it. I was never taught all the things that Excel can do and make easier. With my new job, I can constantly using Excel to manage my department budget, create attendence sheets, run report numbers, etc. As I am using it more and more, I am begining to appreciate all the neat things it can do and it definitely makes things easier. But it took me awhile to get used to using Excel and my boss had to show we a lot about it and what it can do for me. I have had mini training lessons in certain parts of Excel. Now that I use it, I am getting more comfortable with it.
There are many ways that Excel can be used in the classroom. For example, it can be used to log the weather. Every morning, the students can record the weather and temperature and look for patterns throughout the year (NETS-S 1 D). It can also be used for daily attendence and lunch counts (NETS-S 3 D). The students can take turns being in charge of using Excel to add up the lunch count numbers for each student. Teachers can use Excel for grading and averaging. Teachers can also use Excel to create graphic organizers such as a KWL chart or Venn diagram, as well as rubrics (NETS-S 3 B). Excel can be extremely helpful with mathematics lesson when teaching probability, you can use the dice and do the probability act with Excel. It can be a visual aid in learning fractions and proportions. It can be very useful in teaching money management and balancing a checkbook (NETS-S 4 C). It can be used with question of the day and the class has to answer a question, such as "what is your favorite pet?" and there is a place to put a tally mark on the board and then the morning learner will end the number of tally marks into Excel and see what the class's most popular favorite pet is. It can serve as a great getting to know the class activity (NETS-S 6 D).
Excel can be used in each and every classroom in all subjects. Teachers just need to be willing to learn how to navigate Excel and cannot be afraid to use it. I know before I had a job where I needed to use it, I had no interest in using Excel, I thought that word could do everything for me. I am now realizing that if I would have used Excel earlier, it could have saved me a lot of time and energy on certain projects.

New Language evolves from Technology Advances

Technology has definitely evolved our language over the past few years. Students are speaking an entirely different language than what is familiar to some teachers and their parents. For example, you may hear students say "friended" which is not a word in the dictionary but due to the new social networking website known as Facebook, "friended" has become a word used daily by its users. I truely believe that it won't be long until "friended" and "defriended" are added to the dictionary. When I tell my sister, I friended someone on Facebook, she knows exactly what I am talking about; my mother on the other hand looks at us like we are speaking an entirely different language and she does not know what we are saying. To her, we are speaking a different language. It is the new tech language.
The ways in which we communicate are very different. My mom will call her friends or family up and talk on the phone for hours because they might not have talked in a week. My friends and I are in constant contact and technology has made that very easy. It is rare that I will spend hours on the phone with my friends. However, I will constantly text them throughout the day or email them to say hi or send them a comment on Facebook. I believe technology has made it very easy to stay in touch with people. Especially with today's society where everyone is constantly on the go, the one thing everyone always has with them is their cell phone and it is very easy to contact anyone, anywhere, anytime with cell phones. We can be in constant connection and communication with our families and friends. I think that is a major advantage of the technology advances we have made in the last few years.

Digital Natives vs. Net Gen/21st Cent Learner

Digitial natives, aslo referred to as Digital Immigrants, are defined as "Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them."
For Net Gen/21st Century learners, we were born into a world of technology and gadgets and we are familiar with the latest versions of games, software, etc. We can pick up on it because we have been using technology since we were born. It is an important part of our everyday life. We rely on it and depend on it. In contrast, digital natives do not rely on technology as much. They are more old fashion.
Digital natives and net gen/21st century learners, learn very differently. As stated in the reading, one of education's biggest problems today is that teachers are stuck in their old fashioned way of teaching because most of them are digital natives. However, the students that they are teaching are net gen/21st cent learners and learn in a completely different manner than they are being taught in. Teachers and students are not clicking and do not have an understanding of one another because advances in technology has formed a gap between them. Unfortunately, some teachers are not willing to adapt their teaching and keep up with the latest ways to motivate and engage their students, but causes a problem.
It is important for teachers to remember that the net gen/21st cent learners are used to having everything at their fingertips with the internet, electronics and technology so they thrive from instant gratification and frequent rewards. Technology has made it so easy to retrieve information and answers almost immediately when they are needed and that is what students today are used to, even us college students.