Media Sharing - Reflection

Okay, so I'm aware that I'm doing things out of order but hey! at least I'm titling them so you can find things if you care. I learned a lot from this unit. There are so many things available to teachers if we have the time and energy to learn. My daughter is going into 9th grade and as I have learned things I've asked her what she knows. She may not know that Jing is a cool screen capturing program but if I ask her to capture something she'd find it. She embeds things and copies things and creates. She's got professional grade art software on her computer and a stylus and she understands the creative commons message about taking public images and modifying and improving -- she and her friends do it all the time. And like anything else, if it is fun for you, learning is easier. As teachers we have to incorporate things like blogs and wikis into our teacher, particularly for older kids just as a way to build relationships.

I will definitely use one of the photo share programs for personal and classroom use. I'm so grateful for the web 2.0 site so I have a directory of how to videos as I make the move from my personal computer to the school computers. I'm hoping I don't have any technology problems there.

Last year, I used digital cameras in the classroom and had the kids act out definitions for our forces of motion unit. They loved it! It was difficult for third graders to create verbal definitions that were meaning for them and synonymous with "a force in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an opposing force". But as they say a picture is worth a thousand words and they could easily act it out. This year I'll try to get it all incorporated into a slideshow or podcast and with parent permission post to TeacherTube.

By the way, I'm not sure if my playlist ever worked with my wikipage (which I built for the FCE 3rd grade team) so I tried to embed it here too. It just spins like it is loading and doesn't seem to start playing? Just an example of the questions I have ... how not to get discouraged when things don't work intuitively.