Digital Storytelling CEDO 530 - Week 2

Holy Cow - tons of work this week!!  I'm not sure how my neighbor took 12 graduate credits last semester - wow.  Anyways, moving on...
     We continued reading our two books, DigiTales and Presentation Zen.  I find Presentation Zen to be an easier read even if some of the ideas are hard for me to buy into.  I am staying open-minded though.  I think a person's presentation style should ultimately be a mixture of good presenting techniques and the strengths of the individual.  I will most likely never be the type of presenter that gives a ton of handouts, for example.  I think their distribution at a presentation is clumsy and they often end up being a distraction as people tend to look at them instead of listening to your message.  However, I will be more conscious of the strategy of using handouts to supplement the presentation instead of cluttering a slide and perhaps there will be a situation in which it makes sense for me to incorporate them into a presentation of mine.  It's all about keeping an open mind as you read these two books.  I've enjoyed the research-based findings and have been able to analyze my current presentation style.  I am more aware of the things that I do that are deemed effective and now I also have some ideas on how to change some of my bad presentation habits.
     VoiceThread was the web tool that we were able to try out this week and it made me think of several excellent classroom uses for it.  We almost have the email address thing figured out here at my school (K-8) so that shouldn't be a problem for us anymore.  Of course VoiceThread has the obvious application of having students use it for presentations.  It allows for voice files for narration, text comments on each slide, or even video narration form a web cam.  All great features that would add to the appeal of a presentation.  We haven't even touched on the best feature yet, however.  Collaboration.  I am guessing that our Civil Rights VoiceThreads will be used to collaborate with each other in much the same way that peers can make comments on a blog.  To get feedback and deeper questioning from peers is going to be the most powerful aspect of it's use, IMO.
     I'm still plugging away with the Posterous pictures.  I've found that the easiest way for me to do these is by taking the pictures with my phone and then just immediately emailing them to my Stritch email account.  I've played around with it enough now where I'm following 6 other classmates and I have it setup where the Posterous site sends me a daily email with everyone's picture updates.  Pretty slick.  There is a chance that I might use it once class is over but it most likely wouldn't be everyday.  It's one of things that just takes time and has to be in the back of your mind in order to update it enough for it to be useful to anyone.  It's less time consuming than doing a Facebook status update every 20min like some of these junkies which is why it's possible that I may still use it.  It'd be fun to get my brother to start doing it or cousins that I never talk to anymore or, even better, my family overseas.  I was able to hook up with some of them through Facebook but seeing pictures of them and seeing what they are up to would be really cool.

Digital Storytelling CEDO 530 - Week 1

The first week of this new class has at least clarified what exactly was meant by "Digital Storytelling".  I kind of had an idea because I had to do some research about 2 months ago on a program called Storytelling Alice but I wasn't sure if this would be along the same lines or not.  The one connection that I hadn't thought of was the presentation aspect.  Digital Storytelling certainly ties into presentations and their techniques but for some reason I had the two separated in my mind.  I was under the mindset that "Presentations were factual and serious" and "Storytelling was emotional and animated".  I quickly realized that my way of thinking was part of the problem.  Factual and serious usually equates to "boring".  The expectation, especially in the business world, is that when a PPT slideshow or similar presentation flashes up during the meeting that it's time for the head-nodding to begin.  I really  hope to learn of some resources, techniques, and methods to use in making these normally "boring" presentations more exciting and impactful.

CEDO 525 - Enhancing Learning Materials - Final Reflection

     Well this class has for some reason has been the most painful for me to get through.  I think the beginning of the school year had something to do with it but I think that analyzing "Teaching Strategies" was the bigger culprit.  I had been spoiled with the prior classes that talked about cool websites, web tools and even a class about hardware and operating systems where I was able to embrace my inner geek.  This class, on the contrary, made me take a deeper look at my teaching methods and techniques and really assess my integration of technology into my curriculum (and other teacher's curriculum).  I am doing fine for the most part but I certainly have room for improvement.  It was good to re-visit these 10-12 effective teaching strategies and get ideas from class, classmates, and other resources for new implementations into my lessons.  I also was able to take a look at the technology that I'm using and make connections between the lesson and the technology used.  The connections were always there but I never really internalized them by saying to myself "I'm using Inspiration so that students can have experience with advanced organizers, which are proven to have a 22% gain".
     Lastly, I had actually gone through several interviews prior to this school year looking for something more in the capacity of a technology integrator or coordinator (unsuccessfully) and I couldn't help but think to myself that I would have done better had I gone through this class first.  I would've been able to make stronger connections to these vaunted teaching strategies and perhaps would've increased my chances of impressing the interviewers.  I'll get em next time  :-)