August 13, 2010
August 12, 2010
Google Forms
The other software that I chose to evaluate was Google Forms. In my opinion, there are a lot of things that Google Forms can accomplish for educators, including:
- Surveys
- Quizzes
- Student Information / Enrollment
- Scoring Rubric
- Contact Form
- Choose Your Own Adventure
- Voting
- and more...
I recently attended a workshop about this technology, and the instructor directed us all to his website at the very beginning, and asked us to fill out the form. On the form were questions about our prior knowledge regarding Google Forms, and once everyone was finished completing it, he immediately went to the results page with us, and used the feedback to determine how much or how little he would speak about various topics of the workshop. It was very powerful!
Below, I have embedded a simple survey about the technologies we have learned in this class. If I have done it correctly, after taking the survey, you should see a link to the results page, which shows real-time data in the form of pie charts, bar graphs, etc.... I tried to incorporate one of each type of question that there is available to create so you can see the variety of question styles available. Enjoy!
August 11, 2010
Picnik
One online application that I chose to review is Picnik. This photo editing application is very intuitive and easy to use. In addition to basic options such as zoom, crop, resize, rotate, etc..., Picnik offers advanced creative options that can dramatically change the appearance of your photos. Many of these options are free, but for a price, you can access additional features. Although my examples do not show this feature, it is possible to include various stickers on the photos like thought bubbles, stick figures, mustaches, sketchy stars, hearts, flowers, etc.... Some of the examples on the website show this, and it offers an opportunity to have make some very cute and fun looking photos. See my examples below, which were all generated from the same original photo.
D/B13: Chapter 31
What most made you say (or think) "that's so neat!" Why?
For some reason, the AI portion of this chapter made me think of the movie I, Robot. Perhaps it's just me, and perhaps I should blame it on the movie, but the thought of machines developing intelligence in a way that unmistakably resembles human intelligence is a bit frightening.
With that out of my system, the thing that most made me think "that's so neat!" was the portion of the chapter about electronic paper.
I think that in general, people become increasingly fascinated by the decreasing physical size of technology. We always want our laptops and cell phones to be less bulky (perhaps not to the extreme of Ben Stiller's character in the movie Zoolander). As the book mentioned, less than a decade ago, the idea of holding 1GB of storage on a storage device the size of a flash drive or SD memory was inconceivable.
Electronic paper fascinates me because as a teacher, I think about the possibilities for using it. Assuming that its purpose will be visual storage, I can imagine a day when students will develop a tangible portfolio with electronic pages which display some of their greatest CAD work. Not the printouts, but the actual drawing files, which you could zoom in/out, pan, spin, etc.... Perhaps they could embed on one page a video introduction, rather than a text letter, in which they explain who they are, and what their career goals are. The possibilities seem endless, and I am anxious to see if this technology will become mainstream.
For some reason, the AI portion of this chapter made me think of the movie I, Robot. Perhaps it's just me, and perhaps I should blame it on the movie, but the thought of machines developing intelligence in a way that unmistakably resembles human intelligence is a bit frightening.
With that out of my system, the thing that most made me think "that's so neat!" was the portion of the chapter about electronic paper.
Electronic paper fascinates me because as a teacher, I think about the possibilities for using it. Assuming that its purpose will be visual storage, I can imagine a day when students will develop a tangible portfolio with electronic pages which display some of their greatest CAD work. Not the printouts, but the actual drawing files, which you could zoom in/out, pan, spin, etc.... Perhaps they could embed on one page a video introduction, rather than a text letter, in which they explain who they are, and what their career goals are. The possibilities seem endless, and I am anxious to see if this technology will become mainstream.
August 10, 2010
D/B12: Chapter 30
What are two ways you believe you can apply ideas in this chapter to improve your teaching/instructional design work?
One of the most prominent concepts that I have highlighted, starred, and circled in my brain is the idea of incorporating appropriate visuals to accommodate my text. (As an aside, this will definitely require that I learn how to perform a screen capture on my Mac, as this is the platform of choice that my school has adopted.) I found it particularly interesting that the level of sophistication of the visual has little to no bearing on its effectiveness, as it pertains to learning. Obviously, it is easier to produce learning materials with text alone, but after reading the chapter, I am convinced that a small sacrifice of time will be far out-weighed by the benefits of educational gain.
Another very interesting concept was that of the working and long-term memory. I couldn't help but consider the comparison between our brains and computers (RAM *working* vs. ROM *long-term*). It was humorous to me about how our working memory capacity was described as "seven plus or minus two chunks of information." As the book went on to describe the inherent limitations of the working memory, I found that it all seemed very logical. This understanding will help me in my teaching profession because it should help me consider which elements of rich media are helpful to the learning process, and which are more distracting. Like a PowerPoint with too many animations and sound bytes, which are meant to do nothing more than "wow" the audience, it will be important to remember that just because I can, doesn't mean that I should. In the future, I will need to be more selective about the type, frequency, and amount of rich media that is incorporated into each lesson to ensure that maximum learning occurs.
One of the most prominent concepts that I have highlighted, starred, and circled in my brain is the idea of incorporating appropriate visuals to accommodate my text. (As an aside, this will definitely require that I learn how to perform a screen capture on my Mac, as this is the platform of choice that my school has adopted.) I found it particularly interesting that the level of sophistication of the visual has little to no bearing on its effectiveness, as it pertains to learning. Obviously, it is easier to produce learning materials with text alone, but after reading the chapter, I am convinced that a small sacrifice of time will be far out-weighed by the benefits of educational gain.
Another very interesting concept was that of the working and long-term memory. I couldn't help but consider the comparison between our brains and computers (RAM *working* vs. ROM *long-term*). It was humorous to me about how our working memory capacity was described as "seven plus or minus two chunks of information." As the book went on to describe the inherent limitations of the working memory, I found that it all seemed very logical. This understanding will help me in my teaching profession because it should help me consider which elements of rich media are helpful to the learning process, and which are more distracting. Like a PowerPoint with too many animations and sound bytes, which are meant to do nothing more than "wow" the audience, it will be important to remember that just because I can, doesn't mean that I should. In the future, I will need to be more selective about the type, frequency, and amount of rich media that is incorporated into each lesson to ensure that maximum learning occurs.
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