Final Blog Post

I think that the most useful technology that I have learned this semester would be iMovie. I've always wanted to learn how to use it and I've always been scared to try it, even though it's always been on my computer! I also think that it would be a great project for the students to create a movie with their acting or explore different genres of movies/plays. I'd really love to be able to have a project like that for my students and I think that I have been given the stepping stones for that! I think that using technology is a great way to engage students because their generation (and our generation for that matter) is obsessed and fascinated with technology and it just seems to be so fun! I think that just writing papers or journals gets a little monotonous when students have to do it for every class. Being able to do the same things in just new ways is a way for students to not be bored and stay on top of things. I hope to continue with learning new technology and keeping on top of the ever-changing and ever-improving technologies so that I can give that ingenuity to my students and keep themselves on their toes!

Wikis

I'm not exactly sure how I would use wikis in my classroom, but if by chance I had the students doing a big group work project, then I could see how wikis could be a good way for the students to share the resources that they found. I also think it would be a great way to share good monologue ideas and/or good scenes. It especially would be valuable after I have taught for a few years and so my students will have all that information from students that came before them.

Internet Safety

For this assignment, I interviewed my little sister who is 17 years old. I think that the discussion we had was pretty positive. She's always been a cautious person, so I don't think that she is uneducated about what is and isn't safe to put out on the internet. She had some good insight herself and I could see that she really was taking in what I was saying to her and how important it is for her to be good about internet safety.

As for some of the things I read about internet safety, I read

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=4b3d2ee01e31c010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

and

http://www.providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,5302-1-2769-1,00.html

and

http://lds.org/library/display/0,4945,538-1-4830-1,00.html

I've always believe that children on the internet need to be monitored - I know this because I was there once and there were somethings that I did that I would definitely not want my own children, or my students for that matter, to get into. I'm not saying that I did really horrible things, but my friends and I loved to go to a chat room and pretend we were older than we were and we would talk to boys. I shudder to think what could have happened if one of those boys had been a sex predator or something like that. The most important things that I learned from the readings is that it's important to use monitoring techniques such as keeping the computer in an open area and using certain blocking techniques on your children's access. I also would have never thought to have your children just use their bookmarks. I think that that's a great idea. I think that as a teacher, I will definitely be faced with safety issues with my students in concerns with doing research for papers or even information that they put on our class website. I think it's a good idea to at least address to your students the importance of being safe as they surf the web.

My Video Project

Here's my video! I decided to do mine on Characterization and using stereotypes in order to create characters quickly for things like improv. This helps cover the Core Requirement in Theatre 1 for characterization. I had a lot of fun making this video and I think that the music helps not only enhance the characters that I'm trying to portray, but it makes the video fun for students.

Copyright Assignment

I had issues embedding every video that I looked at onto my blog, so I'm just posting the urls for each. Here's the first one: http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=172790&title=The_History_of_Storm_Chasing

She does list who the music is by and credits some of the pictures to one man, but the rest of the pictures she doesn't mention anyone to credit it to - and I believe those pictures are the more historical ones. Just a list of where she got each picture would have sufficed.

Here's the next one - http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=15395&title=50_States_and_Capitals__cartoon_song_


This one is from the cartoon "The Animaniacs", but no where in the video is that mentioned or the company that produced this show. Now, they only used a little more than 2 minutes of the show for this video so they're probably ok, but they should have at least acknowledged where the clip was from.

Personal Tech Project

So, I originally decided to do Vectorworks for this project, but what I found was a really difficult and technological program that I couldn't figure out and wouldn't be able to without instruction. They had instructional videos that I could buy, but I didn't have the money for it, so I decided just to learn a different technology. I had a friend recommend to me learning how to use Sumo Paint. It's an online photoshop that is free and seeing as I've always wanted to learn how to use photoshop, I thought that I would give it a whirl. I decided that I would use Sumo Paint in my lesson to create what I call a 6-word memoir and that it would be a great and innovative way for my students to characterize new characters that they have created. Here is the link to my lesson plan: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Ad8lBllpkUnpZGcyZnczdDRfNmY0NWcyaHQ4&hl=en

And here is my own creation/version of a 6-word memoir that I created on Sumo Paint:

My Gospel Presentation

Here is the link to my gospel insights presentation:

http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dg2fw3t4_3cnvnz8f9&interval=30

I decided to do my presentation on President Eyring's talk from this last general conference because it was about teaching and leading the youth down the path of righteousness. I also thought it was a good idea seeing as general conference was last week and it was amazing!