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Final Reflection in the Water

I have really enjoyed summer camp. I will the miss the campfires and the counselors sooo much! No, I truly felt that summer camp was a great learning experience for me. It forced me to dive into new web based tools that I've overlooked and also try out ones that I've been meaning to find time to explore. I feel like I've discovered tools for teaching art to students and also for communicating with both colleagues and parents. I can see myself using Prezi to introduce more of my lessons, Animoto to display student artwork or images of students working on projects, Google forms to create volunteer forms, Screenr or Snagfish for creating screencasts, and perhaps Weebly to design a more user friendly Art Webpage.

I have to admit my greatest weakness in the process was communicating my feedback to the other campers. I felt that the interactive blog format was an effective way to communicate to others in the class and the instructors, but I just wasn't very good at keeping up with it. I have to admit I viewed many other camper's blogs, but didn't always comment. I appreciated being able to see what others came up with for their activities and it helped me trouble shoot some of the problems or questions that I had along the way.

I would recommend summer camp to others, and feel that the way it was organized and the support that I received along the way was excellent.

I can't help but attach the youtube link below, because every time I would say "summer camp" this song would come to mind.


Camp Grenada

#9 Reflection on Possible Sitch-i-ations using Technology in Education

Scenario 2: Blocking all Access
After hearing a presentation at a conference, your principal Mr. Smith has banned all Web 2.0 tools for students and teachers including Facebook, Skype, YouTube, wikis, blogs, and Flickr. A number of teachers and many students are upset with this decision but Mr. Smith cites legal reasons for blocking the sites.

1.  Discuss the possible ethical issues involved.

•  The principal Mr. Smith needs to let the waters calm and reassess the situation. His reaction to ban all Web 2.0 tools is a fear based reaction and in some cases understandably so. There is a balance of somewhere that can be reached with choosing the best web based tools which have safe guards in place and are age appropriate. I think each Web 2.0 tool needs to be looked at individually for it's purpose in the academic setting and not a blanket banning.

2.  Determine if the safety or well-being of anyone is in jeopardy.

• I don't believe the safety or well-being of anyone is in jeopardy, however he is blocking growth and access to so many learning opportunities. 

3.  What advice, strategy, or policy would you recommend to individuals or schools based on this scenario?

• I would recommend forming a committee of administration, teachers, and parents, to look carefully at what Web tools staff and students are using, how they are using them, what is being done to make sure they are used safely and within the schools technology regulations. In some cases district wide committees may need to make decisions on updating technology policies across all schools.

Scenario 5: Email Complication
Mr. Lopez, a social studies teacher, has been using the same PowerPoint to introduce content on the electoral-college for many years now. He recently saw a Prezi his high school-age daughter created for a class and asked her to teach him how to create a Prezi. He was able to link images and video content instead of just text and found that his students seemed more motivated and lively in a debate about voting politics.  He decided to have his 7^th graders create Prezis in small groups outlining their main points for the election debate.  What Mr. Lopez discovered in the computer lab is that as students were creating Prezi Edu accounts and told to use their school provided email when registering, they could not activate their Prezi accounts because the school email settings only allow emails internally, and therefore cannot receive emails from outside the district. Mr. Lopez’s assignment was suddenly dead in the water.


3.  What advice, strategy, or policy would you recommend to individuals or schools based on this scenario?

• Mr. Lopez should have gone to Prezi to do the entire lesson as if he were a student. By going through every step of the lesson through a student's eyes, he could have anticipated the pitfalls of the lesson. Speaking from experience you can never predict the surprises that technology can spring on you, however I think the bottom line is prepare, prepare, and over prepare. Virtually all free web based technology tools require you to register or create a login and password and for many districts this can be an issue with students using the programs.

4.  Share any real-life incidents or personal connections related to the scenario.

• Most of my teaching experience has been in the art classroom, but I've also taught Information Technology, as it was dubbed at the time. I love teaching technology and using a computer as a tool to teach students how to gather information and create a new and exciting way to present that information is wonderful. I have had more than one situation in the computer lab where there are individual computers that literally stop working, freeze, black out and die in the middle of a lesson. Being flexible and always anticipating a melt down has helped me tremendously. A second scenario when I was in the lab with students that was not expected or planned, was when an unannounced fire drill happened in the last 15 minutes of class before we were all about to save our work. I had to go around manually and save all their work after we missed the last part of class. 

#10 Animoto

I choose to use animoto to take photos from an art lesson and make them come to life. I really like how easy it was to use and upload photos. I wish I could choose my own music, but understand the copyright issues involved with that. Animoto and this type of animated slide show would be a perfect tool to show on meet your teacher night, or to illustrate a lesson for the PTA, or simply to use in the classroom to motivate students on an upcoming lesson. Artsonia is our school's online art gallery for student artwork, and I think that if I purchase the upgrade with Animoto, I can upload images of student artwork into the slide shows. Kids would love to see their artwork in Animoto slide.

Make a video of your own at Animoto.
Make your own photo slideshow at Animoto.

#8 Polling and Collection of the "D"-word

The answer to this poll always tells a lot about a person. Using Poll Everywhere would be a good way to collect data from students in a fun and easy way. I would love to have an open ended question posted too sometime. Creating the poll question was very easy and took very little time, which makes it more likely that I would use it. I created the following form to arrange volunteer help in the art room. I hope to refine it a bit more and post this on our webpage or functioning blog.

  Art Volunteer Form

#7 Cloud Computing

I have been working on this power point presentation over the summer and had so much fun collecting images of owl drawings. It is a work in progress but a good start. I can see many ways to use google docs in sharing information amongst co-workers and other art teachers district wide. It's a powerful tool also to share with parents through a blog or website.

Owl Drawings

#6 Study Tools and Art Vocabulary

I used Tagxedo to create a word cloud which includes most of our 5th grade art vocabulary. I could play with Tagxedo for hours shifting around the font, color, and shapes. I feel it's easy to work with and easy to save and share. I would use this again in my teaching for handouts, worksheets, and parent communications. Using Quizlet I created a set of flashcards for the 3rd grade art vocabulary. Every year we give a pre-test and post-test on these art words. I will be able to use these or share these vocabulary flashcards on my webpage or blog for parents and students if they care to study.