Podcasting

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Prezi

I created this Prezi to use at our annual Back to School Night which usually takes place during the first week or two of school. Each teacher presents important information to parents for 30 minutes. I now have a projector in my class so I will be able to use a visual aid to go along with my oral presentation.

I like using Prezi because I think viewers find it more interesting than a PowerPoint presentation. I plan on creating more Prezis in the future, especially if I am presenting professional development information at my school. My students would also enjoy Prezi, even though they are kindergartners. A simple Prezi I could create would be one using their sight words. I could put one sight word on each frame. I think that would create more interest among my students. Although Prezis can be more time-consuming to create, especially when one is first learning how, I believe that the end result is worth the initial time investment.

Comics

I enjoyed creating my own comic. Although it was a time-consuming experience, now that I know more about Pixton, I feel like it would go much quicker next time. Since I teach kindergarten, I feel like my use of comics would be very limited. My students are just learning to read, so I would either have to read the comic aloud or else include only a few words in each scene. Although I feel like I could come up with some creative ideas using a limited amount of words if given enough time, I choose to create a funny comic aimed at teachers or people who think that teaching is an easy job.

I think that Pixton has a lot of potential for use in schools through the use of both teacher-created and student-created comics. Teachers could use Pixton comics to introduce a new concept or motivate reluctant learners. Students in high ability or enrichment programs would especially love to create comics centered around a topic in the curriculum. They could then share it with the class. Another option would be to have students work with a partner to create a comic at the end of a unit to show what they've learned. The two main challenges of using Pixton in the school setting would be the amount of time that is required to create comics and the fact that Pixton is not free for use in schools. Overall, I think it is a very fun and inviting program!

Photo Editing

This is a photo that I took when I visited the Great Wall of China. I like this picture for several reasons. I like the view of the mountains in the distance, as well as the steep steps that show how difficult it would have been to build and maintain the Great Wall. I think the watchtower looks uniquely Chinese, so most people would be able to identify this location as the Great Wall, even if they have never been there or don't know very much about it. The only thing that I don't like about this picture is the date stamp. I wish there was an option to remove it after the picture is taken.

This is my original picture of my sister and me. I like this picture because we look happy together, but there are many problems with the picture including red eyes, poor choice of background, and too much light.

I experimented with several of the programs on the list. I started with Aviary, but it was too complicated for me to figure out. I then continued down the list to Picozu, but when I uploaded my photo, it was much too large and I couldn't figure out how to shrink my picture down in a proportional manner. I made it smaller, but our faces were stretched too wide. I next tried out Picfull. The main fix I wanted to accomplish on this picture was red eye removal, but I was extremely disappointed in Picfull's red eye removal tool. It did not really help very much. Next I explored Pixlr. I was again surprised and displeased with the red eye removal feature on this website. Unlike other photo editing programs I have used in the past, Pixlr instructed me to click in the center of each red eye in order to fix it. However, when I did this, the red disappeared from only about half of the eye. No matter how much I clicked on the half-red eye, it was to no avail. At this point, I was becoming frustrated, so I resorted to using the red eye removal tool (that allows you to draw a square around the eye that needs to be fixed) on Windows Photo Viewer. It worked like a charm, and I returned to editing my photo on Pixlr. I tried many different lighting variations, and I found that I liked darkening the edges of the photo to draw more attention to our faces, which are the focal point of this picture by adjusting the brightness and contrast. I tried all sorts of themes and crazy editing frames and colors, but I liked a more traditional look. I also used a shine removal tool to take some of the glare off of our foreheads. I was very pleased with how the photo turned out and am going to email a copy to my sister.

As far as using photo editing programs in the classroom, I can definitely see how older students would get into it. Most students really enjoy using technology, and editing photos often feels like play as you experiment to see what you like. There is no way that my kindergartners would be able to use these tools, though. Even if my students were able to use the program (which some of them would probably be able to do), I don't believe kindergartners possess the maturity needed to evaluate pictures to see what looks good. I fear that kindergarten humor would prevail and they would just enjoy coloring over the photos and using the stretching and crazy color techniques! For middle and high school students, I could see teachers coming up with many creative uses for photo editing tools such as preparing photos as a visual aid for a presentation or backdrop for a skit. These students could also respectfully edit pictures of the class participating in a certain unit and then write about each picture in a blog or create a photo album with descriptions of the activities.