What's New?: My Third Blog

Communication

Some students may have great communication with their parents or guardians.  Those students may go home each day and give them detailed reports of what they did in class and what they have coming up in school.  However, those students are few and far between in the 21st century. Also, some parents may feel that they are barging in on their child's studies if they are not openly invited to come to a concert or check out a project.  Classroom blogs are  great ways to share the info that is going on in class, and they are great communication tools for the teacher to communicate with the parents or guardians of the students in his or her class.  For example, Western Salem High School uses a blog to communicate with all of their music boosters.  Instead of risking fliers and letters getting lost between school and home, this music program blogs about all of its upcoming events, concerts, festivals, and fundraisers.  Not only does Western Salem High School use their blog to communicate upcoming events, but it is also used to post videos and pictures.  If a parent, guardian, or family member could not make it to a concert and festival, they can access a certain performance  easily on the blog.

Animoto and Voki
I think both of these programs are great resources, and will liven up any lesson.  Animoto is nice because it incorporates many engaging tools, such as music, pictures, and movement and transitions of the pictures.  If one is introducing a topic that your students may not be very interested in, such as multiplication, Animoto enables you to introduce it an interesting way.  I think the music has a lot to do with the interests of the students.  If it's a hip, upbeat song, the students are more likely to have an even larger interest in the topic, and may even think its "cool."  I see myself using Animoto to introduce the visual aspects of music, such as singing posture.

 I have to admit, having an avatar that uses your voice, is pretty cool.  Voki is  also great to introduce topics. I see myself using Voki to briefly talk about a dead composer.  I would use an avatar to represent the composer, and record a short presentation of the composer talking to the class about themselves. However, I do find Voki to be quite limiting because it only uses the voice of the recording to communicate the info or activity. 

New Technology
The past few weeks have been quite the whirlwind of technology.  I have learned to use Excel and Access much more efficiently.  I have always had an idea how to use these programs, but now, I feel very well versed in this software.  While completing my assignments for Web 2.0, I took time to further explore what Excel and Access have to offer.  For instance, I feel much more confident with my formulas in Excel.. It used to take me a very long time to create a table with formulas, now I can complete them in no time.  This will help me relay information about assessments  to my students  more quickly and efficiently.  In Access, I figured out ways to make info and projects more accessible to my students.  In my Zoo Database, I not only created databases, but linked them to build a complete Form for my students to use, as well as use the Button Control to make my Form more user friendly to my students    These assignments forced me to look more closely into these two programs to see what resources are available in each of the programs.