Week 4: Putting It Together: Protopage and Proposal for Final Project
This was my most stressful week along this adventure in
learning. Many things have been learned
and incorporated into my everyday life that I would never have imaged just four
weeks ago. My personal growth and understanding about how technology works when
educators use them to their fullest potential has been a painful but fun
learning experience. Why painful because I had to stretch myself far out of any
comfort zone? Feeling that I was always
forward thinking and discovering that I was far from that has brought me
pain. The pain has quickly been replaced
by the knowledge gained and the comfort in using new tools.
Just last week I hated Twitter
and could not see how it would benefit me as an educator. Don’t mine saying
today that I was grossly mistaken and my foolish thinking showed in my previous
account of this learning adventure. Love is not what I’ve gained from the
Twitter experience but a collaborative knowledge bank with a wealth of
information on so many levels that is freely shared from strangers. It felt
good to find a Tweet thread that was exactly what I needed to help with
understanding a principle or process or just fun meaningful information. I
started reading more articles and discovering that I wanted to share on my
Twitter page and collecting information from others that I can use and learn
from. I also did some research on Wikispaces, but
I have not ventured very far in that area. But I can see how it would have
value in the classroom as an excellent creative tool to get children to reading
more.
Did not understand the value of YouTube to the extent of my
knowledge now. It has been used for years as an easy go to DIY learning tool
for me, but discovered it is so much more. What is appreciated most about it is
any person can have a voice. After evaluating its many uses you can create your
own library of ready to go information from people who have done it, tried it,
or created it. It’s a site for all
knowledge level bases. For me that makes it practical, usable and worth the
time. For the first time since becoming familiar with YouTube I actually reviewed
its many components to see how to create a catalog of, suitable and interesting
videos. At this moment I don’t believe that there is any subject that I want to
find information on that I wouldn’t find it in a YouTube.
Aggregate pages was also something not familiar and had no
idea of what they were designed to do as a tool for anyone. The instructor
offered us two options to try out: Netvibes
pages and Protopage. After reviewing both I really feel in love
with Protopage for many reasons: a) ease of use b) tools, and c) appearance. Immediately,
I began discovering its potential for classroom and personal use. Of all the
many apps that I have discovered this has been the most profound to my
envisioning it as a tool that I would use for a long time.
Along the way I tried several other apps and immediately
downloaded or reviewed them as something I needed to my devices:
LiveCollage,
Hootsuite,
Reddit,
Tango,
Duolingo,
TweetCaster,
Textizer,
Nearpod,
CoolFonts,
Tumblr, Kahoot, Camastasia,
Aurasma, and Viewpure.
I also found an internet catalog of links call Cybraryman. WOW so much information. I
learned the use of hashtags and how to use them along with retweets and located
a list of usable acronyms that or worth their weight when texting or tweeting.
This conversation can go on and on because that’s the levels of information
gathering that has been created. At the
beginning of this course our instructor asked us to see what our digital
footprint looked like. I’m curious today
as to how it has changed.
Next, is the current challenge of creating a multimedia Web
2.0 rich unit presentation of a lesson or unit I would teach. At first thought I was sick, not with the
project but how to approach doing the project. Not being active in a regular
classroom setting presented a problem that I thought I would not be able to get
around. But where there’s a will, there’s
a way. I had the will now how about creating that way? My solution to this
problem was to create a hypothetical class setting using what I would currently
do as the basis for the project. The solution
is to develop a lesson on teaching about meteorites as a one day introductory class
using Chromebooks, Nearpod resources, PowerPoint presentation format incorporated
with YouTube embedded links and as many cartoon like inserts that move as
possible to get the task done. Today, I wrote the proposal and submitted it. I’m glad I’ll have a 4th of July
holiday break to get the job done. I am
excited and highly motivated to see how I can get this done well. This is
another brand new adventure in learning for me.
The wonder of it all is how I value technology and its many
uses in the classroom. There is a new
appreciation for all the many apps and tools that are available to help make
teaching and learning fun. My philosophy is “Learning is Fun, but Fun Work” and
this adventure has proven to be exactly that.
Here are just a few of some of the web 2.0 tools that I
checked out maybe you’ll want to do the same.
Enjoy!
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