Class Blog #3

I was excited to see the sections about Audacity and Garage Band in RSS For Educators. I can’t say I read everything word for word, but it’s good to know that I have a source to be able to turn to for information. I have used Audacity quite a bit at school, though I know I’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of what this application can do. I’ve used it to record my students as they sing in class and then have played it back for them to hear. I’ve also recorded myself playing and singing, often for the benefit of a sub or classroom helper. This program is really cool because you can pretty much just click “record,” do your thing, and then export the recording as a .wav file and drag it into I-tunes or even email it (so cool!).

There’s a transliterator at my school that cues speech for kids that are hard of hearing. In the past I’ve spent an exorbitant amount of time and energy setting up my mixer and microphones to record all the songs that these students will learn in my class so that the transliterator will be able to learn the songs ahead of time. With audacity I found a great time-saving application, in that it requires no set-up and I can simply email my recording to the transliterator (instead of having to burn a CD every few weeks). The recordings aren’t terribly high quality, but I also have only used the computer’s internal microphone, and I haven’t messed with the program’s settings much either. I’m hoping, now that I’m headed back to school full time, to spend some more time with Audacity to figure out what other capabilities this program has. I haven’t attempted recording duplicate tracks, nor have I tried a USB microphone like the one described in the book. It’ll be interesting to see what I can do to improve the sound quality of recordings just by trying some of the tricks in the book. Again I just have to say that I think this class is awesome – it is encouraging me to learn about technologies that are unfamiliar to me, but it is also pushing me to delve more deeply into technologies I’ve already been using.

Speaking of unfamiliar applications, Garage Band is another program I’m interested in learning more about. I have seen a little of what can be done on it as far as recording music, though the book goes more in depth as to its capabilities in recording podcasts. I think my students would love working with the program, though I’m concerned that I don’t know enough about it myself. Would I just be wasting time having the students fiddle around with technology for technology’s sake instead of having specific learning objectives in mind? Hmmm...

I’m still excited about what we learned about powerpoint during class last week. I like the approach Joe took in giving us cool examples other people had created and then showing us how to pick it apart and figure out what they did for ourselves. It’s so empowering to know that it can be as simple as that. Again, I’m looking forward to being back on my school computer this week and trying to add sound (and maybe even video?) to some powerpoints that I have already created. If I can add sound – maybe even whole songs? – to specific slides rather than having to shuffle between powerpoint and I-tunes during class… wow, that would be incredible! Talk about increasing my productivity and efficiency as an educator.

Class Blog #2

I definitely feel like I have become addicted to my computer in the past couple weeks. This class has given me permission to spend time on what I used to consider frivolous technology. (And because of this, I’m finding that there are some really great applications out there that are definitely not frivolous… though they are time consuming, as Jan mentioned!) This week I’ve worked on organizing my Google Reader feeds and navigating through and around this application. It’s been fun to “follow” my classmates and read what they have to say. I’ve also created a Delicious site… and I agree with Elliot – it’s great to be able to access one’s bookmarks from any computer! This week I’ve worked on manipulating and personalizing my blog. That hasn’t been the easiest program in which to maneuver but it’s been satisfying to finally be making some headway.
Oh – and in the process of working on a powerpoint I used for a lesson on my first day back Friday, I figured out how to create action buttons! I’ve been interested in learning how to do that since I saw Elliot do it in a powerpoint presentation a few classes ago but haven’t had the time to figure out how... until now. This is going to save me a huge amount of time and hassle during my day-to-day teaching. I teach ten classes during the school day, for which I used to have ten sections in specific order in a powerpoint presentation (so that I wouldn’t have to stop and find the next section between each class). Now I can just click the handy dandy action buttons and get where I need to go quickly during a class. All I can say is... hurray for this class and the push it has given me to learn new things!

Class Blog #1

Well, it’s Tuesday night and I’m attempting to use my time wisely and get some work done for class. Here goes!

After class last Tuesday, I came home fired up and ready to dig into some new technologies. I spent time fiddling with I-Google and I also messed with blogger.com and Twitter. I-Google is very cool and the possibilities and fun features impress me, but I’m not sold on using it because it seems like it has really bogged down my computer. Maybe I just have too many gadgets on my homepage… I’ve been on Facebook for some time, so I haven’t been all that impressed with Twitter so far, seeing that it is really only providing the “update” feature from Facebook without the other cool stuff. I’m hoping as I dig into this application more I will prove myself wrong. And I can’t wait to figure out podcasting and work with this blog site some more.

I started reading Disrupting Class this week (before realizing that we aren’t actually “supposed” to be reading for several weeks) and was pleasantly surprised with how engaging the introduction was. It has really made me think about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation… I found the author’s discussion about motivation to be extremely interesting. The obvious statement was made: When there is a high extrinsic motivation for someone to learn something, school’s jobs are easier. On the surface, that seems like a no-brainer. But when I really started thinking about it, I realized I’ve never really thought of students in the United States as having a lack of extrinsic motivation. When I think of extrinsic motivation, I think of getting prizes or rewards for doing a good job. Kids in America are constantly rewarded for everything, right? But… I’m thinking on a smaller scale than the authors. They made the point that prosperous nations have less of a need to pull themselves out of poverty and therefore do not have as many students choosing to study (or choosing to study well, I should say) the harder subjects like math and science. I’m looking forward to reading further and learning about how to make our teaching intrinsically motivating.

I also started reading RSS for Educators as was assigned for this week. It was good to get an understanding about what RSS actually is (I hadn’t even heard this term until last week’s class!) and also learn about podcasts, blogs and wikis (something else I really knew nothing about except for being familiar with wikipedia). This is going to be a very information-packed resource.

What’s next? Well, I am thinking about possible uses for these technologies in my classroom. Podcasting intrigues me. And though these things weren’t necessarily a big part of our readings for the week, I’m looking forward to learning more about powerpoint capabilities (I use it every day but only on a very basic level) and smart boards (We’re hoping to get smart boards in all the music classrooms during this curriculum cycle). I can’t wait!

My first blog

This is my first blog ever. I am exploring this method of communication as a part of a master's level class I'm taking called Instructional Technology. I've never done this before because I really don't feel I have any deep thoughts to share with the world, but am looking forward to seeing how this all works.