The first thing I was introduced to in the course was Digital Images. I had to crop, enhance, create a panorama, and practice various other techniques with photos. I was not sure, at first, how I would be able to integrate this into a classroom setting, but after a lot of thought, I do believe I now have a few ideas. Digital Images can be used in various classroom settings. I teach Reading and World Cultures, so I focused on the things I do in my classroom and how Digital Images may enhance student engagement. Some ideas I came up with are as follows. To encourage writing, a digital photo can be used as the foundation. Students can be given a photo to look at, study and then write about it. This can encourage descriptive writing as well as free writing and/or story-telling. Another way I could use this is to create a classroom magazine with updates as to what we are learning in class. Students could be given roles such as reporter, photographer, editor etc. and when it comes time to adding photos into the magazine, students can put their cropping, enhancing, and special effects to use to make our magazine more visually appealing to the readers. As I am currently a classroom teacher, I think of ways to integrate what I have learned directly into my classroom now, however, being that this is an Education Media course, all of these techniques could be taught by the Media Specialist of the school. Currently at my school, my own media specialist loves to take full classes and teach lessons. These will be excellent ideas to take to her for next year!
The second thing I was able to get from this course is the importance of organizing classroom websites. I have a classroom website that I use quite often and students are able to access it for various reasons. However, I never gave much thought to the organization of the layout. Creating a web of my website to see where things fall and how they are viewed by the students really helped me to see what I may be able to do differently for next year. Easy navigation is a very important aspect of the classroom website. Many parents are still not very tech savvy and it is my job to make it easy for them to navigate to where they need to be. This is something that I do not consider as often as I should! Clear and concise headings and buttons are a must for this reason. Students in this generation know how to navigate technology better than most adults. When I was organizing my already-created website, I noticed there were some pages that may have seemed a little cluttered or misplaced. However, the purpose of my class site is to keep students and parents up to date on classroom events. Students who are absent can got to the website to gather the day’s lesson and activities, parents can read information on school events, due dates for assignments, projects, and anything else that requires a time limit, as well as 24/7 access to my school and home email addresses.
Skype can become a great tool in the classroom for parent-student-teacher interaction. As of right now, students have access to an AOL Instant Messenger Screen Name I created solely for students to reach me. I have this linked to my cell phone so students have the ability to send me an Instant Message, making me able to attend to my students’ needs even while I am out and about. I truly believe in being accessible to both my students and their parents. For this reason, I also give my cell number to parents who feel they may need to contact me outside of school hours. Many Professors who work in the Distance Education realm also provide this option. This step gets me one step closer to how it would be if I were ever become an online teacher. I would like to utilize Skype into my parent-student-teacher connection because I think it is a great way to stay connected. Students are able to connect with other students about homework, class work, and projects. This is especially useful for group projects because they can contact each other and work via Internet (with the option of video conference if both parties have web cameras).
Finally, I was able to learn about the “behind-the-scenes” of Online Courses. Which I think should be a component to many instructional technology type courses such as this! Through the activity provided to us via WebCourses, I learned how much maintenance goes into an online class. There are many different areas an online teacher must routinely check to be sure everything runs smoothly. I am not yet able to apply this to my classroom, though I do have the ability to create test/assignments/quizzes online and have students take them via the computer and submit them. This is not as complex as WebCourses, but it is a baby step into that direction. With our new program that will be introduced District-wide next year, Skyward allows students to complete assignments online and teachers can opt to have the computer grade it, which will them automatically insert the grade into the grade book, or students can do the assignment online, and the teacher can still manually grade it, and enter the score into the grade book at his/her leisure. I do feel that by using Skyward, my district is slowly creeping towards the feel of an online curriculum course. If I combine all that I have learned through this class, I am willing to bet I would be quite close to having a solely online course. Close, not completely there though.
