ICT Tools- Group 3: Powerpoint, Prezi and Glogster

ICT Tools- Group 3: Powepoint, Prezi & Glogster.

Power points:

I have used PowerPoint's previously and I have used quite a few of them at my school placements. This is one of them, found at my Wiki space and it is called "Das Wetter", I used this PowerPoint for my German class when the topic was on weather.

What is a PowerPoint?

PowerPoint is a versatile presentation tool that can be used as a multimodal presentation to accommodate intelligences or as an advanced organizer to present content to learners.

Resource:
http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/creating-animations-powerpoint-support-student-learning-and-engagement

     PowerPoint is regarded as a presentation tool that is used to support oral presentations. But it is so much more. It is a platform that supports the embedding of text, linking and interactivity, audio, video and images. So it is really a very easy to use multimedia authoring tool. When you analyse this tool, consider the multiple uses and think beyond the tired presentation. PowerPoint can be used to create a narrated stand alone presentation. This means that your students6 are able to record, listen, improve and re-record their narration - a benefit that is not afforded by an oral presentation. Thus, your students have the opportunity to develop their spoken skills rather than being confronted by nervousness when presenting orally. As a presentation tool, PowerPoint supports embedded audio and video, which has already been proven to be important to this generation of learners, and certainly by the learning theory you have consulted. PowerPoint can be used to analyse a process, to create interaction "choose your own path" story books. It can be used to create interactive quizzes both by yourself and by your students for each other (or other audiences).

Extended entry on the PowerPoints: 

Affordances:   

Teachers:

• The PowerPoint's can be used for the presentation of nearly every topic.
• The teachers can communicate their speech presentation better with the PowerPoint because it is possible to add images, videos, audio files to the PowerPoint's.
• The PowerPoint's can be zoomed using Prezi and it is perfect for global learners.
• Can do a presentation for the parents.
• Can create interactive presentations, where it is possible to click on the image and access a program from the computer if needed.
• Mischief mouse can be used for interactive activities.
• Adding a pop quiz at the end of the presentation.

Students:

• Students can create animations in PowerPoint.
• Students can present any topic with a PowerPoint, using graphics, images, videos and choose their own timing when presenting, with elaboration possible.
• Can get creative and use various backgrounds and custom bullets.
• Use Prezi to zoom the presentation and explain the certain parts in detail if needed.

Positives:

• Powerful presentation tools. 
• Videos and web videos can be embedded.
• PowerPoint can be converted to video.
• Many visual elements to create a powerful presentation.
• The new co-authoring function allows users to simultaneously edit the same presentation from different locations or computers.
• PowerPoint presentations can be organized into sections.

Negatives:

• PowerPoint works best for things that are presented visually, not verbally. It helps when you need to draw a picture and not necessary to tell a story.
• Since Powerpoint 2007 and 2010 both use the pptx extension, it is virtually impossible to tell which of the two versions the presentation was created in.
• It can take away the control from the presenter.
• It does not handle too much text well and so it is the best to use for visuals or interactive activities but not fro presenting long texts.
• The PowerPoint's real purpose is to be short, visual and informative.

Application:

• In German and English classes, the PowerPoint could be used to introduce any language features, for example presenting vocabulary words and maybe adding a picture with it for remembering better.
• A short, informative PowerPoint on Shakespeare.
• Students can do presentations about Germany and present it to the class.

Resource: http://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/Handouts/powerpoint.htm#How well does it work

Prezi.

What is Prezi?

         One of the drawbacks of PowerPoint is that it is linear. For your sequential learners this is ideal. For your global learners this is frustrating. Prezi allows you a global perspective on your material whilst allowing you the ability to add minute detail not possible in PowerPoint. In addition, sometimes you do wish to add detail to a presentation. In PowerPoint, this results in the slide that nobody
 can see - you know, the one that the presenter states "I know you cannot see the detail in this slide, 

but.....", and you wonder why they put it up. Nonetheless, we all screw up our eyes and battle to read the detail. Prezi allows you to present the big picture, and then zoom in to as much detail as you wish. It is like taking a magnifying glass to the tiny print on that hard-to-read PowerPoint slide.

I have never heard of Prezi before but once I tried it and copied one of my PowerPoint's to it, I realised how powerful it it, it is great. I consider myself a global learner and Prezi makes it so much
more interesting, with powerful zooming abilities and a possibility to add extra text and notes. I have enjoyed selecting the backgrounds.

I have explored Prezi and have added one of my created Power points here. Prezi is awesome, I am going to use this in my future schools. It is simply amazing!

Glogster:

What is Glogster?

Is a social network that allows users to create free interactive posters , or Glogs. A "Glog", short for "graphics blog", is an interactive multimedia image. It looks like a poster but readers can interact with the content.  The tool is currently being used for advertising as well as for CV's. Glogster provides an
online environment to design interactive posters. The user inserts text, images, photos, audio (MP3), videos, special effects and other elements into their glogs to generate a multimedia online creation. Posters can be shared with other users on the site, embedded in external wikis and blogs, and shared via many social networks such as Facebook.

Resource: Wikipedia.

ICT Tools -Group 2: Images, Podcasts & Digital Video

ICT Tools-Group 2: Images, Podcasts & Digital Video.

Images

Images may be two-dimensional, such as a photograph, screen display, and as well as a three-dimensional, such as a statue or hologram. They may be captured by optical devices–such as cameras, mirrors, lenses, telescopes, microscopes, etc. and natural objects and phenomena, such as thehuman eye or water surfaces. The word image is also used in the broader sense of any two-dimensional figure such as a map, a graph, a pie chart, or an abstract painting. In this wider sense, images can also be rendered manually, such as by drawing, painting, carving, rendered automatically by printing or computer graphicstechnology, or developed by a combination of methods, especially in a pseudo-photograph. A volatile image is one that exists only for a short period of time. This may be a reflection of an object by a mirror, a projection of a camera obscura, or a scene displayed on a cathode ray tube. A fixed image, also called a hard copy, is one that has been recorded on a material object, such as paper ortextile by photography or digital processes.

Source: Wikipedia

Tools for working with images:

Resizing photos: go to: Moba photo

Digital images online: Flickr: I have created an account and added a photo here.

I have also trialed and tested be funky creative website and have uploaded a photo and changed its appearance: like this:

Picture retrieved from here.


Extended entry on the images:

Affordances:

Teachers:

• Could be used as the hook for the class- powerful image, let the students brainstorm and begin associating the words with the picture.
• Can aid the written material and link the powerful images with it.
• Can aid visual learners.
• Can illustrate the events more effectively with images.
• Can illustrate the information and processes visually with diagrams and graphs.
• Can create powerpoints with images and zoom in the powerpoints by using Prezi.

Students:

•  Can create and share visual material through blogs and wikis.
• Can express themselves better with images that relate to what is being asked in some assignments by using graphs, mindmaps, photographs and so on.
• Can add personal, family photos to share information about themselves.

Positives-

• Provides variety, breaks up the written text and makes it more interesting and meaningful.
• Images can say many words, let students describe the image in descriptive words in English classes.
• Can make the Blogs, wikis more personal by adding own photos or the things that the students like.

Negatives-

• It is risky and dangerous to upload personal pictures and information, there are many cyber bullies and others that are willing to abuse the internet and do the wrong thing.
• It is important to  know what you can and can't share with the world and be aware that attribution applies and that some pictures need permission for the usage and the distribution.

Applications:

• Can be used at home and in the classroom. Powerful power point presentations with images.
• In German classes, the countries profile and states can be presented visually, foods, culture and other German-related images supplied to the class. In English, persuasive text can have images to go with it, advertisment, students describing a topic in anything, will be able to add images to it. Images can also be used to make a movie with a movie maker.

Digital audio recordings: see Experience with Voki  here.

What is a digital audio and a podcast?

A podcast:

A podcast is simply a sound file. But it is a sound file that is shared with others, usually by subscription. Clearly, podcasts can be accessed online, created by others across the web. They can be accessed online as files that you create for your students. But importantly, they are also files that your students create and share by uploading online.

In its simplest form, it is a recording of student performance or speech that is saved on a computer. This recording can be done direct to computer, or using a device such as a portable voice recorder or MP3 player. These recordings can be used in their own right, or can be used to provide a sound track on a movie, or embedded in PowerPoint.

In the next step up, audio recordings can be uploaded online. They can be uploaded to wikispaces, but unfortunately not into your blog. However, you can link from your blog to your wiki. The wiki will embed your voice recording into a player so it streams from your wiki page. Recordings can either be downloaded or streamed.

Digital audio can be embedded into the wiki space but not the blog, however the students can link the wiki site to their blog.

This is an example of the podcast.


http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/

The podomatic website could be used for recording German and then using it in the classroom.

I have accessed the Podomatic and have had a look at Classic poetry aloud , since I am studying to be an English teacher, this poetry podcast is brilliant and there are many poems by many different poets which are currently being studied at high schools.

The only downfall is that if the podcast is quite popular and highly used, the donations will have to be made for the podcast to be accessed for example on the i Tunes, if the podcast is accessed online, there is no problem. I have embedded the 'Anthem for doomed youth' by Alfred Owen, which i remember i had to do on my practical as one of the war poems.

Digital videos:

According to a research study by Kearney & Shuck (2006), digital video has a range of common usages in schools, in particular for communication, observation and analysis, and reflection. As a communication tool, digital video facilitates students' communication of messages, ideas or information. Digital video is also used as an observation and analysis tool, enhancing students' observations of phenomena, experiments or performances. Finally, it is used as a reflection tool to support student reflections on their own learning.
here
Outcomes of student video production include affective, meta cognitive, higher order thinking, communication and presentation, literacy, organisational and teamwork and movie making skill development.

Whilst digital video is a sound support of student capacity, and outcomes described (taken from Kearney and Shuck), caution is urged in ensuring that conceptual development related to curriculum outcomes is maintained as a core focus.

Digital video can be created using digital video cameras, however can also be made using still photographs, audio overlay, and/or the inclusion of video.


Common tools for the simple creation of digital video include Windows MovieMaker (on all Windows PCs) and iMovie (on all Apples), both included with the operating systems commonly installed on computers. Making movies is accessible to all, and even early childhood students are capable of combining their voice recordings and images into a movie.

Digital Tools group 1- Blogs-Wikis-Websites

Digital Tools  group 1- Blogs - Wikis- Websites

What is a blog?

          A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art, photographs, sketches, videos, music, audio, which are part of a wider network of social media

Source: wikipedia

Blogs:

I have started E-learning course and one of the first things we had to do was to set up our own blog, which currently looks like it does underneath but more information will be added soon!

          ICT's  and blogs are powerful tools for teachers and students.  ICT( Information and Communications Technoogy) is the name given to any digital device. This includes but is not limited to computers and the affordances of the internet, including a range of read-write tools. Scanners , hand-held devices, mobile phones, cameras, digital voice recorders, iPods, MP3 players, GPS devices and digital microscopes are all ICT. ( Moodle, 2012). ICT's provide the students with a variety and also interesting resources can be incorporated together with learning context and the curriculum, it is important to present information which will make students use higher order thinking skills and scaffolding.

Blogger tour -  Will describe more about the blogs and will take you through the different information on blogs.

Blog analyzer- http://www.webseoanalytics.com/free/seo-tools/blog-analyzer.php. This website analyses your blog. I have analysed mine and here is some of the results: It is quite interesting and it explains what the domains mean after you analyse your blog.

Swot analysis of blogs an enterprise perspective from enterprisezweinull

Extended Exploration of a blog:

Affordances:

For teachers: Using edublogs for example.

• The possibility to share materials, news, downloads, links and more with the students daily.
• Facilitate online discussions and collaboration.
• Create a class publication that students can easily publish to and you can easily edit.
• Replace your newsletter and stay in touch with parents about what is going in class.
• Get your students blogging so that they can share their work and thoughts.
• Share your lesson plans.

For students:

• Sharing the materials with everyone and finding the 'voice'.
• Encourages the enthusiasm for writing and creating.
• Blogs can be easily edited and updated by the author of the blog
• Other students and friends can comment on the blog pages created by others.
• Blogs can be used for scaffolding and as a life- long learning tool.
• The written blogs can be viewed by many and it provides the students with the feeling of connectedness.

Resource: Educational Blogging.
http://supportblogging.com/Educational+Blogging

Adding things to the blog:
With blogs you can add an image, third party such as flickr can be used aswel for uploading the edited photos to your blog. Adding videos is also posible. Blogger accepts AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, Real and Windows files and the video must be less than 100 MB in size. 

Can't add:
Audio files or powerpoints or files and Microsoft Word documents. Wiki would have to be used for that.

Positives-  Easy to use, step by step instructions, can be accesssed at the Blogger Tour. Interesting and encourages creativity, can change layout, font, make it personal. Can be timelined and the information can be organized and sorted out. Automatically saves while you typing. Can have drafts and publish whenever the full paper is ready. It is fun. Can keep the blog private.

Negatives- Can be slow when typing at times, gets overloaded, everyone can see the material if it is not made private, material could be criticised, could create issues in the classroom, some students might not want to publish their thoughts and ideas. Some students might not have access to the computer or the internet at home. When typing, the capital letters don't automatically apply, like in word documents, so the typing can be a bit slower.

Applications- Could be used weekly, to reflect on the learnt material, mainly use it at school and at the computer rooms, unless all the students have the access to the computer at home. Homework could be supplied, diaries could be kept for poetry for example. Blogs could be used to scaffold the information and to access the weekly information and activities, added by the teacher.

Possible usage of blogs in German and English classes: some ideas.

German: ideas.

Students can create a German blog, browse pictures relating to Germany, describe the pictures, write in German. Upload German You-tube videos, German songs. Do a presentation and share it with the class, allow other students to comment on each other's blogs.

Blogging very much supports learning theories of Social Constructivism and Connectivism:  

What is a wiki?

My wiki can be accessed here http://www.wikispaces.com/user/my/henny1987.
         A wiki is an online space where users and guests can edit, modify, add, remove information with intuitive editing tools. It could be compared to a never-ending, paginated sheet of online butchers paper. Working in a wiki requires rules and etiquette. Especially given that one student is able to remove, overwrite or edit the work of another. Whilst the previous work can be easily recovered using the history function of the wiki, it is inconvenient and poor etiquette unless it is an agreed upon activity. The history function can be very useful to identify the contribution of each student to the blog, authoring dates, and progress of students.

One drawback of wikis is that they cannot accommodate multiple, concurrent authors. If two or more people are editing a wiki at one time, only the work of one will be saved. If concurrent editing is the best way to work, spaces such as Google Docs are more suitable, in fact are ideal.

Wiki would be great for the class of students, where I could provide the topic and us the De Bono's hats for different perspectives. Wiki is effective because the whole class can access and contribute to the teacher-guided activity. Commnets and posts can be left in order to reflect and contribute to the opinions and the learning. Wiki reflection can be found on my blog here

What is a website?

          How does a website, or online space work? In the "good old days", you had to be a web author to create a coded web page. It is still strongly recommended that you become familiar with snippets of code because it allows you to manipulate and customise your pages.
These days, most online spaces have what is called a WYSIWYG editor - "what you see is what you get". It is much like Word, or PowerPoint. You put up your content, and the program does the coding for you.so ANYONE can be a web author. Some programs like Weebly make it even easier by allowing you to insert place-holders, into which you add your own content.

What makes a website fantastic is that you can upload only one of everything in a range of spaces custom built for each type of artefact. For instance, SlideShare is for Powerpoints, Flickr is for images (and video), of course YouTube is definitely for videos. And in your website, you are able to embed code, which embeds the artefact into your webpage. This is how I added the YouTubes to this page. Furthermore, you are able to link from one page to another using Linking, which allows you to move up and down, side to side across the web at will.
One VERY IMPORTANT thing to remember is that a website can draw together artefacts that are held in the WEB. You cannot copy and paste images etc into a web page when you are creating it. You will need to upload and embed it.

Weebly:

I have created an acount with Weebly and it seems to be very easy to operate. The idea of dragging pragraphs, photos, audio files and many other things seem easy and fun.  I haven't actually had enough time to add things to that website but I am planning to create a website in the future for the students, where I could add some things and the students could check it on regular basis, maybe for revision or extra learning material.

Voki experience

I have really enjoyed The Voki experience! It will be very handy to use in the English and German classes because of the speaking element in it. It is possible to use and save some characters and speeches for free but certain characters are only available for Voki classrooms and yearly costs apply. The character seems to be quite realistic when the speech is added and I can use my own voice for the speeches. This would be great for classrooms where I could add teaching material in my own voice. This could save me time ans students could access that and listen to it again if needed.

Wikis and Wiki reflection.

             I have created a wiki which can be found here. 

Henrika's Wiki

 I have added a wiki called Blogsforeveryone.

One of the types of wikis i really enjoy is Wiki How, one of the interesting Wiki How's that i found is How to be responsible digital citizen. This relates to E-learning course and the idea that digital immigrants and digital citizens have different technological capabilities.

SWOT analysis for  a Wiki:

Strenghts:                                                                                 

• Collaborative                                                                                                               
• Fun
• Social
• History function for retrieving information
• Can see the continous string of added information

 Weaknesses:

• Easily removable information
• Only one person can edit and contribute at the time.

Opportunities:

• Creating new networks
• Showing and contributing to ideas
• Learning
• Teaching

Threats:

• Privacy
• Intrusion
• Trust

This E-learning course is teaching me alot. I have never created  a blog or a wiki before and now I have and it is not as difficult as i thought but I must admit it is time consuming.

Reflection on blogs.

          
Before i started the E learning course, i have never created a blog.... Just never felt the need to share too much information online and also the substitute for that is Facebook in my opinion. one of the intersting things about the blogs is that it has got backwards chronological order and it displays the newest stuff first and you have to scroll down to view the older content. This is quite smart but at the start i wanted to try and arrange it so that the older postings come first and the newer postings come after.

I am a big fan of Bon jovi and i have found this blog: it looks so awesome

http://80sbonjovi.tumblr.com/tagged/Demo_of_the_day

This is quite cool and this blog has got many photos of Bon jovi that i have never seen before. I guess blogs are so powerful in a way that people get to express and share their own information, text, images, audio. The viewers can even contribute themselves.

It is awesome and now I am doing a blog about the blog! Inserting images, videos.

De Bono's hats and reflection on this activity.

        De Bono's hats strategy: the theories involved in this would be cognitivism and also social constructivism.

Students get to organise and share their thinking in distinct ways. Mobiles' wiki activity was quite interesting but I guess everything has got positives, negatives. I am going to use PMI chart to express my opinion on this Wiki activity.

                                       

 Cognitivism diagram:

 http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=12563

                             Social Constructivism

Constructivists believe that:"learners construct their own reality or at least interpret it based upon their perceptions of experiences, so an individual's knowledge is a function of one's prior experiences, mental structures, and beliefs that are used to interpret objects and events."


"What someone knows is grounded in perception of the physical and social experiences which are comprehended by the mind."

(Jonasson, 1991, cited in Mergel, 1998)

                                   POSITIVES AND POSITIVE THINKING

     

  + 1 PLUS- The layout is very effective, well organized and personalised: the user adds name on the side, can use different colour, font, be different. +2 PLUS- you can choose which questions you want to answer and add your name to those, if some of the questions you are not sure off, you can leave those out (I did). +3 PLUS- it is great for learning from your peers and see what everyone has got to say on each question. There are no limitations on your opinions. Students can add their references and resources and can further refer to the posts of others in the activity and express the opinion on their posts. +4 PLUS -the idea of the hat is cool and it adds some interest to the activity and some animation.

                                   NEGATIVES AND I GUESS SOME OF THE NEGATIVE THINKING

 -1 MINUS- it is possible to delete other peoples' posts, not that anybody would do that, but some people might want to do the wrong thing. -2 MINUS- this activity is good for expressing yourself but it is also very tempting to get ideas from other people and at times it feels like there is nothing else left to say because everyone already covered everything, it made me feel a bit intimidated but also made me think harder and use higher order thinking to come up with 'unique' answers. This activity done at schools could possibly create competition ' and my post is better' scenarios. 

                                IMPLICATIONS- POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE      

 Technology is about learning, there are always positive and negative but if you don't try and explore, you will not know. Wikis and De Bono activity is mainly positive and great for collaboration,  saffolding and brainstorming. it is not a secret and everyone can see your opinion publicly. It could be intimidating that some people seem to know so much and be so accurate and spot on but it also makes you realise that everyone is different and everyone has got different thinking patterns and different ideas for better for some than others.

I have enjoyed this activity,  i didn't have the patience to fill in all the questions but it certainly got me thinking on various perspectives, once i had my perspective, i didn't feel the need to fill in all the questions, some of them were similar and i was strating to repeat myself. I guess i should be more patient and see the MOBILE PHONE from more different angles, but i do honestly think that it is a big distraction if used at school!

Comment on Wikis:

 In wikis students get to share their own understanding of the question to construct their own reality according to what they think,and also Bono hats provide different perspectives on the subject, it definitely encourages higher order thinking and allows students to have different persepctives and provides the balance between thinking positively and negatively- nothing is black or white, there are always shades of greys.