Looking Back, Looking Ahead

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First Day of Class

Time flies, my technology course will be finished tonight. Memory of the first of class is still vivid in my mind. Our teacher introduced quite amount of technology tools and applications that I did not know and hear about. Moreover, I had to create my blog, my professional website, and using different Web 2.0 tools to create different projects. I felt so burdened after the first day of class since I wasn’t a technology person. I didn’t have such technology senses and skills to do all those assignments. I was so worried that I couldn’t make it.

Learning Technology

As time went by, I was exposed to different kind of technology tools and I learned to use them one by one. All the assignments in this class were new to me, such as Prezi, QR rcode, Glogster, Blabberize, and so on. I sometimes needed to spend couple of hours to figure out how to use some new applications and tools. I remember I tried back and forth to adjust the outlook of my first blog post for so many times.  That’s time consuming in the beginning. However, I found that the more you use technology, the better technique you acquire. Once you get the key to open the technology world, you will find so much fun and good tools in there. I feel my burden is getting lighter after each class and I have more confidence in using technology.

Look Forward

Prezi, Glogster, Blaberrize and QR code are the applications that I like. I was so excited to make my first Prezi, a Glog, Blaberr, and I was amazed to generate a QR code. They are so practical and awesome. I definitely will use them again and again. As I will have my student teaching very soon, I will use them to make in my teaching. I already think about use Blaberrize to have students retell the story book “Brown Bear, brown Bear, What Do You See?”, and I also will develop a classroom website to connect with the parents. Moreover, I will learn to use ThingLink and Wordle so that I can use them in my teaching at well. Even though this class will be ended soon, I will keep learning technology. I should learn more to keep myself from outdated and I need more tech knowledge to teach our 21^st century learners.

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QR Code

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      After using two interact and visual tools to teach the lesson of  identifying coins, I use QR code to generate a worksheet for children to identify the value of penny and nickel. QR code – Quick Response code, is a type of matrix barcode. We can get a piece of information, a URL, a coupon or more by reading this kind of codes with a QR code reader application.  When I first saw QR code in a restaurant, I had no idea what is this about. I was told that I could use that code to order our food. Since I had no smart phone at that time, I had no attempts to learn more.

        I learn how to use QR code in my technology class and I think it is a good tool to promote children’s motivation to find out the answers their owns. I think it would be fun to put QR codes all over the classroom and instruct students to do some planned activities, such as treasure hunt, or some problem solving activities.  Moreover, we can use the codes to show the answers on the worksheet so that students can check out the answers after doing the worksheet.

        It is very easy to generate a QR code; we can do it via couple Websites. We can generate a Website URL, youtube video, plain text, social network accounts and so on to a QR code.  And then we can save it on our computers or use it whatever we want. Generating a QR code is easier than I thought. I could not believe I finished the process just with a click when I first did it. I used my phone to read the code to confirm I did it. I was so excited to see how I put a google image into a QR code. I t was very fascinating. Besides using QR code in teaching, I think we can use it in some games or activities with different age groups.

Glogster

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       The second Web 2.0 tool I use is Glogster. This application allows users to create an interactive poster or multimedia page which visitors can interact with. I think Glogster is pretty user friendly. There are different selections of texts, graphics and  walls users can add to create their Glogs. Moreover, we also can add video and audio file to our Glogs.

        For my identifying coins lesson, I create a visual poster to demonstrate the value of penny, nickel, dime and quarter. And I add a youtube video to consolidate children’s learning. This is my first time to use Glogster, I like it a lot and I definitely will use it again for teaching. I think I will try more variety next time and I also will use it for the classroom newsletter.   I have seen some examples which people use Glogster to create their classroom newsletter. I think it is very great since teachers can include video and audio on their newsletters. Parents and children can read it each together at home. I think it really help parents know more about their children’s learning.

Link for my Glog

Blabberize

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         Blabberize is an application that allows us to speak through a picture. We can manipulate the picture to say what we want to say. This is my first time to use blabberize, I think it is pretty easy to create our own stuffs. Moreover, I like that we can generate our creation into a video or embed to our blog or Webpage.  It is very handy and cool. Since my lesson is for Kindergarten children, I did not plan to have children to use Blabberize this time. However, I think I will involve young children in retelling a story that they read in class next time. That would be very fascinating and children would be so excited to hear their voices with the pictures.

        Even though the application is simple to use; however, I think it is hard to manipulate the mouth movement perfectly match the figure on the picture. I have to try couple times to adjust the mouth shape to match the figure; but I am not quite satisfying with the outcome. I need some more practices and I think picture selection is very important as well. And also, I find a hard to figure out how to edit my blabber after I save it. It does provide an ”edit” icon; however, it’s only for editing the title, description or tag. It is not for editing the blabber itself. Thus, the only think I can do is recreating another blabber. It’s quite frustrated. 

        According to my first experience in using blabberize, I think it is great and I like it a lot. I ready plan to use this application in my next presentation in introduction one  psychologist,  I hope that I can make a better blabber this time.