Saturday, December 29, 2012

Thing 5

There was a lot to explore for this topic. I tried a few different things before I decided on one to use for my project. I think the tool you choose really depends on your purpose. I tried to think of things I could use for my classroom vs. things I would use in my personal life. We have used Glogster in the past and I plan to use that again this year with my students. I started a Glog, but found it to be more complicated than it needed to be. In the past our library media specialist has worked on the Glogs so I am going to defer to her as the expert and ask her to help us out again. I think I will learn more from seeing her use it with the kids. I finally decided to try Animoto for my project. I took all the photos I've taken of my students this year and put them into a presentation. I added music and headings for each event. I have taken pictures throughout the year, but shared very few of them with the kids and parents. I thought this would be a great way to share those photos. I plan to make another Animoto as I take more pictures in the new year. I won't wait for June, but rather put one together in a couple months or after an event where I took a lot of pictures. I could also choose certain pictures to highlight the whole year and put something together for the end of the year. I didn't put a link to the presentation because they are photos of my students and I want to respect their privacy. I will be sharing it with my parents on our webpage, which is a closed site accessible only to families in my class. I found this topic to be a little frustrating at first, but I really like my final project and I'm sure I will use Animoto again. I look forward to exploring some of the other tools as well.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Thing 4: Photo Sharing

Snow Cat I did not have a Flickr account so I signed up for one. I found it pretty easy to copy a photo and add it to my blog. The video directions really helped. I would like to explore the second part of the assignment as well. I am interested in finding out what you can do with your photos once you have them on a site. I like the idea of using the mapping to find photos taken in different places. I think these sites would be great for sharing photos of students with my parents. I am getting better at taking pictures of my students engaged in various activities, but I would like to do more sharing. I've tried to share photos on our school website, but I often find that problematic. Flickr might be a good way to get around some of those problems.