You.com (u07a1)

The task this week was to create my digital portfolio. To be honest, I didn't think this would be difficult at all. I planned to just update my current blog and create a few new tabs with links to the course work I had done while a part of this program. WRONG! As I was trying to navigate adding tabs to the blog, I realized that it was not set up to do what I wanted it to do.
I went back to the drawing board and decided to use about.me to create a digital portfolio. This was a VERY easy website to use and interact with. I appreciated that it literally walked me through the decisions I needed to make on how to use it. I decided to set the background as a picture of fireworks that I had taken myself. They are my FAVORITE part of summer and I wanted to enjoy seeing my photo posted online. It was now time to post a collection of my work as well as link to my online presence. Over the course of this summer, I'd been reflecting on my online presence and didn't think I had a very large one. When it was time to actually link to my projects, however, I realized that I have learned how to use QUITE a few sites! It was fun to go back through my files, find my projects, and link them all to one location. I chose YouTube to store my videos that I've created and linked the rest of the projects individually. It was a fun learning experience for me to reflect on how I've grown in using technology from the time I started the Instructional Media program until now!

Broadcast Yourself Live (u06a2)

Broadcasting yourself live was a very new concept to me this week! I loved reading about it during the week’s readings and seeing different ways that people incorporate it into their classrooms. To be honest, I never would have thought of using it in my 2^nd grade classroom. After investigating several different sites, I found UStream to be free and also fairly user friendly. I created an account and was up and running in no time! They have sent me several different e-mails (maybe even a few too many) to help me troubleshoot my way through using this website. The other nice part about UStream is that you do not have to be a member or sign-up in order to watch live broadcasts. That’s a really nice feature for parents and families who just want to peek into the classroom but not broadcast live themselves!

Next came the tricky part…deciding what to broadcast live! I must admit that this would have been a whole lot easier to do during the school year because I would have broadcast something live from school with my students to their families. This coming year, I definitely plan to do so. This will be a fun experience to do with assemblies, class author celebrations, reader’s theater plays, class parties, and maybe even our field day or bounce house rewards! I am excited to continue exploring the app that’s available for iPads and iPhones, because I think this would make me a little more mobile to broadcast in the classroom and throughout our school. It will be fun to broadcast myself and then showcase the students, but I think they will also REALLY enjoy getting to “host” our Room 201 show!

Since it’s summer time, however, I had a really hard time deciding what to broadcast! I knew that I was going out of town until later Sunday so I had to take that into consideration as well. It needed to be something I could do indoors with just my webcam. After doing several test videos and broadcasts, I realized that UStream was pretty easy to use and knew I could to it! I landed on the topic of geocaching. If you’ve been following several of my other blog posts, I’ve given a short version of geocaching throughout some of them. I decided to use my iPhone during the broadcast because I was showcasing a specific app designed for geocaching. This was a bit tricky as the glare from my lights was different in the dark live-broadcast time than it was during my daytime practice run early in the week. If I was doing this again, I’d consider using a mobile web cam as opposed to the one built into my computer.

I didn’t want this to be a super long broadcast, but wanted to make sure that my audience would get the gist of what I was trying to share. I think it went off pretty well! I learned that you need to have a script prepared ahead of time or people can see you stumble over your words in real life! :D I also realized when I went to share my broadcast that I hadn’t also recorded it. Oops! I had only done the live show, but no one else would be able to go back and look at it. I rerecorded my broadcast so that you could see I really was live and on the air! It is accessible here. One final aspect of the live broadcast that I need to work through for next time is that it wasn’t loading on iPads or iPhones. This was fine for some viewers because they were using PCs, but MANY of the parents in the audience I would typically be broadcasting for may use other handheld devices and that would be very frustrating for them. I’m thinking that downloading the UStream app would help this issue, but plan to do further investigation just to double check!

If I were doing this particular broadcast over again, I would probably sit in a different lit place in my house or maybe even outside. The location of my built-in webcam on my computer reflected the light with a tad bit of a glare. I would also try to use something to help eliminate glare through my iPhone. On the flipside, there were many positives to this broadcast. The volume and location of the camera worked the same way they did whilst practicing, which was great! The broadcast saved when I actually remembered to turn it on. It was easy for my viewers to access on their computers, and I was able to receive immediate feedback while I was broadcasting.

Although I was initially apprehensive about this project, I think it ended up being one of my more enjoyable ones for this course! I can see DEFINITE relevance and immediate application uses in my classroom, which is kind of neat! I can also see my 2^nd graders being able to use this independently (within classroom supervision, of course), in some of the scenarios I listed above. Fun new internet tools like this make me even more excited for August 19^th to roll around! Until then, however, I’m off on one last summer vacation trip!!!

Attend a Live Webinar (u06a1)

Attending a Webinar this week was a new experience for me. I’ve had to log in on WizIQ for other Wilkes grad courses, but I’ve never had to locate a Webinar to attend on my own. With my schedule this summer and the way this course is laid out, I typically work on a Wednesday – Sunday schedule. When I started searching for Webinars this week, I realized that most of the listed sites hosted their Webinars on Monday or Tuesday. This was a little bit of a hurdle since I had already passed those days. The other thing I realized was that many of these only hosted during the school year or once a month. So I set off onto Google and found a Webinar hosted by Presence Learning entitled: Online Speech Therapy: Hot Questions, Cool Answers. The archived version of this webinar can be found here.

I appreciated attending this type of Webinar because there were slides (that were accessible at a later date) and commentary. There was also a q&a forum as well as an open chat for participants to dialogue with one another and ask questions of the presenters. As someone who doesn’t always like to speak up in group settings that I’m not familiar with, this made attending the Webinar more comfortable. When thinking about future Webinars, I would definitely be more likely to attend one in this format as opposed to the Google Hangout or live video streaming ones. One of the weaknesses was the site that was hosting the Webinar. WebEx has a nice platform, but I had a hard time figuring out if there were any other participants attending, and the default settings for the q&a/chat forums were not made so that you could interact with your fellow participants very well. It was also hard to do too much exploring because the session was only active when it was time for the Webinar so I couldn’t get acquainted with it very easily.

I think there are uses for Webinars in the educational setting, but I see it mainly with distance learning, blended learning, or in a secondary or post-high school setting. I really believe that my 2^nd graders still need the in-person, face-to-face interaction. If I were going to encourage Webinars to be used in my school, it would be through faculty in-services. I think there are MANY free valuable Webinars out there that we could benefit greatly from as a staff.