After finally getting my ideas worked out for my WebQuest it went a lot smoother and was actually a lot of fun to make. I really like working on non linear PowerPoints because they are much more engaging (even making them) than linear ones that follow just one path. I just need to be careful not to get too Action Button happy.

I was finally able to Skype with one of my friends, Abby, who graduated from Nazareth a few years ago and is now teaching in Louisiana. After a few tries we were finally able to connect for more than a few minutes and actually get down to talking about the technology that she has in her room, as well as the technology that is available to the art teacher in her building (to give me a better sense of what my field has to work with). Abby told me that in her classroom, she has five desktop computers and two laptops for the students to work on, as well as her own personal laptop. All of her classroom computers are equipped with both mics and webcams provided by the school for the students to use. She said that she uses these in the classroom by having students chat with other students in the class through the computer or with students in other classes in the building. She said that she is also looking into having the students Skype with other schools next school year, but has to run it by the Principal and a few other people before she can get the go ahead. She also told me that she has a program called Promethian which works much like a SmartBoard but wasn’t able to compare it any further because she had not really worked with a SmartBoard before moving to Louisiana. She also has a document camera (like the ones at Nazareth) that project paperwork that she has on it onto the screen for students to see. She said that this works for when she has to show the students something and doesn’t want them  crowding around her to get a better look. This program also allows all of the students to see what she is showing.

She also stated that the art teacher has a document camera in her room as well, and uses it for demonstrations mostly or to show images of artwork to the students because she doesn’t have a computer so she is unable to use PowerPoint or anything like that. It was amazing to me, and also to Abby, that her room could be fairly well equipped with technology, but that the art room had very little. She was not sure if it was because the art teacher is much older and maybe did not want to use the technology in her classroom or if the school would not provide the technology for her. Either way, each year the school is getting more and more technology and computers for the students to use and to enhance their learning as people keep coming back after hurricane Katrina.

My first thought on how to use Podcasts in school would be to let students know what is going on around the school or the district. For a few years during my Undergraduate studies, two students at Naz ran a podcast through iTunes (for iClub) in which they went around the campus and asked students various questions and got their opinions, much like callers on a radio station. What I liked about this was that especially around election time for the student government, they would ask students what they wanted in a candidate for any of the various positions.

However, after some thought, I found that Podcasts could also be used for students on a tour at an art museum. I got this idea from taking tours of the Newport Mansions in Rhode Island where you are given a headset and are asked to press certain numbers for each room. Once a number is pressed, a recording tells you background information about the time period, the people who lived in the house, as well as about the architecture, decoration, and artwork in the rooms.

Before taking my students to a museum, I would go myself to the museum, walk around, and record different facts and information about each piece, as well as some questions that they may have to answer on a sheet to show that they were listening. Then for each room or piece, the students would have to download the Podcasts before the trip and listen to each one as they get to each piece in the museum. That way each student would be able to clearly hear all of the information that is being given about each piece, instead of being stuck at the back of a group and unable to hear the tour guide. This would also work if some students did not own iPods because they could share headphones with a classmate while going through the museum. In addition, I felt that this could also be a good way to encourage students to go the museum outside of class if field trips were not in the budget.

Wiki Pages:
Wiki pages are a great tool in that they allow students to learn about controversies within the art world by researching the different contexts and reasons that artwork was created through research for a group webpage. In addition, allowing students to edit pages helps them to see what other information other students have found, while giving them the freedom to edit the pages in order to present the most accurate information possible about an artist, art period, or a piece of work.

Flickr:
Flickr is a service that both teachers and students can use to share and discuss artwork both in and out of the classroom. Users are able to create an account, upload and tag images, as well as organize the images into different folders. Other users or students can then access the images and comment on them. In this way, students can run the conversation about the artwork while the teacher is able to monitor the discussion, and because the conversation is in textual format, it can then be saved to be used at a later date. Another way that this service can be used is for students to upload their own images to receive feedback on their work from their peers, as well as a place to store digital images of their artwork to use in the future for portfolios.

Art Collector:
Is a resource offered through museums online that allows users to collect, organize, annotate, adn save digital images of works of art. In this way, users are able to make exhibits from the online images and share them with others by generating a URL specific for that user and exhibit. This program can be used by students to come up with exhibits on their own, much like they would if they were a curator at a museum.

Pachyderm:
Like Art Collector, Pachyderm allows users and museums to upload media, such as images, video, and audio, and place them into templates. Unlike Art Collector, however, Pachyderm allows presentations made through the system to be either put onto a website, viewed from a hard drive, or made into a CD, making it more portable. By putting the exhibit onto a CD, students are able to have a hard copy to either hand in or keep for themselves for future reference.

This whole situation got  me back into thinking about how we rely so much on technology these days and how quickly that technology can go away for a good amount of time. A simple upgrade to a “simpler” system left me without a computer for a few days, using my boyfriend’s lap top to type up lesson plans that were due for another class. I guess that this is just something that we as teachers need to think about when we come up with such technology heavy lessons for our students. What happens if a system upgrade goes wrong? What if the computer is acting up?

Needless to say, although I have missed a few blog posts recently, I fully intend to still write each blog individually within the next few days, so I apologize now for all of the updates in the next couple of days from this blog. Hope that everyone had a great weekend!

As an art teacher, it’s great to be able to bounce ideas off of other art teachers in regards to lesson planning and how to make lessons more exciting for the students, and sometimes it is very hard to find time to meet up with someone in person to talk about ideas. Therefore, Facebook chat, and even AIM, have become a great place for me to just hop online quickly to see if anyone is on that I can talk to about ideas and to ask questions in real time without having to spend time driving somewhere to meet up with someone. Even if I have an image that I need someone to look at, I can upload it into an email or on my Facebook and ask people to comment on it. Sure Myspace and Facebook are places where kids can spend a lot of time on things that aren’t as educational as one might think, but there are times when these tools are very helpful to help kids connect and help each other out when they are in a bind and need someone else to help them work through a problem when no one else is available.

Looking at the “negative” aspects, I feel that one of the major drawbacks about using blogging in the school system, especially for assigning homework and as a way for students to check things at home is that many students in lower income areas may  not have access to a computer at home, putting them at a disadvantage compared to their classmates. Also, with technology still being a new thing in schools, I feel that many parents may not feel comfortable having their children participating in an online blog. This may be due to the parents themselves not being aware of what a blog actually is and how it works.

However, as an educator  I feel that there are many more positives with what blogging can do in the classroom for students. Being in a subject where I may not see my students that often, blogging would be a great way to let students know what they missed when they are out sick and would also give me the opportunity to post demonstration videos for students to look at to learn what they need to do in class before they get back so that classroom time is not wasted on going over the material again and again. In addition, growing up I was not one to speak out in class for fear that I would be wrong or made fun of by my classmates, so blogging would be a great way to share what I feel about certain topics without worrying about being ridiculed.

One thing to keep in mind about blogging would be the accessibility of the blogs to each student in the class. For example in this class, it is important for us to read and respond to the blogs of other students in the class. However, I have found that for me, although it is nice to be able to set up a unique page for myself,  it is very difficult to navigate between the pages and to find the blogs from other students in the class. For one of my other classes in which we must blog, there is one place on Blackboard where everyone blogs each week and all of the blogs are right there for everyone to see on a list. However, with that program, the ability to individualize your page is not possible.

As a whole, using technology in the classroom is growing and I am sure that as it is used more and more, my feelings about blogging will change too.

This week when I got home from class I was really excited to show my family what I had learned, and to my surprise, they were actually really into it! Wordle was a huge hit and I eventually had to pry my laptop away from them and give everyone the web address so that they could play with it on their own. Now my mom is using the program to generate a poster for her department at Wegmans to emphasis key points. Its starting to look pretty cool! What really got me was that my brother was excited about it as well, and when it comes to 17-year-old high school seniors, it gets pretty hard to get them excited about anything most days.

Another thing that I really liked doing in class was playing around with the newer version of Microsoft Word. Most days I’m afraid to even touch it and never really knew the full potential. Now I feel like I am at a point where I am comfortable enough with the program to help someone out.

However, I did find out this week while trying to work on a presentation for another class that there are times when you cannot use Quietube or Safe Share TV. According to Safe Share TV, you are blocked from uploading a link to a youtube video that is copyrighted (for example, a clip from a television show that has been posted by the company that produces the show). This is obviously understandable, but also puts a damper on things when that is the only clip that you can find on youtube. Oh well, here’s to hoping that I can figure something else out instead.

Another thing that I really liked was that there are programs on the computers that make it so that it can talk/read to you. Not only is this feature great for me personally in that I can now multitask while listening to articles that I need to read for class, but its also a great tool for my classroom. I did a project on electricity in my elementary placement for student teaching and if I could have set up a program on the computer to have the computer (a device that uses electricity) teach them a little about it, they would have gotten a huge kick out of that for sure! I can’t wait to see what we learn next class!