Week 5

This week we had two presentations on Authoring and Multimedia.

One aspect of these presentations that really caught my attention was gaining an understanding of the use of multimedia for 3 specific different purposes, education, entertainment and information.  It was really interesting that depending on the purpose of the media, the different types are considered more valuable than others.

 For example text might be considered highly valuable for information purposes but not valuable at all for entertainment. Then again this is subjective, we found through class discussion that it is a personal opinion and all medias can be valuable in all categories if they are used creatively. For example a student said that they actually would put text at the top of the list for entertainment because reading is their favourite hobby. 

This is important for teachers to remember. We need to think outside the box. Maybe the best way for education or getting students to absorb information is not always through textbooks; perhaps it can be better absorbed through a video or an interactive website activity.

This is important in relation to Howard Gardeners Multiple Intelligences theory where he states that there are 8 different types of intelligences or ways of learning. Some students are linguistic learners who learn well from lecture situations, others can’t take in anything that way and need to read or be shown images/graphs/statistics to understand these are logical mathematic or spatial learners. Others are musically intelligent. To cater for these people there could be a homework task where students must show their understanding of the previous lesson in any number of ways. Some could write a reflection of the lesson, others could create a timeline of what went on in the lesson and what was learned at each point, or a musically intelligent person might like to write a song about the lesson.

Hardware

I do understand the basics of hardware and the Input, output, storage, processing and control. However I think it can be quite difficult to explain it all to a class. A great method to show them the input, outputs could be on labelled images such as in the lecture where the different ports such as USB etc are annotated, or since many students now have laptops they could have a task where they have to locate each type of port on their own computer.

This website has a great quiz that the students could work though to get a better understanding of hardware.

Hardware Quiz

Week 4

This week was the first week of presentations and WE were up first!!

The internet and Web site development

I found this assessment really interesting. I enjoyed catering it for a younger audience as it gave me the opportunity to find some really fun resources and videos that can help with teaching.

I found a great video that explains what the Internet is in an interesting way. Today, explanations can get very complicated with all the new opportunities the internet provides so this video really took it back to an easy to understand level. It was completely comprised of clips from news headlines, 60minutes sort of shows and other documentaries that were made in the early 90s when the internet was really taking off. It was catered for the mass market and it was almost funny because the things they were saying seem like common sense as we have all grown up with a basic knowledge of the internet, it does however get the message across fantastically for a stage 4 or 5 audience.

I was interested in learning about authoring software because I didn’t really know what it meant. I then realise that I use different types of authoring software all the time when developing assignments etc.

To explain the World Wide Web I thought it was important to identify that the WWW is different from the internet as the two terms often are used interchangeably. The WWW exists within the internet and you can be using the internet without using the WWW. To get this message across I found a video that explains the WWW and how it works using a hand drawn stop motion animation. I thought this was very effective and I really liked how it explained the WWW without using an actual computer in the presentation.

I was really excited to be able to take about website development. In the previous blog I spoke about how passionate I was about it when I was in high school so to be able to break it down my own way that would be great for a stage 4 or 5 audience was really exciting to me.  Instead of finding a video I decided write my own design process that is simplified and easy to remember with 3 sections and 2 steps within each section. I made sure though that every essential element of designing is evident and I cross checked this with the HSC design and technology Major Design Project requirements. I thought if I am ensuring I am meeting the criteria for stage 6 students then my simplified development stages would definitely be more than adequate for stage 4 and 5 projects.

I feel our lesson went really well and it was great that we had a backup plan if there were any problems with computers. The students learnt at the end of the lesson how to identify the message and meaning of a webpage and the techniques web designers use to get this message across.

Week 3
There are so many free online authoring software programs that I was unaware of. They are simple to use and can be fantastic teaching resources. The two that researched were wordle and then in much more depth, prezi.

less repeated words appearing quite small. This can be a great study tool. A student can enter a page of notes on a particular topic and the key (most important) words will stand out and the distracting, joining words appareing insignificant. The student can print out and stick the wordle on their bedroom wall for example and become familiar with the key points of their study notes.
I remember at school one of my year 12 teachers told me that in a paragraph of writing, joining words such as “and and the” distract the mind from the key points and that is why it is essential to re-write your own study notes that only contain important words and concepts so that the brain can just focus on remembering the essesntial information. Wordle can help do that with only the important words standing out.

Prezi: What a fantastic presentation media! Prezi is like a far more interesting and creative method of presenting information that might otherwise be displayed using Microsoft PowerPoint. It is based around zooming in and out of one image or background. Information can be hidded in the background so that it is unidentifiable until you zoom right into the specific part of the background. It is really clever and in a class room the students are egar to see where the next bit of hidden words will be. You can alter the path of your zooms to make the information flow more logically and you can even insert youtube videos and PDF’s into the prezi with ease. After I signed up as an educational prezi member (which gives you more features that are normally additional extras at a monthy fee), I was surprised at how quickly I learnt how to use it. There is no tool bar with multipe options to click on which can make it confusing like on PowerPoint. Instead there is one circular icon with a few tabs around it which contain all your editing requiremnts. Another interesting thing about prezi is that you cannot claim copyright on your own prezi’s, they are available for anyone to see, copy, edit and use. This is fantastic for teaching. Teachers can search for a topic for example “The design process” and 100 pages of prezi’s made on the design process by other teachers or students appear to download, edit and show the class.

I think wordle is a great creative way to present key words or ideas. In a paragraph of writing, the most repeated words (likey the key themes) are displayed the largest, with

 The core topic Design, Produce and Evaluate was one i know very well. The design process was one of the biggest part of my high school life as i focused most of my attention to design subjects. I think it is very important to understand what the user of the design wants when designing for them. Following the design process allows you to ensure you look into every aspect of designing.In basic terms this involves
Project Proposal
1. Identifying the "need"
2. Analysing the "need": developing breif, action plan, time plan, finance plan, areas of investigation, criteria to evaluate success.

Project Development and Realisation
1. Evidence of creativity: developing multiple design solutions that are self evaluated as well as evaluated by the target market.
2. Research exeprimenting and testing: Material, Tools, Techniques and Target market needs. 

Evaluation
1. With respect to the proposal: have i met the needs of the initial proposal and designed a solution to the need for the user? Have i met all the criteria to evaluate success?
2. Evaulation Impact on society and the environment: does my design have environmental impacts, who does it effect society or the way we live? 

Click this link to sign up for your own prezi account or browse existing prezi's

Week two - quite a shock!

During the ICT tutorials I have had some revelations. I realised that on my first teaching prac, I breached copyright laws multiple times in the lessons I had prepared. I showed both the year 7 classes examples of music videos that explore different cinematic techniques and in doing this I copied and saved 5 different music videos from YouTube onto my desktop and played them for the class. I had no idea about these copyright laws. I assumed it only applied if I copied the videos and then put my copies up on YouTube. It may be necessary for teaching students to have a serious copyright seminar or workshop-day before they go on their first prac teaching sessions.
I now realise that copyright can make teaching somewhat difficult. It is so simple to plan a lesson and show a few videos that you have saved to prevent any problems with internet connection or site blockages once the lesson commences but it’s completely illegal! I realise as I teacher I will need to be exceptionally prepared and test all resources at school before I need to teach the lesson, especially for subjects that are heavily technology based and require a generous amount of computer access

Link to a handbook for school libraries that takes you through all things copy right including: Creating copyright material at school & Copyright exceptions for schools,