Picture Story

Fireside Video

I enjoyed the video about how so many of our teachers began teaching before they learned technology. I help a teacher next door to me on a daily basis. She has been teaching since 1982. I show her the same things over and over, she doesn't catch on very quickly. She wasn't taught in the world of technology, and after years of helping her, she is still overwhelmed by it. I have been teaching for 7 years, and these types of courses I am taking make me realize how much technology has progressed even since I graduated from college. Someday, perhaps I will need my nextdoor teacher to help me. It seems to be like a snowball, progressing faster, and faster, and faster..........

Twitter

I just wanted to say that I had no idea what Twitter was all about......but after reading the article on Twitter........I have heard the term all over the place. Funny how things like that go right by you unless someone brings it to your attention.

UK vs. Florida

This picture was taken at Rupp Arena. I chose this picture because the it was taken from the top row, which made the court look far away. I thought it would be good to make it stand out better by making it in color and the rest black and white. I really would like to try some more pictures because I think it would be pretty to find a picture of a lone flower and make it black and white and make the flower stand out with color. A more close up picture might be a better choice for this type of photographic effect. The way I did this was I used the picture as my background layer, then added another layer by selecting copy visible. This way the top picture was the same as the bottom picture. Then I used desaturate to turn it black and white. Then I used the scissors to create a border around the basketball court. When I cut it out, it showed the original picture behind it, which was in color........but only the part that I cut out.

GIMP

Boy this was fun! It took me hours........and I mean hours totaling into days. But at least it was fun and I really learned alot. If it weren't for Dr. Lowell's help, I don't know if I ever would have figured it out. But once I did, I made several of these types of pictures, so that I wouldn't forget how to do it because I would really like to use this in the classroom. This would be a wonderful way to teach children new words.

To create this image, I opened up my original picture, then I typed my font. I then went up into image and clicked on "select by color" and when I clicked on the word it made a border for me. Over in the layers box, I clicked on my original quilt picture (layer) again and pressed control-c for copy, then control-v for past. Then I created a new layer. Last, I clicked on the eyes to hide all the layers except the last one. To get the background color, I had to go over and click on the left box where it has two boxes with a switch arrow between them. I found out that I had to make sure the color was already on there because I couldn't figure out how to do it once I did all the other steps. That part is tricky, I think I just got lucky on that. When I was done, I just went up and saved my picture on "save as."

As I said, this assignment for me was very long and time consuming. I have sat on the couch with my laptop for the past two days plus this morning trying to figure it out. But I really think figured out what Dr. Lowell was trying to do, because what seemed to be a simple assignment took a lot of digging to figure out, and in the process I learned alot of other things you can do with the program. So for me, it was worth it. I don't mind spending time on things I enjoy, and this was like a puzzle for me I could not put down. So it kept me interested (obsessed more the word) and it is something I feel will definitely be of use to me as a teacher.

I chose the font because it was big of course, but discovered other interesting fonts I would like to try......some kid friendly fonts. I love quilts, and I felt like this picture, like some on other blogs I have seen, definitely goes with the theme of the cold weather lately. Hope you enjoyed my picture as much as I enjoyed some of yours. :)

What I think about this class:

I feel like I am going to learn a lot in this class. It has taken me a while, but everything is starting to make more and more sense to me now. I think some of the things that we are going to learn will be useful to me and my family in my home (non-teaching) life, and much of it will be very useful for me as an educator. I am just getting the concept down pretty well of what a podcast is, and after listening to a few I am anxious to get going on searching for podcasts that are more specific to my interests. I am also anxious to see if I can find some for my husband. He is always listening and learning about the problems we are having with our economy, politics, and our relationship with other countries just to name a few. What he learns he shares with me, and makes it even more comprehensible. So it would also be beneficial to me if I get him involved in what I am learning.

For me, I'm anxious to try out some entertainment podcasts and maybe see if there are any specific to teaching issues. I'm getting ready to delve into the GIMP assignment, but for some reason I can't get the GTK to download. It's coming up as a zip file which I know nothing about. I've been trying to guess, and hoping I don't mess my computer up doing so, but nothing has happened yet, the GIMP won't download. I may have to get with Dr. Lowell. But I am really anxious to get the GIMP downloaded and start the picture assignment. I love playing around with pics. I have also enjoyed taking pictures for this course. It's kind of made me feel like a photographer, kind of giving me a certain sense of freedom to take pictures that might sharpen my armature photographer skills, so to speak. I mean......before now, taking lots of pictures of objects would seem nonsensical. But it's actually been very fun and has made me realize that this is a good way to get better at taking pictures. I hope we get to take more throughout the semester.

Audio File

I loved the audio file, "multimedia shmultimedia". This would be wonderful to use in elementary school. You could create read alouds for children to read along with books. Like this audio file, the reader would provide the inflection that makes the reading passage more interesting. It would help students with comprehension, reading inflection, concepts such as elements of a story, Etc. I was excited to think about, perhaps in the future, reading books aloud for my kindergarteners and having them available for them to listen to on the computer or on an mp3 player with headphones. I do have some CDs available for children to listen to, but I think they would much rather hear my voice. In addition, I would not be limited to just a few book choices, but I could create audio files to go with any book I wanted.

Flickr

Flicker is a place where you can upload lots of photos and organize them in various ways. It kind of reminds me of more like a myspace......but I am someone who doesn't even know much about myspace, so I guess what I mean is it is sort of like a personal space, only more specialized for photos. You can invite people, and you can join groups that you are interested in.

While visiting the website, I felt like flickr would be very user friendly. You can easily drag pictures and videos into "batches", sets or groups. Just by looking at it with only one uploaded photo, I thought it would be really fun to create with.

Comparing Podcast Directories

I compared the podcast websites PodcastAlley, and Podcast Pickle. Both websites seemed to be organized well as far as I could tell, although I am just learning about podcasts. Both had top 10 podcasts which I think is good for the newcomer who wants to get a feel of podcasting. Both had lists of newest podcasts. PodcastAlley however, had a list called featured podcasts which I noticed were mostly offensive subjects. Both also offered the option to find podcasts by genre. Although I really liked the design of pickle better, they were similar in many ways. They both featured a large forum area on their homepage. But I just felt that pickle's list on the left made it a little easier to navigate. I also was a little put off by PodcastAlley's featured list, which as I mentioned were mostly offensive topics. I wouldn't want that page on my computer for anyone in my home or workplace to see.

More "podgress"

I've been learning more about podcasting. I read some external links on blackboard that Dr. Lowell placed on there, and I read some FAQ links for juice and others that helped me get a better understanding of what podcasting is. I finally figured out how to download juice, and then had some trouble getting any podcasts to download. Finally I got it to work through trial and error, and have been listening to some podcasts such as talk live, on which they were talking about how cell phones are advancing quickly and becoming capable of streaming information. I also listened to a podcast about marriage which I found very interesting. The idea was about how we are taught to blame our spouse for any baggage they carry into a marriage when in actuality, we all bring in baggage and the purpose of marriage is for each to help the other heal from the experiences that caused the baggage. That is how we have a healed and wholesome marital relationship. It was an interesting podcast. The thing I keep thinking is that my husband is going to love podcasting when I introduce it to him. He is really into politics and current issues, and listens to the radio a lot while he is working. This way he can find the topics he wants and listen to them when he wants. I am anxious to explore more this week, and start downloading them onto my mp3 player. So far I have just been listening on my computer while cleaning house. That's not bad either.