Audio Unit

The assignment and rubric for the audio unit can be found on my Google Drive and the sample is posted below. The background restaurant noise was created by J Fairbanks and can be found here.

 

Class Website

Here is my model website. I went with Google Sites because I thought it might keep some continuity with Google Drive and Blogger. Google Sites seems to have a lot of widgets, I browsed through them but only really scratched the surface.

The site is simple but serves the purpose. I added the assignments and syllabus to the document section.

https://sites.google.com/site/educ932seandoran/

Concepts from a Great Class

There are a couple things that will stick with me from this course. The most obvious being the effective ways that I can utilize technology and multimedia in the class room. Although I was aware of some of the tools mentioned in class I guess it just took me being shown their full potential use in with students.  The idea of managing a class through Schoology or Google Drive creates a whole new level of possibilities and adds transparency and interaction between the student and teacher.

Using computers and other technology also brings excitement to the classroom. While they can easily be used as a crutch for teachers to fall back on, it was great to learn effective ways that they can be utilized. In whatever school or class I teach in the future i'm sure I will think about how I can better the class with multimedia. Personally, for me, this course has also rekindled my interest in teaching and was a great course to start this masters program with. Thanks Steve and fellow classmates!

Movie Unit

For the movie unit I wanted to make something I could use in my current job. So, I created an assignment that called for making a video for use with young children. The lesson overview and rubric can be found here and a sample video for the lesson is below.

Useful Tools in Education

A lot of the tools I have learned about in this class have been ones which I have or plan to use in my life outside of the classroom. Learning a little more about audio and video will be great but Diigo especially has been something I have needed for a while without ever knowing it existed. Keeping track of articles I've read and liked online has always been a pain with traditional bookmarking. The idea of building your own data base to refer back to is great!

As far as in the classroom goes I think Prezi is something I will get quite a bit of use out of. As I've mentioned previously I teach young children and often have classes without the children using a book. While I have made good use of PowerPoint in the past, Prezi is much more dynamic and eye catching. It is a form that will work well to encourage the children to interact and participate. Some of the presentations I saw in our class, especially the two traffic related lessons, were great and gave me ideas on how I can use it effectively. Although I need to put sometime into learning how to use the program to its full potential, it is something that I plan to use on a regular basis with my class.

Class Syllabus

Here is the syllabus I plan on sharing with the student's parent for the oncoming semester. The character images that I used are the mascots from the school and I was given permission to use them along with the company logos. Everything else from the document was either created by me or is covered under a creative commons licence.