Twitter

Twitter...I dislike it as I am not a user and do not really understand why anyone would want an account - At the same time I do enjoy the witty quips or ranting banter people come up with in that little box as much as the next person. Twitter is actually a reasonably attractive technology on the 'sharing your thoughts with others' bandwagon and consists purely of status updates. On Twitter you can make an account and start adding your thoughts to the pool. You can also find friends and even strangers to 'follow' and have your own 'followers' in return. Twitter is explained as keeping all your friends and family in touch with your daily grind, letting them know all the details of your life that happen between phone calls, emails and blog posts. This is an exciting pitch and I believe Twitter is a success according to meeting their own goals.

When I took part in class discussion we decided it would be difficult to use Twitter in the classroom with the children as it would be extremely difficult to monitor the children's private accounts. Twitter would work however to keep the parents in touch with going's on in the classroom, the class could have a twitter account (a private one)that the parents and other teachers 'follow' the teacher and students could then take turns at announcing what the class has achieved for the day or simply the activity they are currently doing. This would give parents the chance to be more involved with the goings on in the classroom and allow for up to date information to be shared constantly, filling in the gaps between newsletters and parent teacher nights.

Overall Twitter is an exciting avenue for communicating with and connecting people. I can't see myself using it it a personal way but would definitely consider it for class use in the future.

Glogster

"forget blogs, glog!"

Glogster was incredible, I can't believe I have never heard of some of these technologies, it is essentially an interactive poster that you can make at glogster.com. You log in and get started straight away - FOR FREE! You start with a page (it's not exactly blank) that you can manipulate and make your own. You change the background (wall) then select graphics, pictures, videos or sounds/music to add to your poster. The end result looks amazing.

You can be so creative whilst 'building' your poster there are so many colours, patterns and graphics to choose from, not to mention the edit tool which allows you to change the colours and effects of each object on your poster.

We were shown examples of how glogster could be used to present topics and assignments (anything you would normally do in poster form and more) in the classroom. I could definitely see myself using Glogster as a form of assessing children's knowledge and as a final presentation or part of a project. It is fun, free and easy to access. The only problem, the same with the other online technologies, is that the school network may have the web site blocked making it difficult to use or to get permission to have access to.

I will definitely attempt some more glogging in the future, personally and professionally, as it was a great creative outlet and it would be great to spend some more time on. My only hope for Glogster is that it stays free...

Bitstrips

Bitstrips! I loved Bitstrips! It was so easy to figure out by using the information on the class wiki and having a play with Bitstrips myself at home. I sat on Bitstrips for a solid hour and a half and played with the character creation part and the actual making of a comic strip, it was so much fun. I loved how easy it was to figure out and I was genuinelly impressed with the detail you could add to a character and their expressions and range of motions. I found the end product to look totally legit and loved having a go at my own little gag.

Would I use Bitstrips in the classroom? Similarly to Scratch I could use Bitstrip to cover the topic of plot or narrative. I love it and can really see children loving it too. I felt so creative while using this technology and I really believe I could intergrate it into a classroom one way or another.

I will use Bitstrips in the future as a lesure activity or to convey something to friends. I can't wait till I next attempt a comic on Bitstrips :D

Scratch Project

Scratch is a fun cartoon builder where you play the director. You decide which characters are in the show and what they do when, in relation to movement, body position and sounds.
I found scratch quite complicated to use as the buttons were confusing and frustrating. There are definitely holes in my Scratch knowledge which makes me think I might grow to like it over time as I become more familiar with it and its characteristics. I struggled to manipulate my 'sprites' in the way I wanted but I feel I took advantage of the time we had available to play.

I could use Scratch again but I would need to do a lot more 'research'/play with it as I could not hope to be successful in a classroom using Scratch with out actually understanding and enjoying Scratch myself. I could use Scratch to look at narrative with a class, first they would make their own simple plot and we would tackle it bit by bit with Scratch. Maybe doing one plot as a class before the children work on their own individual stories. It would be hard to monitor and help the children but I sense that they would really have fun with it and pick it up a lot quicker than me, making the lesson motivational and exciting to them.

Again my opinion is a bit premature as to really know how I feel about Scratch I would need to become much more familiar with it. I enjoyed it a bit, though I did not fully understand it and became frustrated when I could not manipulate my characters in the way I wanted.

Jing

Jing. This is my first experience with Jing, not only have I never heard of it but I have never seen anything quite like it.
It's a free technlogy that you download and use your gmail address and password to get access. It is a screen capture device that can be used live. Jing takes pictures (screen captures) and video captures of up to five minutes. Although I liked Jing and found it pretty interesting to play with I would not say it is one of my favourite technologies. It was fairly simple to use but now that my video is on my blog, it takes a long time to buffer.

I believe Jing would be a handy classroom tool as you could make videos of some kind of instuctions on the desktop then each child could look at them and refer to them whenever they wanted. What I did notice from my prac, is that the school's network was very slow so if Jing's videos are already slow to buffer it would be an unjustified amount of time before it was complete.
And as for screen capture, I can already do this without Jing. Though I did like how you could change the size and postion of the screen capture, when I do a normal screen capture I have to paste the capture to an empty paint screen to be able to cut the part out I require. Jing would save my time in this case.
Jing is fun and new to me, I can see my self using it to assist with easy screen capture.

My First Time...

This is my first ever post and blog :D
Here is a Wordle exercise I completed in class that shows the key features and uses of blogs.
Exciting stuff...