Kylie's Blog

December 9, 2009

kyliegrace89 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:22:52 +0000

This week was just spent working on our final projects in ebooks. It went pretty well, ebooks isn’t that difficult to figure out and once you get a good flow going you just fly through all the typing. I strongly prefered doing a project over an actual test for this class. It was very fitting for this class to be able to show that you really knew what you were doing opposed to just remembering answers to a test.

I’ve just finished working on my final project, which officially means class is over for the semester. I have to say that this has definitely been my favorite class by far! I throughly enjoyed learning so many great sites, and then coming home and sharing them! Along with constantly surprising myself with how much I really did know about computers.

December 6, 2009

kyliegrace89 — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:34:43 +0000

This past week I order three christmas gifts using mixbook. It was great being able to do something relatively homemade but it still looked great. I am really glad that we were introduced to the wonderful site this year, although I may not use it very often for professional reasons I will definitely use it for years to come to make other gifts. As well as a great way to share online albums that are aesthetically pleasing with my family and friends.

In class we’ve started our last module. I’ve been working on it a little at a time and haven’t had too many problems. It feels like a mixture of a lot of other programs that we’ve used this semester. The only thing I dislike about the program is it doesn’t tell you that it’s logged out until you go to save your work and consequently it doesn’t save!!

November 22, 2009

kyliegrace89 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:18:14 +0000

This week, we didn’t have class but we had the opportunity to work on our group projects, module 3. It definitely didn’t turn out the way I had hope. It seemed that we didn’t agree on things or we didn’t just get to where we wanted to be. I am still glad that we had etherpad to work on things together, as much as everyone was willing. We ended up using mixbook because of how well the themes fit our topic, but other than that it made it difficult because of all the words. Hopefully it turns out the way we hoped!

November, 15 2009

kyliegrace89 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:06:40 +0000

We didn’t really do a lot in class this week that involved new software, just a few more sites that we could use for digital storytelling. We mostly focused on our group projects/module 3. So far our group has been doing pretty well, in class Thursday everyone took the class time to work on our own individual parts so hopefully Tuesday we can put it together and add finishing touches on Thursday if necessary, and if not we can just submit it early. So far we’ve used etherpad.com to communicate and it’s been very effective. I really enjoy using the site and I definitely think that it is a site I’ll use in the future for group projects, it’s awesome to use to collaborate on and really banishes all excuses that apply to ‘not having time to get together’.

This is the first group project I’ve ever done that I haven’t wanted to pull my hair out. We’ve set deadlines that have been followed and everyone has pretty much been very cooperative.

November 8, 2009

kyliegrace89 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:06:45 +0000

This week we went over more options for our digital storybook. We focused on voicethread.com and animoto.com, I definitely think voicethread is the more useful of the two. Voicethread.com is a digital story telling site that would be a great tool to create quizzes and tests in different kinds of classes, I would love to see a music teacher use this software for test taking or even lecturing. The other site we went over, animoto.com, would be a great way to do picture collages. But for me it seems more like a site you would use to build a slide show for a wedding or some other event, not exactly a story. Although, I still think it is very useful and easy to use, considering all you have to do is upload some pictures and pick background music.

A tool we used last week in class has been keeping me busy, we went over mixbook.com and ever since I’ve been working on putting all of my, and my family’s pictures into albums. Everyone I had shown it to has been very impressed. Definitely great Christmas gift material!

November 1, 2009

kyliegrace89 — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:45:43 +0000

In class this week we were introduced to module 3, a group project on digital storytelling. Kind of worried about the group project part of it but hopefully with the online tools we’ve talked about so far this year it will be a completely different experience, compared to group projects in high school. At least with websites like etherpad.com and zoho.com we’ll all be able to work on it at our own pace and still have the opportunity to collaborate.

Since we’ve started going over module 3 this past week we have already started to go over different websites that we can use. The first one we’ve worked with is mixbook. I really enjoyed it and was really excited to share it with people in my family who share the problem of having tons of digital pictures but no desire to print them out one by one. Not sure I’d like to use the mixbook software for the group module since we can’t add audio.

October 24, 2009

kyliegrace89 — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:19:16 +0000

This week I was mostly focused on module 2. I chose to use prezi, a site we were introduced to in class two weeks ago. I worked on my project a little bit each night and found that with this online tool I never got frustrated the way I used to with power point or word. I actually enjoyed being creative with the flow of my presentation. I think so far prezi.com is my favorite tool that we’ve been introduced to, I can really see myself using it in the future. My only problem with prezi was trying to create a hyperlink. I had really wanted to use a click me sort of approach but couldn’t figure out how. I even searched the faq’s and couldn’t find what I needed. I did get a little irritated but I eventually just put a direct link on my page. To be honest, I’m not even sure you can hyperlink on prezi.

Other then the hyperlink dilemma I really enjoyed module 2, and even enjoyed working my way through a new tool that I had only used once. I think doing that and using a topic I needed in another class really made this worthwhile.

October 18, 2009

kyliegrace89 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:04:23 +0000

This week in class we worked on different programs to complete module 2. For the most part of the week we focused on Power Point. I had never realized just how many things you can do with power point. I had always been under the impression that it was very straight forward and could only go from slide to slide with only the slide transition to mix it up. Apparently I had been mislead, there are a lot of extras you can use to really give your presentation something extra, which helps if capturing wandering minds.

I had no idea that you could do non-linear presentations along with adding animations to pictures and text. I thought you could only go from slide to slide in the set order and by clicking. Along with adding animations to your slides you can embed videos and audio clips, things I’ve always tried but never seemed to work seamlessly. Now that I have been made aware of how to ‘properly’ use power point, I’m looking forward to using it more often.

October, 11 2009

kyliegrace89 — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:46:21 +0000

In class this week we worked on more open source software, like googledocs. Zoho is a great site that has a lot of different uses, like its own mail, planner, chat, and many other great free tools. Another plus of Zoho is you can log in using your igoogle account, a great thing instead of having another account to memorize. This week we were also introduced to etherpad. Another site similar to googledocs but you can collaborate in real time which is very exciting, and a site I plan on using in the future.

Last week we played around to photobooth on the macs but it is not a tool that you can use on a pc, which is difficult because I only own a pc at home. But, instead, we were introduced to cameroid. It is pretty similar to photobooth but you can use it on any computer with internet access and a webcam. I had a lot more fun playing with cameroid at home then in class, where you feel like everyone is watching.

My favorite thing in class this week was prezi. I had a lot of fun showing different people and playing around with the software. It is very impressive, and will be a great tool to use in the future to present new ideas to a class. I definitely think that I will be using this site to complete module 2.

October 3, 2009

kyliegrace89 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:41:30 +0000

This week in class we were introduced to our second module, and with that came an introduction to inspiration. This tool would be great for presentations, for me, even better than power point. With inspiration you can really add something new to a presentation. Not only that I feel like it is much easier to use, you can add pictures, videos, and audio with little trouble. Using inspiration it would be easy to present a new idea to the classroom, by bringing up the main point on the screen you can have your class work together to get to the links or supporting ideas to grasp a main understanding.

Another big perk with inspiration is the fact that you do not have to purchase the software to use it. There is an online version that you can use free once you sign up. Webspiration is another great tool like googledocs where you can have it saved to the internet where you can access it any time and any where with access to the internet. Since it is like googledocs that also means that more than one person can use it at once, and being a future educator I get very excited in knowing the great group projects are no longer the issue they were!