has come. We have sucessfully (hopefully) concluded another chapter in our EdTech life. While it was a chapter filled with reading, posting, more reading, and more posting, I have to say that I am not all blogged out! I definitely learned a lot and have already begun to use all this cool stuff in my classroom. Thanks for the tools Karl. Here is my final project presentation.
Bonilla Final
Here is the actual site.
Ok so here’s my first attempt at a podcast. It’s not what I will be doing with my project, but it’s an idea that I think might get students into the whole podcasting thing at our school. A weekly sports report has the potential to work if it involves reports and interviews. It will sound nothing like this!
This past week I was at Yearbook Camp with six of my staff members and about 350 random students, Advisors, and other adults. This annual camp is full of informational seminars and workshops that ends in a portfolio submission with awards given to the those schools that meet all requirements for the design of their book.
I have been to this camp for the past six years and every year we are given tons of useful information. We learn about new trends in design, writing, photography, Photoshop, InDesign, and how to use the new plug-ins for the software. The problem for me is that by the time I get back to school, I forget to go back to my notes or look through the pile of handouts we were given. The other problem is that of the group of advisors from our district that go to this camp, I am considered the veteran so I get most of the questions throughout the year. My project is to create one central location for all the stuff we were taught at camp as well as a place for yearbook Advisors to use a reference or to seek help/advice/tips from other Advisors.
Analysis
The users for this site are going to be other yearbook advisors and camp educators. This site will be a central location for the educators at camp to place any information they wish to disemenate including handouts and web links they wish to share with the advisors. The site will also include a place for people to ask questions and share tips with each other. It would also be a place for a representative from the publishing company to give updates as needed in the form of a podcast as well as software tutorials in the form of video podcasts or screencasts. In speaking to other yearbook advisors at camp they all feel that there is a definite need for something like this. As far as I know, there is not something like this for us already. If there was, I’m sure our yearbook representative would have told us. The only trouble I forsee is getting the advisors to check the site on a regular basis. After a quick tutorial on how to use the site, they should be able to use the site efficiently…I hope.
Design
Users will be able to read/listen about updates from the publisher, ask/answer questions via a blog, and share their notes from camp via a wiki. It will also be a place to share tips and tricks that work for them in the classroom as well as a place to centralize all the links they find useful. This project would definitely be a recurring thing because in order to get people to keep coming back, the information would have to be constantly updated.
Development
The main site will be the blog page. It will include the link to the wiki, podcast, and all other resources via the Edublogger widgets. In order to make the page more attractive and easy to navigate, I will have to design it so that it is visually appealing and not look to busy. Edublogger and Wikispaces are the two sites I will most likely use. For the screencast tutorials I am leaning towards use freescreencast.com because it’s free, but if I decide to purchase Camtasia, I will probably use that in conjunction with youtube to post the tutorials. So far I am happy with what I plan to create.
Implementation
Currently there are at least 10 other schools in our district that work with the same publisher. With the help of our Rep, I will first focus on getting those schools to jump on board. Before the the launch, I am going to have to post some of the resources we got at camp this year. I will also ask the Curriculum Director from camp to contribute summaries of the most important information from camp. Since this won’t really involve students from school, I won’t need permission from Administration…I hope.
Evaluation
I will determine whether or not the site is meeting the objective based on monthly surveys and feedback. I will send out emails to those that signed up and have them do surveys to request feedback and ask for recommendations.
Hi all! On Monday I will be starting my eighth year as a teacher at Sweetwater High School. I teach Special Education, am the Yearbook advisor, and I coach a few sports. I graduated from Sweetwater in ‘93, SDSU in ‘99, and National in ‘02. This year I will be teaching ELD, Geography, Computer Applications, and Yearbook. Having more than three preps is not cool, but when you teach Special Ed, you just get used to it. Outside of the classroom I am happily married, have three German Shepherds, and have been a wedding photographer/videographer since 2003.
Prior to the COMET program, I was only technology-savy in the field of video/photo editing and basic publishing. I had already heard of blogs, wiki’s, and podcasting, but I never really thought about implementing it into my classroom. Now I am so excited, I don’t even know where to begin. This is an instance where I really wish I only taught one or two classes. Implementing all this technology into all of my classes will be pretty much impossible. Especially since I don’t have the same schedule every year. Oh well. I will try to implement as much as I can. On a personal level, I now use my igoogle page to read my favorite blogs and I’m constantly trying to get my friends to use it as well.
I will most likely use edublog, in conjuction with my googlepages, to organize all the info my students need. I might even try to use it within our department, but who knows, I can bearly get them to use google docs to manage our caseloads.
