Social Media and My Professional Journey

http://www.losasso.com

In this 21^st century time of teaching and learning, social media and technology play such a large role in how we as educators teach and learn and how our students learn or even how they learn best. My journey throughout the last three months has shown me not only the importance of technology, but also many amazing ways it can be implemented into our classrooms. I learned that although it’s important to use technology, it’s more important to implement it safely and properly. It’s essential for students to understand their limitations and boundaries when it comes to the use of technology; and that’s where we as educators play a very influential role in their learning. I think using social media and technology in the classroom allows students to have amazing opportunities to connect with others, find resources from all over the world, share their talents, and discover things many students before them didn’t have the opportunity to do.

With the wants, needs, demands, and popularity of social media sights. The daily advancements in technology, and the students who thrive off it all … teaching, learning and educating will never be the same. Our world is running at a faster pace every year, and it’s up to us as educators to contribute meaningfully to our children and students learning by keeping up at the same pace. This course showed me that that is possible, and in the last three months I have grown and learned so much from my colleagues and educators around me.

Using Social Media in the Classroom 

The Generations of Presentation Programs

PowerPoint

https://www.nationalexchangeclub.org

            For a long period of time now I think it can easily be said that PowerPoint has been the king of ^st century classrooms.

all presentation programs. It’s simple to use, easy to manipulate, adapt and make unique to your own needs, and most importantly its very user friendly. PowerPoint is a presentation software program that can be purchased through Microsoft. For collaborative purposes this program is a little more difficult to use; files would need to be saved and sent back and forth between participants to combine work and work together. This form of collaboration is quit easy, but sometimes things can be lost in translation. As a result, I think Google PowerPoint has really revolved this collaborative need in our 21

Google PowerPoint

         

http://www.techlato.com

   Is a free presentation program that is connected with your Google Drive account. This program is very similar and works in many of the same ways that Microsoft PowerPoint does, but because it’s on Google+ you can share your work very easily, access it anywhere, and collaborate with other where and whenever you would like. The program runs in the same fashion; you can add slides, titles, captions, pictures, music, audio links, change colours, fonts, pretty much anything you need to change to make it unique to your presentation needs.

SlideRocket

http://steveanderson.com

          A balance between the two? I think Sliderocket is a good balance between the tools and features both Microsoft PowerPoint and Google PowerPoint offer it’s users.  It’s a free program and works in the same format of slides, and features that allow you to add and change anything you want to these particular slides.  The unique feature about SlideRocket is that you can import presentations that you have created through Microsoft PowerPoint and Google PowerPoint to continuing editing and using the many features and options neither programs have. Presentations can be assess anywhere at any time, and the program offers a collaborative features where multiple users can be working on the same presentation at the same point. SlideRocket allows always user to keep their work completely private or to publish it to the Sliderocket community. Although it’s not as well known as Microsoft’s or Google’s versions of PowerPoint, I think SlideRocket is a great program and deserves more credit than is given.

 

http://evrimbaran.com

Prezi

            Is the 21^st Century PowerPoint presentation! For someone who grew up using PowerPoint, Prezi took some time and effort to learn how to use properly and to learn its many benefits and features that other presentation programs don’t offer. Prezi was created to replace the “typical” slide based presentation, it also offers a collaborative feature where up to 10 participant can work on one project at once.

Prezi Christmas! 

Image Manipulation Programs

1. GIMP

http://www.sam-mallery.com

 “GIMP – which stands for the GNU Image Manipulation Program – is a feature-packed and powerful open source image editor that can be used in all major operating systems (Linux, Mac, and Windows). It has a customizable interface so that you can easily set the view and behavior of GIMP. It has a huge set of retouching tools that will allow you to perform advanced image retouching and manipulation. The GIMP outputs your work in many common formats like JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, and even PSD (Photoshop’s native file format).” (sixrevisions.com)

2. Photoshop

http://www.radford.edu

“Photoshop is what comes to mind when image editing is involved there’s very little that can be said about it that hasn’t been said already. With an insurmountable amount of features that help you manipulate and enhance photos as well as create web graphics, all while helping you manage your workflow and image editing environment – Photoshop comes in at numero uno as the best image editing software currently in the market.” (sixrevisions.com)

Photoshop is always the first imagine manipulation program that comes to mind; by popularity everyone knows its name…but how many people can use it properly? In my opinion these programs take lots of time and effort to understand fully and properly. It’s not an overnight understanding.  With popular programs such as Instagram and simple photo editing programs on MAC computers, students have already made clear where their interests lie.

GIMP for Beginners, Watch this short video! 

Photoshop for Beginners, Watch this short video! 

Flipped Classroom

http://www.miscositas.com/flipped.html

Flipped classroom? In our crazy 21^st Century lives everyone seems to be searching for a sort cut, a   I think a flipped classroom is a great example of that efficient and effective way of supporting our students and children’s learning with the technological edge they all so desperately thrive off of.  Google defines a flipped classroom as, “a form of blended learning in which students learn new content online by watching video lectures, usually at home, and what used to be homework is now done in class with teacher offering more personalized guidance and interaction with students, instead of lecturing.”  This flipped method of learning stresses the importance of ongoing parental involvement in children’s learning; but is this reasonable? Or even capable for many parents and students?  The idea of the flipped classroom and method of teaching is brilliant, but the application will be difficult and less practical. It’s hard to believe but many students this day and age still do not have access to a computer or internet at home, many students spend this time after school participating in sports and other activities, and don’t forget the parents who aren’t home themselves? Many parents work jobs with long strenuous hours, is there time for the parent to become the teacher throughout all of this?

method to make things easier, cutting corners in an efficient and effective way.

What is a Flipped Classroom? Watch this 60 second video to find out!