ThirdGradeFun

One of our very first assignments in this MultiMedia Tools for Education class was to record ourselves for fluency! I was left speechless and frazzled at the same time. Flashbacks kept coming into my mind...I hated (still do actually) when my dad pulled out the old VHS tapes and popped them in for my kids to watch. I hated the sound of my voice then and all I could think is great, I’ll be tortured by the sound of my voice again! The best advice from Mr. Hegedorn was to basically get over ourselves! And you know what? He was right! My first assignment in which I had to record myself took longer than it really should have. I recorded my assignment at least 10 times! I kept hearing myself and thought, ‘Wow! Is this what my poor students listen to everyday, yikes!’ The funny thing is, it’s only the sound of your voice. It’s not like you had to record yourself! But of course, I spoke too soon. Unfortunately, there were some assignments that I had to record myself! 😞 Anyhow, ...

The Wow Factor When I heard that our assignment was to create a movie trailer for a book or to introduce a new unit of study, I thought to myself, ‘Is this professor out of his mind! I can’t do that!’ Then looking at some examples helped ease my jitters. Those jitters rose back up when I heard that most people like to use apple apps to do this sort of stuff. I’m not an Apple user but I know a couple of kiddos in my house that are! I was excited about the topic. Native Americans. My students were about to start reading a nonfiction piece called The Athabascans:  The Old Ways and News Ways. Then they would read a fiction book called The Year of Miss Agnes. We had also read about different Native American tribes in Social Studies so I figured I would do a book trailer for the Athabascans. I used the iMovie app for Apple. It is a pretty cool and simple app. It comes preloaded with a few movie trailers or you can start from scratch and make your own. I think find the pho...

Audio, Video, And So Much More! It wasn’t easy to think that I arrived to work at 7:30 a.m. and that my day wouldn’t end at 4:05 p.m. but 8:00 p.m.! However, as I think back to my experience in this class, Multimedia Tools in Education, I can truly say I had a blast and learned so much! An article that stuck with me was the F-Shaped Pattern of Reading by Kara Pernice. It talked about how eye tracking research shows that people scan webpages and phone screens in various patterns, including the pattern of the letter F . This made me realize that I personally scan webpages this way. Realizing this, it makes me rethink how I layout information for my students or the manner in which I present the material in class. I had many conversation throughout this course with my classmates that helped make a difference in my learning and teaching. We discussed pros and cons about audio usage in the classroom, using videos in the classroom, pros and cons of using audiobooks in the ...