I used imageloop for the first time while also creating my first digital story. I chose to write about my new pet, Minion. I think that this tool could be fun and easy for students to use. Students could use this tool for fun and they could also use it academically. Teachers could easily use this tool in their classroom. Teachers can retell stories digitally or have the students do so. If the students do not understand the technology, the teacher can be there to guide them. Digital story telling using imageloop and other tools doesn't always need to be use just for literacy and stories. The tool can be used for almost any academic lesson. It could be fun for a student to present a social studies project using imageloop.
The best part about using this tool was that it was simple to learn. I believe students could learn it just as fast or even fast if they are familiar with computers and digital images. However, the simplicity of this site also offers some negatives. I found it frustrating that there wasn't much choice for the captions. It was hard for me to fit the words onto each photo. Cons of the site aside, I would reccomend any educator to check this site out.
Description: "Google Earth displays satellite images of varying resolution of the Earth's surface, allowing users to see things like cities and houses looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle (see also bird's eye view)" (Wikipedia).
Uses in the Classroom: Google Earth has so many different uses that is hard to narrow it down into one blog post or even one conversation. Many different subjects can be touched using this tool as well. The way I had heard of Google Earth being used the most was for geography. I had never even thought about the other subjects that can be implemented through this technology. Because other subjects are new to me unlike geography, I am choosing to focus on one in particularly: Math.
Google Earth and Math: The video below was one of my favorites that I wanted regarding this technology. Side note: there are tons and tons of videos/tutorials available for Google Earth. I liked this video best because the idea of doing perimeter and area using Google Earth had literally never crossed my mind until I saw the title of the video pop up in one of my searches.
Obviously from the video I posted above, there are many possible lessons that can be created in measurement. There is also a website I found that listed some possible math lessons teaching students how to estimate distances. I found this to be beneficial and I am sure it would also be fun for the students. Visit this site if you are interested in some great lesson ideas using Google Earth.
Affordances: Google earth can be a great tool to use when trying to relate math, or any other subjects, to the real world. Also, places that are familiar to the students can be used in lessons because they are able to be found easily using this tool. Google Earth is also free which can never be a bad thing. Students can access Google Earth if they have a computer and internet access at home.
Constraints: Some students may not have the access or the experiences that many students have online. When I hopped on Google Earth a few days ago to explore the tool for this post, I found myself very distracted. I couldn't focus on the goals of me signing on because I wanted to just explore the places that I know. I realize that the enjoyment is a good thing but it will be important to make sure goals are met by the students teachers.
I think it is easy to see that using Google Earth is easily placed into the Technological Knowledge area of the above diagram. An educator would need to learn about the technology before adding in the Content Knowledge they would like their students to learn while using this tool. Pedagogical Knowledge is hard to gain if an educator does not have years of experience but is an important area of TPACK. The educator will need to use teaching strategies, such as talking about math with a partner/aloud to the class. The educator will need to be familiar with the content knowledge, such as area and perimeter. Lastly, the educator is going to need to be familiar with the technology they are using for the lesson, such as Google Earth. If all three of these things are truly met then TPACK is truly met.
I am still unsure about my feelings for Twitter as far as websites go. However, I have began to see why people would want to use Twitter socially, for business, and for education. It is unbelievable how many people you can access so quickly on the site. I think that the social and business aspects of the site are quite obvious. But it took me a while to gather an opinion on how I felt about Twitter being used in education.
I think it would be neat to have Twitter used school wide or even district wide. It could be useful if all of the teachers and other staff members in a building had Twitter accounts and posted about certain events going on around school or the community. Students could see these tweets and so could their parents. Teachers could also update their Twitter accounts throughout the day so parents could logon and see what their child has been up to at school that day. Twitter can be used by everyone in a district and I was blind to this at first.
As far as professionally, I have already learned what a great tool Twitter can be. I can hop onto Twitter and see the ideas, articles, websites, etc. that are being posted by other people within my profession. The more I reach out and expand the number of people I follow on Twitter the more people I can reach. I find this to be an amazing opportunity and I am planning on learning and exploring to develop myself more professionally.
I was browsing YouTube to find some videos on technology in the classroom for one of my classes. I some how came across the above video and it really got me to start thinking about the idea of technology and just ideas in general. I obviously realize that technology has advanced in huge amounts since the time period shown in the video, but is the idea really all that new? When I was in elementary school we had computer labs and in our district that was what was considered top notch technology in the educational setting. Each classroom had an overhead projector and that was considered top of the line as well. By the time I was in high school we had several different carts of laptops that circled into different classrooms. Now that I am college, I sometimes go back to the same district where there are now smart boards and Mac computers in classrooms. There are all kinds of new things all the time. It is interesting to me that the technology is constantly changing faster and faster everyday but the idea that it is important to always implement it in the classroom is not a new idea at all.
So, is the old saying "nothing is new under the sun" in some ways true after all?
