EDM 310 Final Reflection

I learned so much throughout this course. At the beginning of the semester I knew very little about technology, and the things I could create with it. In just a few short weeks I learned how to successfully create a Free App trailer, EdPuzzle, and a interactive PowerPoint. My favorite project was creating the EdPuzzle activity. I think it is a great way to start of teaching a lesson to students, and also will give the teacher knowledge on how much her students know. My confidence level when it comes to technology is so much greater than it was at the beginning of the semester.
I will take the things that I learned from this course and apply it to my future classroom. I am already planning to use EdPuzzle to have an interactive lecture with the students. When you have more technology in the classroom, I feel like it will engage the students to learn and will keep their attention. I am very glad I had the opportunity to learn about the different ways I can use technology when planning a lesson. I look forward to using everything I learned from this class to one day benefit my future students.

Interactive PowerPoint

I learned a lot of things when creating the Interactive PowerPoint. Selecting what subject and how I wanted to go about deciding what I wanted to do was the easy part of the assignment. However, when it came down to actually putting it all together, I has a few difficulties. The main problem I had was figuring out how to make a certain object trigger with the other, and making it flow together. One I received help from the lab assistants, it seemed so much easier to do.
I enjoyed this project, because before this assignment I did not even know you could create small interactive games through PowerPoint. It can be time consuming if you are not familiar with how to do it, but I think next time I do this it will be a lot easier. I think this is a great way for students to have fun practicing the material they are learning. I definitely plan using something like this again for my future class.

ALEX Experience

ALEX is a great tool for teachers to use to prepare lesson plans. I enjoyed searching around on the website, and found it very helpful when deciding what subject I wanted to use for my interactive PowerPoint assignment. The website has so many different lesson ideas for all subjects.
I found it interesting that there was a tab titled "course of study" that shows what the Alabama standards are for each subject and grade level. The level I chose to do for the interactive lesson is first grade math using addition and subtraction. The lesson plan is titled "Number Carousel", and is a great activity for students to do in groups. Browsing around on the ALEX website was very helpful, and I will definitely use it when planning my own lessons one day.

Number Carousel Lesson Plan From ALEX

Group Video Project EDM 310

The group video project was an overall enjoyable assignment. The purpose of our project talked about the budget cuts that are made in schools. I learned a lot of information that I did not know prior to this assignment through all of the research we did. In our project we included facts about budget cuts, narration, video clips, and we also acted out specific scenarios.
There were a few obstacles we had when putting this project together. Since a team member had to miss a day, it left us having to meet outside of the class time we had. The hardest part, in my opinion, was finding the facts we wanted to include. Since there were so many different facts it was also difficult to decide which route we wanted to go with the filming. This project also helped me get accustomed to iMovie since I am used to Movie Maker instead. I think our group did a great job despite the time limit we had for the summer semester, and we are very pleased with how it turned out.

EdPuzzle

Edpuzzle is a great tool for teachers to use to get their students prepared for a new lesson. I enjoyed creating my Edpuzzle video, and enjoyed watching my group member's videos as well. A few things I feel that would be most helpful when forming a video is including several narrations of the teacher's voice, because it will grab the students attention. Including questions throughout the video will also help get the students engaged in this activity. Having more than one style of asking questions would be useful as well, because it gives the students different ways to answer the question. I was very pleased with mine and my teammates Edpuzzle video, and I will most likely use this in the future for my own class one day.

Free App Trailer Process

Making the free app trailer for this class was an overall enjoyable experience. I learned many new things about technology throughout this process. This was my very first time working with Movie Maker. I was very nervous going into this project, because I had never worked with something like this before and had no clue what I was doing. After trying different things and playing around with the app I felt more comfortable about this assignment.
The app I chose to advertise in my free app trailer is a free math app, called Monster Math, that is great for a first through fifth grade math level. I think this is a great way for students to practice their math skills, and teachers can even integrate this into the classroom if they choose to do so for extra practice. I did not have any trouble finding facts and pictures to include in the trailer, however the editing part of the process seemed to be difficult for me at first. I had trouble editing the music and the video clips so that it would run smoothly, but after playing with it a few times I finally got it up and running smoothly. I do wish I had a little more time to work on this assignment, but overall I am proud of the finished product, being that this was my first time working with Movie Maker. This was an enjoyable experience for me, and I will possibly use this form of technology one day in my future classroom.

Guest Speaker Presentation

I learned a lot of great information from our guest speaker, Dave Walker, in class the other day. He taught our class some great techniques to use when recording a video production. I honestly did not know the things you could record off of your personal phone, and still have it look professionally done. He was very helpful and answered any questions the class had about video technology.
One thing I learned from his presentation is when recording a video from your personal iPhone or Android device, it is best to film it horizontally instead of vertically. Also when using lighting, natural light is the best source to get the best lighting. He presented many more helpful tips throughout the presentation that will help me and my group throughout this course during our group projects. Learning from his presentation helped me feel a little more confident when it comes to video technology.