My FINAL Project!

I decided to learn about Photoshop for my final project. I know the class has been centering a lot on free use software and programs, but they do have a version for free online that has a lot less options, and my husband happened to own the program. So, he taught me a lot about photoshop and I figured out a few things myself. The program is really useful for creating almost any kind of graphic. I created a poster for a dance concert as an example. Teachers can also use photoshop to create posters for visual aids. They can create decorations, or create graphics for video projects. It can basically help you create anything that involves graphics. Visual learning is an important part of education for many students that do not thrive with aural learning, therefore creating interesting and useful graphics can help some children to better understand many topics.



After learning about Photoshop, I keep finding ways I can use it to help others with projects, to supplement my own creative ideas, and to become more technologically savvy. Although it is not a program that directly involves students, using Photoshop, teachers can create many visual aids to help make lessons more interesting and meaningful.

Assignment # (the last!) 7

This blog post is in answer to a series of questions, so I am going to divide it by the numbered questions.

1. How have you used technology to contribute to some domain of knowledge?

I feel that I was best able to contribute to a “domain of knowledge” by putting my you tube video up about how to dance the Charleston. This has allowed me to share some of the things I have learned in school with anyone who happens upon it. I also enjoy blogging about my teaching experiences so that others can share my good ideas, and in the hopes that I will soon be able to garner ideas from others who blog about teaching.

2. How have you used technology to collaborate with classmates?

This term I have been able to use google documents on several occasions for group projects. In this way, my group members, who had very strict schedules, were all able to edit our presentation without all being at the same computer at the same time. I have also been able to read classmates’ blogs to get ideas for my projects for this class! Finally, I have also used technology to make a video record of the teaching I have done, so that I can let others observe and hopefully better understand what dance education is.

3. How might you use technology in your classroom?

I am really excited to use technology in the classroom! Especially so for a class website and blog. These can help my students be able to always have a place to go to remind them of assignments and can help the parents easily update themselves on what we are working on in class, without sending home a plethora of notes and handouts. In addition, I hope to be able to use online quizzes and presentations, so that homework can be varied from the classic worksheet after reading in a textbook. Finally, I may be able to teach my students about technology by teaching them to use a software to create videos, presentations, or other projects, which knowledge could greatly help them in the future.

4. What did you learn in this class?
I learned a lot about how I can easily incorporate technologies I already knew a lot about into my everyday classroom as a teachers. I also learned how to create a website, which I had never done before. That was my favorite project for sure! I learned that technology can be used without taking over the material for a lesson and that it has a legitimate place in the classroom when used appropriately.

5. What will you use that you have learned in this class?
I truly plan on using a class website and/or blog, and I also already love to make videos, and will continue to do so. Also, for my final project, I learned about using photoshop and I plan to use that software often in the future.

Internet tools and safety

Well, I spent a while searching for free programs that are directly related to dance, but I just couldn't find anything. So I expanded my search to education in general and found a few:

Students can create digital posters
Teachers can create quizzes and tests
Teachers can use a digital gradebook

These are pretty good, and they're free after all. I believe I will use the creating a digital poster for my project #3 and make a student assignment where they have to create a poster on one of the elements of dance. Making computer quizzes is kind of tricky because it is just hard for some students to concentrate on the computer and it makes it easier to cheat. But it is beneficial for the organization of student answers and automatic grading possibilities. The gradebook is just awesome because I don't have to take the time to set up an excel spreadsheet with all my formulas and can just use a program that is already set up specifically for grades.

As for internet safety, it all comes down to being smart and checking url's of websites where you are putting in information. If there is no reason you can think of for them to have that information, then just make it up or leave it blank. The internet is super easy to get information off of, so let's keep some information off of it!

Video and video chatting!

This is a screen shot of the awesome video chat that my husband and I had using google talk! We love google! Also, we love video chatting with our family that lives in Tennessee and Louisiana since we never get to see them. :-( I discovered video chatting when I was in China for the summer and wanted to see my family! It is an amazing way to communicate with people across the world, or even just across the neighborhood! It really breaks boundaries that phone calls can't help, since you can't see body language over a phone. I think you could use it to help with learning about students in another school, state, or even country!

Also, the video is finished and posted below along with the assignment for it! It was fun. We had a few technical difficulties with the air conditioner really interfering with the sound of the video, but we tried to mask it with background music, and it worked okay. It was fun, because I now learned how to change the volume of the audio within a track and also how to slow down or speed up video! Cool!

How To Dance the Charleston Video

Video Assignment

Social Studies Video Assignment

For this assignment, you will be creating your own video about a popular dance from the first half of the 20th century. The dance should have been socially and culturally popular between 1900 and 1960.

Requirements:

· The video should be at least 3 minutes in length (No longer than 7 minutes).

· The video should include pictures and narration giving a brief history of the dance and why it became popular.

· The video should also include a short segment of video that shows you demonstrating the dance and teaching it to the viewer.

· The video should include music that is unique to the time period of the dance.

You may choose any dance form that you would like, but you must have your topic decided by May 31st! We will edit the videos in class in the school computer lab on June 3, 4, and 10. On June 3rd, you must bring to school digital copies of the music, pictures, and recorded video for the project. You may record the narration in class. The video project is due on June 11th. DVD’s to put your finished video on will be provided on June 10th.

Film in Progress

Well, I'm working on another film for school. Good thing I married a man who knows how to edit video! So, I decided to edit my video with the program we have on our home computer, Sony Vegas. My film will be an example of a possible outcome for a student assignment. It fulfills this Utah core curriculum Standard for fifth grade dance "The student will understand and demonstrate dance in relation to its historical, cultural, and personal origins." More particularly, it fulfills an Objective underneath that standard, "Perform and understand dances from different time periods and cultures". As fifth graders are learning about the turn of the 20th century and world war II when social dance was incredibly popular in America, the assignment bridges both dance and Social Studies curriculum. For my project example, I have a story board that shows how I will first tell the history of the Charleston dance through stills and narration, then I will demonstrate it step-by-step, teaching the viewer how to dance the Charleston!

The hardest part about this video has been finding pictures that are fair use and un-copyright protected. But it should be fun and I enjoy editing video!

Here is my story board:





Lovely huh? I'll be impressed if you can actually read my chicken scratch! But I've spent about 2 hours on the whole project so far. It should be fun!

Classroom Website

Well here it is! My awesome classroom website. I had trouble with embedding an iframe. I tried several websites and they all came up as errors... I'm not sure what I did wrong!

http://sites.google.com/site/mrscravathsclassroomwebsite/home

Google Wave

Class Websites

Although it was difficult for me to figure out exactly how to make one work, I really like the idea of a class website. Instead of sending home several reminders and class newsletters that are very likely to get lost before they ever reach the parents, you can just send one home not that emphasizes the importance of checking the classroom website daily. Then you can post reminders, calenders, and assignments. I know it could be a challenge with those parents who don't have a computer or internet at home, so I'm not sure how to overcome that challenge yet. But internet is becoming more and more commonplace.

I really love the idea of a calendar on the website to keep both me and my students organized and updated. I can also post ideas on where students can go to research for projects and to give them ideas on how to get started. Finally, it would be an easy way for parents to reach me, as they can just email me through the website, instead of keeping track of my email. Then, I can avoid getting too many parent phone calls as well! I think this can be a great tool in the future for disseminating information to both students and teachers.

Blogging and Teaching

Funny how I've always though of dance as a way to get kids up and out of their desks, off the computer, and moving, yet now I'm in a class to teach my how to incorporate technology into my dance education techniques. Lol. Yet I do see some good out of it. First of all, finding videos of dances on youtube is a constant assignment I have and could benefit my future students. Putting those videos onto my blog would make it a lot easier for them to find exactly what I want them to view. In addition, I can keep parents updated on assignments without destroying a million trees and using up unnecessary ink. So as an environmental tool, blogging is great! I could also post assigned readings on my blog so that the students can read there instead of printing those out as well.

RSS feeds are also useful for me as an educator. To stay current on what the dance world is doing, I can subscribe to several dance blogs and websites instead of having to re-find them all and check them. I like google reader for this, but I still feel like it is a different experience to go and visit the actual website, and I don't like to give that up. However, a couple good feeds I subscribed to are:

www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/blog
www.dancingperfectlyfree.com

I think that a blog could also be incredibly useful for fellow educators who want to add dance to their curriculum. I could post lesson plans for all to see and share, so that someone who stumbled across my blog from New York or Florida could try adding dance to their curriculum.

Dance on Film as Art

I made this movie for my dance and technology class. The little girl choreographed almost the whole thing!

Chinese dancers

I love this dance!