Everything always works out in the end!

After having technological issues and venting on my blogger (sorry), I decided to sleep it off and try again in the morning! Well when I woke up I decided to try my parents laptop to see if the program would download, and it did! I had a very good morning because of it! Photostory is wonderful. I thought it would be great to use to review a book that was assigned for the kids! I decided to make my Photostory on The Great Gatsby. If you would like to take a look at it, it is attached to my google site.

Frustration

Its always something that hits hard at the end of the semester. These last two projects have been the death of me. I feel like the actual idea of creating a photo story is awesome. It is just not working out for me tonight. I have everything ready but the program will not download. In order to download this program I have to update three other things which are not working! Technology is so frustrating! Now I'll have to cancel my doctors appointment tomorrow even though I'm really sick, because I'm going to have to do this at school! Hope there's a quiet room available! :(

Missed

Unfortunately, I had to miss last class because I was very ill. This is the kind of class that if you miss one night, you miss too much! I have no idea what digital storytelling is, but I am determined to learn about it and make project six very good! I started watching the video on our class website and it seems pretty interesting. I am not sure, but I hope I do not have to download anything to do this; I don't think my computer can take anymore programs! So far, I'm thinking that this is a project that I can put to use in the future and make me a tech savy teacher!

Pechakucha

Wow. That was quite a project! I have to be honest, that was my least favorite. I feel like everything that could have went wrong did! I have an old version of power-point which did not cooperate with Pechakusha. I ended up having to do it in school. The difficult part is that it is hard to find a quite spot on campus. I ended up giving up finding an empty (or close to empty) computer lab. I had to borrow a friends laptop who had the right version of power-point! I understand the assignment and I do think that it is a very nice idea, but this was a pain in the butt! Oh well, I am looking forward to the next assignment!

Whew

What a relief. Cindy and I just finished our Wimba presentation. I was pretty nervous because even after practicing it a couple of times, I was still uncomfortable with Wimba. We figured out how to hear the audio for the video on Cindy's portion of the presentation, but of course mine didn't work! I was dissapointed because it is a pretty interesting video to hear the students collaborating on creating a prezi. Oh well! I think we did a pretty good job explaining how Prezi is used. I really enjoyed learning and playing around with PreziU. I can see myself using it as an educator if I do not have a smartboard in my classroom. Its also cool that you can use other teachers materials. If you have time take a look at www.edu.prezi.com.

Presentation

So this week we are doing presentations on Wimba and I have to say, it is a little nervewracking.  I have just completed my screencast with Jing, which was pretty interesting.  I thought it would be much more difficult than it actually was.  Its would be a great tool for professors of an online class to use as a tutorial for a project.  Other than that, I can't see myself using it in the future. 

So now I am on to preparing myself for the presentation that I will be doing with Cindy this Wednesday evening.  We have decided that we will split up our focus.  She is going to focus on how to use and make a Prezi presentation and I am going to focus on PreziU.  Prezi is this REALLY cool presentation maker/editor.  It uses these zooming effects that really capture your attention.  You can take a look at it at www.prezi.com. Not a believer? Check out this introduction video I found.

Smartboard!

This week we had our smartboard presentations.  I have to say I really enjoyed this project, and I have never had that much fun doing a presentation.  The smartboard software is awsome.  I hope that in the future I will have a smartboard in my classroom.  I have requested that we get one where I work, at Stockton's preschool.  I feel like a have a great understanding of how to use the smartboard after creating my presentation and watching everyone else's presentation.