I feel my biggest challenge of starting this online summer course was learning how to allocate and manage my time appropriately. I was also a bit apprehensive of completing a Master’s degree online due to the inability to meet with professors face to face and hear instructions first-hand. However, I made an effort to keep an open mind and a positive attitude. I quickly found myself in a structured routine in completing my coursework and I was pleased that our professor, as well as Moodle, kept us so organized with clear directions for each project and activity. I am truly proud of the work that I completed in this course, but I feel that my two favorite artifacts were my Haiku Deck and my Digital Story. I am particularly pleased with my Haiku Deck slideshow, as it will give my math students helpful tips to succeed in my 7th grade math classroom in the coming years. Additionally, my Digital Story leads viewers through my study abroad adventures and experiences using multiple pictures, text, and audio narration. Learning how to create an online video slideshow, upload my audio on iMovie, and transfer the final piece to YouTube was challenging, but very rewarding. Upon completion of the first semester of my Master of Educational Technology degree, I can honestly say that I have already learned so many engaging strategies and resources that I can implement in my own math classroom.
Author: clairedickinson4
Worked Example Screencast
For this activity, I created an online video tutorial that will help my 7th grade math seminar students navigate through BuzzMath this year. This is a math website that has been very helpful for my seminar students in the past who need an extra boost. Therefore, this video will be beneficial for them to watch at the beginning of the school year. I downloaded a tool called Jing Project on my MAC computer in order to capture computer screenshots and record audio for this project. In my opinion, there are definitely a couple of downfalls of Jing. First, I did not like the video time limit that it strictly puts in place. It does not allow individuals to exceed five minutes, and therefore, some information that I would have loved to have discussed in my video was not included. Additionally, this resource does not allow individuals to edit their videos, and therefore, it had to be completed in one take. However, this could be seen as a positive in that I was forced to choose only the most vital and pertinent information, rather than violating the Redundancy Principle. Needless to say, I had to work through many different takes until I was satisfied with my video. For those of you that admittedly tend to babble on in videos (which I feel that I do sometimes) and add unnecessary information, Jing would be a great option for you!
I hope that you will view my Screencast video HERE!
The words that I spoke throughout my video can be found in the following Word file: Jing Screencast Buzzmath video narration.
My Digital Story
My digital story describes my wonderful experiences while studying abroad in Cork, Ireland in fall 2010. From there, I was also given the opportunities to travel to London, Madrid, and Copenhagen, all of which are discussed as well. I thought that it was vital to use a friendly, conversational tone of voice as I narrated this video, and tried to have my personality shine through as much as possible. As we have learned throughout EdTech 513 and our studies of Clark and Mayer’s E-Learning and the Science of Instruction, this is known as the Personalization Principle, which has proven to engage learners on a higher level than a formal tone would. I chose to create my digital story by uploading pictures to a website called Stupeflix. I then uploaded that video to iMovie which enabled me to add audio. Lastly, I transferred it to YouTube. I have always thought that creating narrated videos would be time consuming and difficult. However, I was pleasantly surprised with this process! It definitely took effort and patience, especially with creating the audio portion, but it went very smoothly. I look forward to using these types of videos in my classroom to teach math lessons or to introduce a unit.
Coherence Analysis
My Google Doc report/analysis on the Coherence Principle can be found HERE!
Crazy for Cool Cooking: Podcast
This week, our task was to create a first episode of a podcast! This has been one of my favorite technological projects thus far, and I really appreciated that our instructor allowed us to choose any topic, including a hobby, that we desired for this assignment. Due to my love of cooking, I decided to create a podcast about my experiences with cooking as well as certain recipes, entitled “Crazy for Cool Cooking.” In this podcast episode, I provide two Italian recipes that I have learned as well as some personal cooking touches and tips. This assignment was particularly neat in that a podcast does not allow any visuals, so I needed to be aware of my tone of voice to keep listeners interested and engaged. I hope that you will check out my first episode HERE!
To view my spoken words in written form, please see my Crazy for Cool Cooking podcast notes!
Welcome to my EdTech Learning Log!
Hello! My name is Claire. As a graduate student in the Master of Educational Technology program at Boise State University, I am so excited to learn about the many engaging ways that technology tools and resources can be implemented within my current mathematics classroom. You can view my Animoto introduction/”About Me” video HERE! In addition to EdTech 513, I am also currently enrolled in EdTech 501, where we created a Pinterest board showing a bit more about ourselves.
Thank you for stopping by! I look forward to the continuation of an awesome summer semester.