Rethinking Education In the Age of Technology C.1

In the last decade technology has become a huge part of jobs, schools and everyone’s personal lives.  To me, not having access to the internet is a mind boggling thought. Because people are now so accustom to the different resources they have with technology, it has a larger role in education. This reading makes me realize that in order to become a successful teacher for the future, I am going to have to learn new technologies and use them in the classroom.  Because technology is now becoming more accessible to a larger percent of the population, I feel that it is imperative that the educational system use this to its advantage.  It may seem that technology has been clashing with schooling in the past few years, but in order for schools to keep up in the Knowledge Revolution, teachers must allow children to use technologies to benefit their learning in a more customizable way.  This can be done in many ways, including the internet, wikis, blogs, podcasts, videos, and other similar media vantages.  This reading really helped me realize the importance of media such as these and why we should begin to use them now so we can teach with them in our careers. 

"What did you do in school today" "Nothing"

There were many things that I learned in Edu 331 class on Thursday September 9th.  We were taught on how to utilize a wiki account and what benefits it has, especially for a classroom setting. I loved the idea of our "what we did in class wiki" because so many parents ask the dreadful question of "What did you do in school today" and most often students reply with "nothing". I find that it would be extremely useful to create a wiki for parents to see what there students are doing each day of the year. Another great resource that I took away from class is the delicious website. I feel I will be using this source a lot, because my own 'favorites' link is filled and I find myself getting extremely frustrated when I'm looking for a specific website I bookmarked. I am extremely eager to use many of the different sources we learned about!!  

Vuvox Digital Autobiography

I made my Digital Autobiography using www.vuvox.com  and I was surprised that I really enjoyed it.  It took time to rummage though some pictures to find a few decent ones, so I posted 8 pictures that I felt most described who I am, and what my biggest loves are.  Because of my familiarity with Photoshop, some of the tools in Vuvox were easy to get the hang of, but I could easily see Vpeople becoming frustrated with the cropping tools.  

 Although it took a while to understand the different tools, it was easy to learn. With a little help from the “how to videos” I’m sure my mom could eventually figure it out… and that’s saying a lot! 

Vuvox was easy to use because when placing a picture into your collage you could just drag and drop to the spot where you wanted it. The cropping was slightly difficult because you had to invert the image.  I felt that I put a lot of effort into this project making sure that all the pictures and the way they were placed really helped describe me as a person in a short amount of time.  

After playing around with it for about an hour and getting everything how I liked it, I arrived at my finished product. 

http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/02cf973c6d

I placed a few baby pictures, family pictures, a picture of my gorgeous dog and a picture that I took myself to include my love of photography.  These all resemble my personality and the things that I care most about.   I think it is important with an assignment like this to really show who you are as a person knowing that your classmates will be looking at it.  This is a good way for us as classmates to get to know each other on a personal level in a quick, creative way.

After completing my project for Edu. 331, I feel that I will come back to this website and make many more collages.  I let my family view my collage and they all loved it and were curious on how to make their own.   There are many great things that Vuvox could be used for, and it is a fun interactive tool for us and any other future students who are to use it.

After making my collage I feel that there are many different programs that are just as easy to use, if you spend some time and effort on it.  I was really excited for the completion of this project because I feel it is something I can take with me in my future teaching as a unique method for creative expression and breaking the ice in a new classroom.