Jing Use in Student Learning

Jing is an online screen capture application. The free version gives you five minutes to capture and record your screen and lesson. In my

Design, Multimedia, and Web Technologies course, I had my students take different chapters of their Photoshop textbook and create a review project using Jing. They turned out wonderfully. Below is one of the examples.

Summer 2012 Begins

Summer is finally here. A busy year learning and teaching Photoshop CS5 and AutoCAD 2012 this past year. Now onto creating an online course for students of Norfolk Christian to add to their busy schedules. The course will be entitled Advanced Microsoft and will be hosted by Edmodo. While I have been fortunate enough to take many online courses, this will be my first attempt at developing an online course. Wish me luck.

HRACS Winter Conference 2012

We offered many new programs this year. One of my favorites is Edmodo.com. Edmodo is an online classroom. You are able to attached Word documents, videos, make quizzes, and much more. The code to get into the HRACS site is c7hva7. Give it a try and see what you think. The site has communities that you are also able to become involved in. I joined two so check it out. Another site we introduced this year is one of my old time favorites, Quizlet.com. While Quizlet is not a good test generator, it is awesome at vocabulary building. Another tool we found was Classtools.net. Classtools has tons of cool gadgets for teaching. You can download your class list into a random name generator to make sure your students are paying attention to your lesson. It also has a countdown clock which is helpful for those times when you want to give your students time to think. Finally, we also discussed the advantages of online bookmarking. I personally use Portaportal.com. My guest name is teanderson. Have fun and check out the new resources.

Busy Year at a Glance

Wow it has been a busy year. Two new preps which include AutoCAD 2012 and Photoshop CS5. Both programs are huge, but are really fun to teach. Tomorrow I have the privilege to present at the HRACS Winter Workshop at Greenbrier Christian School. We will be sharing many new free online resources. It should be an awesome seminar.

Complete

Capstone II What an Adventure. Working with fantastic educators throughout the State of Virginia was a dream come true. It is impossible to explain everything that was learned during this adventure. Above you will find a brief video capturing the highlights of my adventure. I hope you enjoy!!

Final Week At Last

So where will I go from here. To be honest, I am hoping to take a break this summer, but knowing me, I will be taking another technology course. I would like to teach on the community college level some day so I will need at least 18 technology credits. I am not sure if this counts for 8 or not??

To explain what I learned from Capstone would take more than a few paragraphs. I can say Katie sure stretched me in Capstone I and she also assured us that Capstone II would not be as difficult which were both true statements. I always wanted to use bookmarks such as PortaPortal; however, I never had a chance to set them up before. Now I have it set up and I am able to use my bookmarks no matter where I am. In addition, the tools I gained through everyone in both classes are amazing. Never thought I would say this, but I will miss this class, well all of your ideas. Finally, check out my final project and let me know what you think.

The most significant learning moments were working with my eighth graders  and high school classes to create an Edu.Glogster portfolio which I would have never done without this class. Also, presenting to the faculty with confidence and the over 50 fellow educators at the Hampton Roads Association of Christian Schools was also something that Capstone helped to push me towards.

My next steps professionally would be to continue to be a life-long learner. Probably everyone in this course has that to say as technology is constantly changing and our students pick up to it so very quickly that we have to continue learning to stay ahead of them, or at least try to stay at least a week ahead of them.

Thanks everyone for everything. It would be great for us small school types to have all of your knowledge on a continuous basis. Feel free to stop past my blog anytime you find something new or amazing. Thanks again.

Capstone II is Coming to a CLOSE!!

I just submitted my final Portfolio for Capstone II. It is hard to believe I am finally almost through. All that is left is to make corrections from the final reviewer and create a demonstration to share with the faculty at our school. Not to say that will be the easiest thing in the world to do, but once those two items are completed, I will be completely done. Is all of this worth eight JMU credits?? Ask me that in a few weeks :) I will truly miss learning from each member of my class. The new technology I learned during this session include Museum Box, Edu.Glogster, Answer Box, Animoto, just to name a few. My PortaPortal is full of resources that I will be able to look back over and try a few.

Well as normal, I have grading to do so until next time. . . .