EDTC 300
Talking Photo's5/29/2020 This week I looked at a number of different Applications and online tools, my main focus was on finding an application or tool that I was able to add pictures with a voice over. So using the Weekly Plans I found the application Fotobabble; the first issue I had was it said there was an application I could download on my phone but when I went to download the application it wasn't available in my region. The second issue I had when using the site online is it didn't work and wouldn't let me upload my pictures, when I went to upload a picture off of my computer I would receive the message "Page you requested is not available". So this led me to search for another application or tool to allow me to add voice over to pictures I had. The next tool I found was a site called Visiblegains, the main focus of this website I believe is around business, as it had a lot of business templates. This was okay, so I uploaded my pictures to the site and tried to add voice over. Well this site did not have a spot to add voice over so it didn't work how I had thought from the description. After those two applications or tools not working I searched up on google "adding pictures with voice over". It came up with many different things, after looking through some I decided on an application called talking photo as it was something I could download on my phone which I hadn't tried yet. So I downloaded this application and I successfully uploaded a picture but when I went to put voice over it was short amount of times like their custom one "It's Time to Celebrate Christmas". The voice over also made my picture move like it was talking. Which was funny but wasn't what I wanted at all. I am posting the video of this application below for a laugh! After that application failing to meet my needs I found another application on my phone called Talking Photo, this application was exactly what I needed. It was easy to use all I had to do was upload a picture and then was able to add voice over, if I didn't like the voice over it was easy to delete and try again as well. The only issue I had was each picture was a different video, which was okay but for this blog I decided to test out another application that I found on the computer which allowed me to add videos together. This Application was called Adobe. Spark, this tool was easy to use and I was able to combine my videos in short amount of time. I found this journey for the correct tool or application long but in the end I found ones that did exactly what I needed to do. Edit: After posting this video I realized it didn't save property and only made a red screen with voice over so this application didn't seem to work as well as I thought it did. This week I focused on shading which I have talked about in previous blogs as something I was never good at. I decided to use Youtube as my learning tool this week and walked three different videos on shading. My first video was " How to shade with pencil for beginners" this video was very helpful in helping me to understand how to hold my pencil to achieve the correct amount of pressure for shading. Did you know you are suppose to hold your pencil from the top, so put your pencil on a desk and then just lift it up with thumb and pointer finger? The author of the video also talked about having to understand how light behaved in order to be able to shade correctly. Which was something I never thought about when shading, but shade depends on where a light hits an object so it is very important to learn about how it works. They showed different amounts of shade by making 4 boxes and shading each one in a bit less than the next or just adjusting pressure of pencil with lines. After I watched the video on how to shade, I found two other videos "How to draw eyes" and "How to draw easy girl drawing for beginners". Both of these were step-by-step videos without voice over, so you watched and then copied what the author of the video did. I found this super difficult, I constantly had to stop the video and move back cause I missed a spot. I was also way slower of a drawer than the video was moving. I feel like for Youtube videos to work for me someone either needs to talk over the steps as they go or they need to have the video move way slower so I could follow it easier. My proportions ended up way out of proportion, so not my best artwork but I can see my growth with in my shading skills. Overall I don't think Youtube is the right tool for me to learning how to draw, my learning needs are not met with Youtube for this purpose. Although, I am going to keep trying out other Youtube channels to see if I can find one that fits my needs. Let me know if you found anything that works for you!
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The new digital World5/22/2020 New Media is like a megaphone. It amplifies your ability to reach people. ~Mark Batterson. I believe this quote is a wonderful representative of today's involvement with technology! As discussed in class there is so many different social media applications that children and adults use to reach others around the world in a matter of minutes. Almost every person has their own form of a phone that allows them to reach others, even young children today have increased in owning a phone. As Katia has stated, about 10.3 is the age that children receive their first phone with 92% of toddlers having their own digital footprint. 34% of people have a digital footprint before they are even born. If you think of that compared to in older times; there was some places around the world that didn't document birthdays, most of the birthdays are documented by the church and are usually not the exact day the person was born. But if we look at today, many people post their child's ultrasound or sonogram, although we know there is some cases today that a persons actual birthday isn't recorded such as a refugee who is now living in Canada. Did you know that for many of the refugees that arrive in Canada their birthday is January 1st. This is because of either unknown birthday or not having access to government documents. When introducing Technology into our classrooms; we have to make sure it is bringing in positively to the classroom. This means it is important to teach children about their digital footprint and how important it is to leave a digital footprint. We have to make sure students have an understanding of their digital footprint being anywhere online, in and outside the classroom. One thing I learned from Katia during class is that Snapchat saves all photos on their servers, so even though they state pictures are gone after a couple seconds it's somewhere on the web. I know everything I post shows up, that people can search for but snapchat saving the photos was something I never thought of myself. Kids most likely will not have a deep understanding of their digital footprint if we are still unknown to our own digital footprint. This is why it is important for us to learn about our own digital footprint and teach the younger generations about having a good digital footprint. One student in EDTC300 (can't remember who), stated that we must look at how technology has truly shaped the students minds and ways of knowing/ living. This is very important to consider during lesson planning, students lives are revolved around technology today as much as our own. How can we fit technology into the curriculum to help engage the students? As we know there is many different applications found online that are linking to online learning, such as google classroom. If you haven't already saw google classroom has feature that allows you to make a bitmoji classroom, If your interested creating your own heres a great link (Virtual Bitmojis)! Technology is apart of our students lives so why don't we use that to our advantage to help engage students and build meaningful connections. Although, using technology in the classroom is an important idea in today's day and age, face-to-face connections are still highly important. Its hard to meet students needs while communicating with them over technology! An anthropological introduction to Youtube, is a very informative video about how technology and most importantly Youtube has shaped our world. Michael Wesh discusses how it is important to rethink, rethink a few things such as copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, governance, privacy, commerce, love, family, and most importantly ourselves. This is important to look at when looking into bringing technology into the classroom and the world. He looked into the idea that the web is linking people like never before; which connects to the previously discussed quote. There is many people that I have connected with over technology like all of you #EDTC300, if it wasn't for the technology around today there is a high chance I wouldn't have met most of you and wouldn't have been able to take part in EDTC300. I think youtube is a great source for teachers and students to use in or outside the classroom, as talked about in class there is so many videos that students can search up "How to" and receive millions of videos teaching them useful skills. So why not use this to our advantage as teachers? The world is so different today then it was in the past, with the world revolved around technology. As a future teacher I have to be able to use this to my advantage, to help students succeed. Katia stated that getting rid of technology won't solve the worlds issues, there was issues before technology. Issues today are more known because of technology, this is both a good and bad thing. Its important to be in the known about the world but being to much can cause stress on your life. Remember even though technology is important to the world today, take breaks from it and step away from the world for a bit. It will be good for your mental health, What do you do to take a break from technology? I enjoy having time with my family and friends (social-distancing of course) away from the digital screens. Comment and tell me what you do to relieve stress or take a break from the many technology devices. Thanks again for reading my blog, I look forward to hearing from you all! (Photo is from christmas; Included in photo is Sister Ali (9), Step dad Ryan, Mom Trina, Sister Brooklyn (13), Myself and Boyfriend Jared)
Are you ready kids!?5/20/2020 For this week of my Learning Project I found a great application that I could download onto my phone, that goes through step to step instructions of many different items including cartoon characters. The application can be found on apple products, and is called Draweverything. I think having an application on my phone is a great resource as I can assess this application where ever I am, because I usually have my phone somewhere near me. I like to use this application while at work on my coffee breaks, it allows me to relax and work on my drawing skills even at work!
For this week I chose to draw something familiar to me, something I grew up with. This week I chose to draw SpongeBob, Squidward, and Patrick Star from the TV show SpongeBob SquarePants. This was a real difficult thing to accomplish as I am still a beginner drawer but I chose to expand my skills from beginner to draw more complex things then small sketches like last week. I still used a step to step process and erased/ redrew multiple times. So much even that I had to go over my lines with a dark pen so that it was more easier to see my lines used for the characters. I found I did a pretty good job for still being a beginner drawer; I still see there was somethings that needed to be fixed but there is already improvement from last time I showed my artwork. I am going to continue to work on drawing lighter because I still tend to push too hard (probably why it was hard to erase lines). I also found the lines smudged when I added colour so it wasn't the desired colour I had wished for; so I would like to find a resource that gives different writing utensils that help to fix this. I hope you enjoy my artwork; I look forward to hearing from you all. Please give me any feedback you might have, or if you have any resources I would appreciate it! Tweet alert!5/14/2020 I have had twitter for quite sometime now, but only recently had created a professional twitter account to connect with classmates and other education professionals. To be honest even with my personal account I didn't tweet very often and when I did it was mostly just retweets with no comments. This class has really taught and aspired me to connect to other professionals, to share experience and even just ways to get through social distancing boredom by using twitter. I never thought twitter would be a professional type platform but #saskedchat has really shown me a unique experience. Saskchat allowed me to connect to different teachers or even classmates that I might not have heard from yet! It was great to be able to express my thoughts about each question while also gaining insight to others answers and replies. I think using twitter in the classroom is a great way to share resources, it can connect teachers and students to resources that better the education system/ students learning. Many children and even adults use a variety of social media platforms, connecting with them on something they use daily can be very beneficial to them. "Best Teacher Quotes" by insbright is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Online teaching; the new norm5/12/2020 Teaching in Fall 2020; As a student going into my Internship this fall it is a very unique and stressful time right now. As it is unknown how Internship will work or even if it will occur this fall. I check my email consistently waiting to hear some word about what will happen this fall (which I know right now its hard to figure out but as a student we do not have a lot of lessons already planned so we would need to time to plan). I believe for teaching this fall that if classes were to stay online then they can't make it mandatory for students. Many students learn in different ways and it is hard for students to focus for long periods of time. Plus learning online is new for them, and I know as a university student it can be difficult for me sometimes to learn online so I cant image young students having to learn online. During the zoom meeting lots of people discussed the possibility of half the students going at one time but I am unsure how this would work for parents as jobs are opening up again. I believe if children are not going back to school there is going to be many parents who will be forced to quit their jobs because they have nowhere for their young students to go. My opinion is that it should not be necessary for students to return to schools but if they are choosing to not return then a plan needs to be set up where they still learn from home. Teachers will be brought back to school for the students who wish to learn in person but for the teachers that are high risk they can be the teachers that teach online for the students wishing to learn online. Learning and teaching in 2025 is difficult to understand at this time as we are not aware of how teaching/learning in the fall will happen yet. I am hopeful that they will develop some sort of cure for the corona virus so that schools will be back up and running how they normally would before the pandemic. We also can not afford to put the children's education on hold for many years for the sake of the children and the economy as many parents will not be able to have jobs if they have young children out of schools. A classmate brought up the idea of making sure good digital citizenship is taught to the students, which I believe is very important right now as learning is all online right now. I definitely think by 2025 that students are going to be back in schools of some sort whether its full time or half the time. Right now with the world and education everything is unknown, I hope soon things get back to the norm that we had before the pandemic but I know this won't be possible until a cure is found. The world is a stressful time right now, we all need to support each other as we all learn to teach and learn in a new way. "Norms of Collaboration" by hj_dewaard is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Drawing "homework"5/12/2020 I promised I would share my completed page of my sketches when it was accomplished with all of you. Remember it is my first take at drawing using online resources but I can already see my growth developing with the different items I chose to draw. I also believe some items were way easier to draw then others which you may be able to notice through my sketch page!
I appreciate any comments anyone has or if you know of great resources for learning to draw I would love it if you could share them with me. First steps5/11/2020 I took on my first lesson with learning to draw from online sources. I decided to use an online drawing course that has 10 different easy to follow lessons for beginners. How to draw: Free Beginner's Course starts with the first course focused on sketching. When I think about drawing it seems like something I need to try hard on, and I always tended to draw hard lines that were not easy to erase. This lesson began to teach me about not being afraid to make mistakes, and that lines can be fixed or blended to achieve the desired product. I think my first lesson went really well and am excited to continue to work on my drawing, while documenting my journey with everyone! I also am a little excited to try and complete the homework that is asked of after the lesson! Ill make sure to share my 50 sketches when I accomplish it! Discovering my drawing journey5/8/2020 When I first heard about needing to learn something using online sources it was difficult for me to decide or even think of different ideas/skills I could learn. The thought to learn how to draw actually came to me in the middle of the night, I woke up and knew that was what I wanted to learn.
I am not an artistic person at all, I never took band and I was the type of student who took art through High school because I thought it would be an easy class (I was wrong). When I think about lessons I watched my coop teacher teach, a lot of them had been teaching the students how to draw or drawing different items so the students could learn names of items while associating them with the object. This is why I chose to learn how to draw. Although I took some classes in High school, I am no where near a pro at drawing (you should see my drawing of a person). I would say I am still at the beginner stages of drawing. For how I am going to learn how to draw I am going to use a lot of different Youtube channels, and I found one useful site so far with many different step by step instructions to drawing. It is called How to draw: the best drawing tutorials. I want to find many different sources, and maybe some different applications on my phone. This way I can practice the skill even when I am away from my computer. I also want to try and find a free or cheap online drawing class I can take! One idea that may be helpful to collect a variety of drawings is through Pinterest, which I got the idea from a previous student Tori Peterson! I believe drawing is the perfect skill for myself to learn by using online sources, I hope you enjoy learning about my journey to becoming someone who can draw! Who I am as a blogger5/8/2020 Hello, My name is Meagan Flunder. I am in my fourth year of Elementary Education, and am taking my education at the University of Regina. I love sports, my favorite sport to watch would have to be hockey. I have been to many different NHL games, but my favorite NHL team would have to be the Dallas Stars. While doing schooling, I also have a job working at a daycare in Regina. I am a level two ECE worker, and have been at this daycare for two years. When I finish school I hope to end up teaching Kindergarten's or Grade 2, the youngest grades are my favorite to teach. I do not have a lot of experience working with Educational technology. Through out my schooling we used things such as word, power point, and many other programs such as these. I have experience working with imovie and different picture applications. Although I have some experience I am not a pro with working with most of these. I want to have a further understanding of these Educational technology applications and also many other ones so I am able to use them in my future classroom. That is why I decided to take this class! I have had a blog since Year 1 of my Education degree, using it for the different classes that asked for one. I think I have a pretty good understanding of how blogging works but there is always new things I might be able to learn from this class! I'm looking forward to learning from all of you and along side you as well. Your welcome to Follow me on twitter to learn more about me! @Meaganflunderl1 |
Photo used under Creative Commons from shixart1985