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Last Day

Hi Everyone,

Today I will finish my ICT course. I just have to say that this is one of the most interesting and useful courses that I have had the opportunity to take. At times I found it frustrating but the class participants and the instructor were very helpful throughout and this made things much less stressful.

Thanks to everyone who was taking this course with me and to Glen for offering such a wonderful and useful course.

Jing Presentations

There are many uses that I can see for this type of a presentation format in the classroom. But I am most excited to use it to help my dad to fix his computer problems more easily. Jing is a wonderful application.

I have also had the opportunity to use the share the screen application that is apart of the SKYPE service. This also has many great uses both in the classroom and as a student myself.

Wiki -Austin Preschool Connections

Using Wikispaces has been very exciting. It is so easy to use and setup. I have created the frame work of a wiki that I plan to use as a part of my project for my masters. This wiki will be linked to the school and community websites so that I will be able to update my own information instead of relying on other people. The templates are easy to use and the gadgets are very straight forward. If you have difficulty the help menu is actually helpful!

Busy day with course work

Hi everyone,

I am sorry that it has been so ling between posts. Life seems to be getting in the way these days! I used my extra curricular day to stay home today to finish my paper and to work on my movie. I am really excited about the movie as it focuses on one of the programs that I run in our community. I will try to add it to my blog. This is always the part that I have the most difficulty with! See you all tonight!

WIKI

Hi

I am really excited about creating a wiki through wikispaces. I will continue to work on adding information to it as I can. I have not spent enough time focusing on the final paper and time is running out. I guess that will have to be the focus of my weekend.

Wiki problems

Hello all!

I have played on the computer all afternoon and evening and my husband is cranky as he wanted to play cards on the computer tonight! Guess he will just have to wait!

I am having trouble linking my wiki. Not sure what went wrong. The links that I have posted only take you to an error message. Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this problem??

Wiki

Hi everyone,

I have been working on setting up a Wiki since we had our course this afternoon. I think this is something that I will really use. I am very involved in providing and creating preschool programs for the children in our community. I have started this wiki to provide information to the community. Presently, I email the RM and they make my changes for me but by the time they have made the changes the program is completed and we are onto something else. If the RM could provide a link on the RM and Austin web pages to my WIKI then I would be able to update the information myself.

Here is the link to my wiki. It is very rough but I will keep working on it. Some of the information that I need is located on my computer at school. I will keep you posted.

http://austinpreschoolconnections.wikispaces.com/Austin+Preschool+Connections

busy week!

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the lack of postings this week. Grandma's house moved out of my yard this week and my priority was getting the basement filled in before my kids got hurt. So basement is filed in and landscaping has begun. always something else to help me procrastinate!

I have downloaded JING but have not yet had time to explore. I am presently working on a digital scrapbook for my kindergarten graduation. I hope to have it completed for the tea in two weeks. That is a real interest of mine and there are so many applications out there to use. I have tried a variety of the free site but so far I still prefer the creative memories site the best. Too bad a digital scrapbook was not one of our assignments!

June 2, 2010

Wow!! What a busy day!! Great Grandma's house drove out of the yard at 8 am this morning. Sad but exciting! Now so much work to do that will keep me procrastinating from my course work!

I did download a JING program / application during the session tonight. I my try to make a presentation of the digital scrapbooking that I am working on right now.

I really enjoyed tonight's session and do not feel so overwhelmed tonight. I will keep you posted as I try to attempt this new project.

Audacity

I have tried and tried tonight to get a podcast set up on my blog and I am not sure what I am doing wrong. It worked when I did it on Sunday and today it is not going so well. One more try and then off to bed!!

May 30

Hello Everyone,

Well I started out really excited about this course but now I am just overwhelmed and frustrated. I really think I needed more computer knowledge than I had before starting this course. I feel so far behind and often do not even understand the computer language that is going on around me! yikes! I have spent hours on this course but still cannot seem to get a handle on all of the information.

audacity

I downloaded audacity today and had a chance to watch the presentation. I hope to have a chance to record a podcast before the class today. It looks very interesting.

May 26

Hello Everyone,

Last night before the class I spent some time working on zotero (not votero like I have previosly posted!!) and was able to generate a bibliography in APA style. This is going to be a real time saver in the future! The mind meister is very interesting to me as a student but not sure how I would use this in my kindergarten class.

Podcasting scares me. I am not really sure where to beging so I will go over the class information again. I have been thinking about how I would use such a thing in kindergarten and thought that it may be fun to use it to record readings of books. THis way the children can look at the book and "listen" to me read!

Mapping

Well I worked my way through the mapping activity and I think that it went not too bad. I can see using it for myself but not too sure how to use this in the early years classrooms. I guess that you could use it as a large group activity when working on a prewriting activity and then print it out for all to use.

I did invite all from our group to view the map. I added a personal message to the map invite and then made a typo. I could not delete the typo so everyone is going to be getting a crazy message from me!!

May 25, 2010

Okay, So is anyone else feeling overwhelmed by all of the new programs and applications??? I still have not figured out last weeks programs and now have to add the one from Sunday! Yikes!!

I will try to figure out diigo and votero tonight. Right now, I cannot figure out what I should be doing with them and how they will be helpful to me. Guess that I will have to explore that.

May 16

Hello Everyone,

I am really enjoying google documents. I wish that I had known about this so much sooner. I think that it would have saved so much in the past year with editing other assignments. It did take a few tries to figure out how to get the APA style set up. Does anyone know how to set the spell check to work continually instead of at the end?

I hav enot yet tried out the other applications that we discussed on Sunday. The kids had baseball tonight. It was so cute!! I plan to spend sometime tomorrow night doing that so my next post shall include my thoughts on those applications.

That is all until tomorrow!!

Google Docs

Last night's session was very interesting! I am having so much fun learning new applications and ways to use them. Google Docs looks very user friendly and can be shared and edited by many people at the same time. This is so very exciting. I am wondering how secure this program is? Can others assess it without my knowledge? I am thinking that it would be an excellent way to collaborate with other resource teachers when working on funding applications. I am also wondering about saving the document. Is a copy of the document saved to your computer?

I am having lots of fun with this course and am more excited about this one than any of the others that I have taken to date. Everything so far has been so useful.

DimDim Excitement!

I had a hard time focusing on the rest of the class tonight after seeing the DImDim session and realizing that this course has just saved me hours and hours of time on the phone with my dad!! If I can set up a DimDim account for myself and my dad, I can show him how to fix the computer problems that he is having by "Showing" him how I am fixing it on my computer. He can follow along by watching instead of trying to understand what I am saying. So excited about this. I came right home and tried to set up an account but I do not have administration rights on the school laptop to finish the installation so Dad will have to wait until tomorrow!

You should try to set up an account through DimDim. It is very simple to establish an account. Once I get clearance tomorrow I will finish the set up and try again. I will let you know how I have done later tomorrow night! Wish me luck!

Skype

Although I am feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the new terms, vocabulary and programs that we have already begun discussing, I am very excited to get started!

I have used the Skype program previous to this course but can already see that I only touched the surface of how Skype can be used and the many different ways to interact through it. Previously, I used the web cam to talk with my parents so that they could "see" their grandchildren more often. I always found the audio very difficult to hear. Now I will use a headset to reduce background noise. I will try to use what I have already learned as I interact with my family through Skype. The best way to learn technology is to work with it and to work with it often!

Being able to record Skype calls, both audio and text is a great benifit to using this program as a part of our ICT course interactions. With everyone's schedules being so full, not being able to "attend" each lesson is not as critical. When time allows, we can listen and read the call that we have missed. Students that need to review directions and assignment information may do so by clicking the link and listening a second, third or forth time!

Hi everyone,

I hope that this blog is set up correctly! I will be in touch on a regular basis as I begin to explore and use new forms of technology. Wish me luck!