Blog #6 CITEd

Hi Everyone! This week's blog assignment was to create an account and toolkit on CITEd. CITEd stands for Center for Implementing Technology in Education.



The toolkit I created is TI89ers. At first, I was unsure what to include or where to begin. I started searching based on what I adding in my toolkit's description. From my search, I chose to begin with three articles.

Accommodations and Modifications: Adjusting the Classroom Experience - I found this link under Special Needs. Many times teachers receive students with IEPs and 504s. The reccommended accommodations are sometimes straight-forward and others are vague. I thought this site is helpful in addressing those vague suggestions. It is divided by grade level, area, and includes multiple articles on addressing a variety of topics. Also, you can lookup your school and find the overall ratings-my school did well! :)

Generation YES Blog - I found this blog under Professional Development. This blogs gives examples of technology used in classrooms, materials to download, different experiences from the point of view of both teacher and student. I found this blog to be interesting because there is no set criteria; it's just people sharing ideas. In additon as most of us know, professional hours are spent creating new lessons, planning, grading. etc. We barely have time to sit down and read anything of length. I believe this blog is a nice quick read for teachers.

Managing Classroom Technology: Tips from Experts - Technology become a part of the classroom so quickly, that learning everything about it is nearly impossible. But, one area that teachers should familiarize themselves with is how to manage it in a classroom setting. These 33 tips are just little ways to control when/how students should use technology. Not all the tips are applicable for every lesson, but some are very helpful.

My thoughts...
I enjoyed creating the toolkit. I know within my department we are always emailing each other new links to resources, which can be overwhelming. So I think the idea of the toolkit is good, in the sense that it's a one-stop shop for resources tools. I did have the opportunity to email it two of my coworkers, both that I had in mind when creating my toolkit. One of my colleagues got back to me. From my first three choices, she liked the Managing Classroom Technology the best. She said "I liked the idea about using the red cups to know when students needed help. I can use something like that in my class...maybe a colored piece of paper". So, that was good to receive positive feedback! If I were to email my toolkit to an administrator, I would not change anything. My district encourages the use of technology and co-teaching, therefore this would be a perfect combination of the two! If I emailed it to a teacher afraid of the "T-word", I would add to it. I would want to include a document showing the benefits of technology, how to incorporate it, and where to begin using it.

Blog #5

Hi Everyone! This week's mini art school project is focused on storyboarding. The first storyboard which I created is an overall use of my Multimedia Project. My storyboard consist of how I would expect my student's to use my multimedia project. As a reminder, I am adding to my current website: chsTI89ers. I am adding section "Geometry Hybrid" which will include an introductory unit plan, consisting of three separate lessons. These lesson will include notes and practice problems, specifically designed as per the rules of design. Each lesson will include a video, creating a flipped classroom atmosphere. Here is my storyboard draft of my multimedia project:

This is the overall storyboard...

Here's a closer look from beginning to end...

The hardest part of storyboarding was forcing myself to use a pen. On Storyboarding basics on Vimeo, Carleton Torpin advises "..do them in pen, not pencil. With pencil your tempted to go back, erasing and fine tuning the story whereas pen it's almost setting it in stone. It makes you have to move on to the next one...so doing it in pen keeps it moving." If you look at the first set of pictures, I feel my pictures had too much detail. As I continued onto the others, I was writing less and leaving more to the imagination.

The second part of this week's project was to create 60 second video of multimodality. The title of my video is "I'll be back..."  I don't want to give a description of it, because I believe it will take away from your interpreation of it. If anything, I will share the story post comments.

I created my video using Windows Movie Maker. The whole video is exactly 60 seconds, but for some reason after the upload its a minute and 2 seconds. Also, when I entered the credits everything fit, but as you will see the words "producer" and "The Terminator" is cut off. Does anyone know how to fix that? Any help is greatly appreciated. Here it is, hope you enjoy it!

"I'll Be Back"

Blog #4 Mini Art School Continued

Hi Everyone! This week we edited images through cropping, coloring, inforgraphics, etc. The first set of pictures is re-composition through image cropping. I thought it would be helpful to include the pre-image and image to see the difference.

Basic Cropping with a slight change in color: Yogi at the dog beach

Cropping with a border and focus: Cake Pops

Side Note: They're really easy to make! Bake any flavored cake of your choice, blend it with a container of frosting, roll into spheres, refrigerate, dip into melted wafers, refrigerate, and enjoy!

Okay back to Re-compositioning!

Cropping gone wrong: Both pre-images the flowers and dessert were cropped specifically away from the focus points-moving the center of attention.  While I was cropping both images, I felt as though I was marketing one aspect (gradening tool and cherry) more than the whole scene.

Life to Mundane Images: NFC Championship Game-San Francisco 49ers vs. Atlanta Falcons. The top picture is the image that I created through saturation, cropping, and refocusing. The focus onto the big screen, makes the fans in the background more visible in comparison to the pre-image which they are practically irrelevant. Go Niners!



Eliminating Busy Backgrounds: This is a picture of my DJing. Music by itself arouses motion. By having a clutter background, I beleive it takes away from that feeling that is why I chose to eliminate the "noisy" background. Also, pictures of people in motion are more favorable than poses.

  

Border Variation Exericse: One Image tranformed by six different borders

I'm not sure which border is my favorite. There is a tie between the pirate theme and white border. My least favorite is the film strip. I doubled the picture, because film includes more than one photo. But the image is not appealing at all. Also, the ink blot border does not add to the fresh water on the hot day feeling. From this exercises, I learned that not all borders can be used for all images. And some borders may take away from the overall theme of the design.

Blog #3

Sunburst! I took the four-star image and only repeated it three times. The difference was the rotation of the image and overlapping.

While I was creating this design, my mind was drawn to a night's sky. At night some stars appear larger than others depending on the distance from land. Also, night can also portray a peaceful escape/atmosphere. I decided to include the word "serenity" because I believe its placement fit perfectly into the design.

Strength-Here I took a set of 13 four-stars. Each layer had three identical starts that were equally rotated. There were four layers and the top was one star. The top star has an increased outline to emphasis strength. The next two layers have a semi-increased outline and the last stayed the same.

Word Portrait

This exercise was very interesting, more psychological than anything. I found myself wanted to use the actual font names as examples. For example, the "Chiller" font-  I wanted to use the word Chiller! Or I was drawn to using synonyms to the font names. Once I was able to think of my first example, my second example was very similiar, and the last was a complete antonym of the first two. I really enjoyed this exercise because it forced me to think outside of the box in creating word representations.



Blog #2 -Mini Arts School: Introduction to the Rules of Design

First, I received a lot of insight from this assignment. I'm not sure if its my lack of artistic ability or my well-balanced zodiac sign Libra, but I started to look differently at displays. From my own designs to my chosen pictures, there are a lot of good and bad rules to designing. I decided to pick two different advertisements from the magazine, US Weekly.

I prefer bad news first, so let's start with the one I felt was a bad design...

1. Unequaling spacing: My initial thoughts-nice red car. The unequal spacing does not draw my attention to the fact that it's a Hybrid car or a Toyota, or it's power + efficiency motto.


2. Placement/Division : Similiar to the horizon variations (Krause, pg. 23), the "power" of the car could have been illustrated by fading the background from fasts to slow.


3. Harmony- Genius is sometimes associated with a light bulb going off. A thematic reference of a lightbulb would have been a perfect fit instead of trees in the background.

4. Tacky Type Emphasis - I'm not a fan of the font choices. The "MPGenius" has a sophisticaed flair to it. But, when you look at the bottom at the all CAPPED "CAMRY" name, it gives off more of a brawny perception.

5. Visual Emphasis of Weight- The trees and sky overpower the car. Now, I understand that balance is not always good thing in design, but the car could be bigger. The car, the road, or the car and the road grouped together...and increase in those aspects would enhance the advertisement.


Time for the good, (promise this isn't biased because of my love for dogs)...

1. Color- Similiar to the Linksys site or shown on, "10 Web Design Rules that you can Break" the lack of different colors works. The contrasting BLUE  with a POPPED description is visually appealing.


2. FLOW - From the beginning text, to the Great Dane's ear, his tail, Westie, dog food, and to the description-Awesome flow!


3. GROUPING-The  food highlight and description is perfected placed by the website address with facebook logo.


4. EMPHASIS- In the first sentence, the emphasis on cesar was a brillant idea. Cesar draws your attention to the product, the dog, and forces you to read between the lines.

5. GRAPHIC DESIGN COMMUNICATES- A Great Dane is sitting on a person's lap because he wants dog food, which maybe thought to be only for smaller dogs. It communicates the yearning for the product and is funny!



My Decisive Presentation Exercise:

Loosened Alignment Exercise:

Blog #1 

Describe what communities you will join, your rationale for your selections, and how you think your involvement in these communities will support the design of your project.

Hi Everyone!

My name is Anita and I am a high school mathematics teachers. Typically, I teach Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, and HSPA Preparation Course. I have been teaching for six years. As a teacher of the 21^st century learner, I feel it is my responsibilities to become familiar with the new Z-generation as well as relay the information that makes sense to them. I based my group choices on the components of the A.D.D.I.E. model-analysis, design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation.

(http://www.thinkfinity.org/groups/math)

The first group that I have joined is Learning Math. Every semester I am asked “When am I ever going to use this in life?” As a mathematician I can think of numerous ways that address the necessities of mathematics, but my students are not all meant to be mathematicians. Therefore, I chose this group because it relates math to real-world concepts while addressing the analysis and evaluation aspect. Learning is based on prior knowledge plus new knowledge. Students want to know how they can relate mathematics to prior knowledge in the real world. One of the –here’s the evaluation aspect. Once student can visualize mathematics around them, I believe it will change how they look their surrounding the future.

Kicking a football is like making a parabola!

( http://www.thinkfinity.org/groups/21st-century-skills )

My second group is 21^st Century Skills. I joined this group to gain further knowledge in addressing design, development, and implementation of classroom objectives. From an overview of the group, I want to enhance my professional development in terms of addressing my 21^st century learners. Starting in September, the educational system has adapted a new teacher evaluation-Danielson Model. This new critique encourages educators to generate more student centered activities rather than teacher directed. Again, because I am a teacher of the Z-generation it’s my responsibility to create a learning environment comfortable for my students. My students spend hours on twitter, instagram, all sorts of social media. If they can access information at their fingertips, I believe they will be more self-motivated to learn. Unfortunately, I did not grow up in a technology-infused curriculum. The highest form of technology I used was a TI-89 and clickers. By learning multiple ways to integrate technology can only benefit me and my students.

Currently, I have created a classroom website. My goal is to create different resources and methods of learning for my students. For example, I am a huge fan of Khan Acamdemy. Therefore, I would like to create a flip classroom using different aspects of technology. Also, I want to supply my students with multiple resources that can assist in their learning.