Adventures in EdTech

In my current role as a TOSA, I find myself screencasting quite a bit. With working between several buildings, I can't always be in the building at the exact time a teacher needs help. I have created several screencasts for teachers to show them how to do something if I can't meet with them and their question or need is time-sensitive. The TOSA team also incorporates screencasts into some of our PD resources to help make sure teachers know how to access materials or resources we're using for PD sessions. The sample screencast below was created for a teacher that needed help with conditional formatting in Google Sheets to auto-populate percentage columns in a gradebook. However, before this course, I never thought about the many different ways screencasting can be used with students. I would absolutely consider leaving a screencast for a substitute teacher if the lesson had a particular message that I wanted to make sure got across in the way I intended it to! Once I ha...

I have used many video creation tools for classroom projects such as iMovie, Apple Clips, Seesaw, Book Creator, DoInk, Puppet Pals, Chatter Pix, etc., however, until this course, I had not used Adobe Spark . Adobe Spark allows you to add photos, video clips, text, and voice recordings to make interesting, professional looking videos. Adobe Spark also allows you to create graphics, newsletters, advertisements, web pages, and just about anything else you can think of, but for this book trailer project, I used the video creation tools. The ease of use and professional-looking outcome make Adobe Spark a winner in my book! The platform is very easy to use, and is structured much like Apple Clips, with photos and video clips that are added to the video with the option to voiceover, and the clips are compiled into a video format. Also, the built-in music, themes, and bank of photos tagged as creative commons-licenced make it a one-stop shop for easy video creation! Sharing completed project...

While I consider myself a frequent flyer when it comes to using multimedia in the classroom, this course really helped me to think outside the box and try some new things I hadn't before. Graphics from pngtree.com One thing that really stuck with me with the power of audio use in the classroom. I think I tend to lean toward using video so much in the classroom that I forget the potential impact that audio can have. Whether it is using a sound bite to introduce a new topic (for example, playing rainforest sounds before introducing The Great Kapok Tree) or recording students or myself reading our most beloved classroom library books to be put in a listening station, audio can really have a great impact on student engagement. Also, I have used audio recordings to capture student reading fluency for several years now, but this course taught me some new tools that I hadn't previously thought of or heard of to get this job done such as GarageBand, Quick Memos, or Quick Voice. I...

Graphic design should absolutely be incorporated into the classroom. For not only visual learners, but all learners, the use of graphic design can help students learn and retain information. Graphic design can help students understand complex ideas or information containing a lot of data more easily when it is represented visually for them. Also, students who might struggle with reading and decoding difficult content area text may benefit from seeing the information presented visually, instead of just in paragraph form. Graphics can be used by both teachers as well as students in the classroom. Some ways we could use graphic design to better support the learners in our classrooms might be to use infographics to help students understand complex ideas. Using graphics as visual aides can really help students visualize challenging or complex concepts. Students could even create their own infographics to show understanding of a concept. Graphics can also be used in the beginning sta...