?Digital Stories?

Alright fellow classmates, I am in need of some help. I have seen the wonder that is a digital story and I think that they are completely wonderful and they present a wonderful way for students to express their own written thoughts in an interactive way. My problem is that I do quite grasp how to get the whole project to work. My experience with VoiceThread has not been positive and have been unable to get my voice recordings to work. If there is someone who excels at this project type and would like to help me in figuring it out, I think that would be absolutely wonderful!

Well all, good luck with everything and may the rest of the semester go smoothly!

One Man, One Guitar

I must say, that when I first approached the Google Maps, I thought that the medium was fairly easy to use. However, once I picked the topic "One Man, One Guitar" as a way to look at those people of the past who helped to created blues, jazz and, essentially, all the popular music that is listened to today, I found that it was much more difficult to achieve the effects that I wanted to.

I found many great You Tube videos that showed the performers singing their songs, but when I tried to embed text so that the video would play when the pin point was selected, the video would not show up. Because I felt that being able to see and hear the performers, I embedded links that would take potentials students to the correct video, but I was disappointed that I was unable to embed the video.

Also, while I was working on the pin points, I wanted to include photographs of the performers so that students viewing the pin point would be able to get a sense of the time in American history that these performers came to dominate entertainment and create, what is now, the powerful music industry. However, when I was working on this project on my iMac, I could not get the links for the photos to work correctly and the photo was unable to be viewed, but when I used my PC laptop, the same links to the photos worked fine and were visible immediately when the pin point was accessed.

Once I was able to create this map and also view some of the maps that others have made, I am impressed and convinced that there are many usages that Google Maps can have when it comes to classroom integration. Maps such as the ones that Google allows you to create can be used to track the progress of a character in a book that the class is reading as he or she travels or can be used to mark important places within a state is a state research project was being conducted. I feel that there are many uses within education for Google Maps and I also feel that it is a powerful tools that students can use to make their own learning more meaningful and lasting because they are educating others to things that they themselves may have over looked.

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Check out my Slide Show!

The pictures within this slide show were taken during a field trip that my TE 401 class took to the 4-H Children's Garden. I chose to created a slide show using these pictures because I feel when going on an educational field trip with a class that all the students should be able to record their reactions to the trip and also they should have the chance to show their fellow classmates their view of the trip itself. I think that if I were to take a field trip with my class, I would want to make it possible for my students to take digital pictures in small exploring groups and then once we return to the classroom, they should be able to have the creative opportunity to create a slide show that they can share with their classmates so that they can get a complete experience of the site that the trip was taken to.