Thing 19

OK, I have been working on Thing 19 for a total of 7 hours, and cannot get my screencast to upload. I used Screenr and made a first screencast--(not too bad)--but every time I tried to upload it I got a message back that said "Whoops, having trouble uploading right now, try again later." Well, I tried for more than 3 hours on my school computer with the same message. When I tried to make a second screencast (thinking that there might be a problem with my original attempt,) my original version kept popping up--I finally realized I had to delete the first one before I could attempt a second. After completing the second screencast--(much improved over the first one,)--I got the same message about having problems uploading my screencast. I tried every 10 minutes or so on my school computer until 8:00 pm. Earlier, I went to the other free recording sites, but the tutorials were over my head, and the attempt I made on Screencast-o-matic did not upload either. Every time I re-signed in to Twitter, my screencast was still there on Screenr, so I assumed that I could log in on my home computer and try uploading from there.

However, when I logged in to Screenr here at home, my screencast was not there. I am moving on to Thing 20 (actually already started 20 and 21,) and will make another attempt on my school computer tomorrow to upload--assuming that my screencast is still on that computer. This Thing was actually pretty easy, and I enjoyed recording. But the technical problems turned this Thing into a real bummer.

Thing 18

I have never been a huge fan of listening to radio--I guess that I am more a visual learner than an aural learner. This is probably the reason that I am not very into podcasting--I would rather read info. Most of my students are elementary level, and I cannot imagine them sitting still long enough to benefit from listening to informational podcasts. However, it would be great to have podcasts with lively storytellers for these students. Although I couldn't find any, podcasts that have creative and lively narratives, which also include/teach content material in social studies, science, history, etc., would also give young students practice with listening and concentration skills. Another way to use podcasts with young students would be to have them record their own stories, book reports, and ideas to share with peers and the school community. The school computers could access a site which contained a whole library of student podcasts on reviews of books in the school's media center. Students could listen to the podcasts to help decide if they wanted to read the books for themselves.



I listened to 5 podcasts, none of which I felt would be useful in my classroom. I listened to a talk given by a Panamanian artist, Isabel De Obaldia. This was episode 11 of a series called "Meet the Artist," sponsored by the Corning Museum of Glass. I choose this particular podcast because I am interested in glass as an art medium. Below is a link to De Obaldia's talk:

http://www.epnweb.org/player.php?podshow=http://www.cmog.org/podcasts/meet_the_artist/cmog_mta_011_isabel_de_obaldia.mp3&podcast=Corning



Museum of Glass - Meet the Artist&program=Meet the Artist 11: Isabel De Obaldía (audio)

Thing 17

I actually embedded two slide presentations. One is an excellent resource for any art teacher on the basic elements and principles of design. (from Slideshare) The other slide show (from Zoho) I chose because the photographs were clever and interesting. Slide presentations from Slideshare would be useful to introduce lessons and give overviews to students. Outside of the classroom, these presentations could be used to provide information and programs at all kinds of meetings. And because these resources are easily shared, they could be e-mailed to colleagues, and to family and friends for their information or enjoyment. In fact, I e-mailed two of the slide shows to two fellow art teachers.

The Elements and Principles of Design

This slide presentation is basic for all art classes. The graphic exemplars are excellent.

Elements & Principles of Design

View more presentations from Z M.

This slide presentation is from Zaiba Mustafa at www.digiartport.net.

Fun with Altered Photos

I love looking at interesting photographs. In the slide presentation below, the photos are cleverly manipulated. Hope you enjoy them, too!




This slide presentation was created by R.K. Chennai, and taken from Zoho.

Thing 16

I spent some time looking at LibraryThing, but decided it was a little more than I wanted to bite off right now--it was busy and sort of complicated to get started. I do have several friends who are big readers with whom I trade books, so this is a tool I will go back to later.

I ended up spending the most time exploring the MANY templates on Google Docs. I first tried the photo album, but discovered that it was actually a very simple version of PowerPoint. After browsing pages and pages of templates, I did a search for "award," and found a couple of good ones to use with my elementary art students for excellent art work. A search for "certificate" produced a couple more that were good. All of these templates were in a PowerPoint format as well, and took four or five various clicks to get to a place/screen that allowed me to print the cerificate out. There are other sites that offer free templates, which I think are actually easier to use. I did fill out and print three certificates (two styles) for students. I also found a template for a gift certificate, which I printed out for my daughter-in-law's upcoming birthday. I no doubt will use this template again, as I frequently give "certificates" to family members for services and "time" instead of material gifts.

Thing 15

I think Cloud computing is great for people who need to work "on the road" or at several work locations. It has been cumbersome to email documents from school to my home computer so that I could work at home. Then, after editing the document at home, I had to email it back to school and replace the original version with the edited version. Also, we could only email files, not folders. When I am working on a lesson unit or some other document/project for school, it makes sense to create it at Google Docs.

Does SkyDrive have the option to create new documents at that site? I uploaded two documents to SkyDrive, but couldn't find a way to create a document at SkyDrive, so I went to Google Docs and uploaded the same two documents. I then created a mini-document and saved it at Google Docs.

I am not sure that I would use Cloud tools with students.