Monday, April 21, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Mastering Multimedia
The process of creating a multimedia lesson plan was nothing short of labor of love for me. I grew up in a tech savvy world, where clicking a mouse, snapping a picture with a digicam, and creating movies on the pc have become innate tasks for me. I am no stranger to designing websites because I have been fuddling with hypertext markup language (html) and designing cascading style sheets (css) since middle school. I would spend long afternoons gazing into a page filled with code to a website I created from scratch. So, imagine to my delight when I discovered that my assignment for the week was to do the things that I did for fun. Deciding on content was a walk in the park because early on our class had plenty of time to brainstorm for a lesson plan topic. Of course, since I am a future educator of history I just had to incorporate a lesson which featured a topic I old very near and dear to my heart --the African Slave Trade.
Creating a lesson plan using the ASSURE plan the second time around took one sitting because I
had already laid out the framework for my lesson during the brainstorm hour. I had decided to use a video (created by me) on the four functions of the Slave Trade, a digital camera for creating tableaus (free frame pictures of scenes), the video editing software "iMovie" or the pc version Windows Movie Maker to create picture slideshow stories, a computer & projector as a way to present the slideshows to the class, and an accompanying lesson website to supplement the entire endeavor, to span the scope of all the multimedia tools used in the lesson. Truthfully, the lesson that I had concocted was very ambitious however, I believed it would work out pretty well.The standard that fits my multimedia lesson from the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS*T) is part IV A under Assessment and Evaluation. It is to use technology resources to collect and analyze data, interpret results, and communicate findings to improve instructional practice and maximize student learning (2002). Students learn the material and gather knowledge from watching the video that I had created and developing their own versions of the stages of the African Slave Trade.
Translating the lesson plan into a website was a breeze, while trying to enhance the look & style of the website was another story. One night I tried vigorously to "hack" googlepages in order to fulfill my desire to change my website template background however, by the end of the night I just resorted to using one of their own templates so that the scripts on my website would not go haywire, which then would impair my students from accessing the website itself. I figured my slide picture presentation in the home page was enough to do creativity any justice.
Integrating multimedia into a lesson plan is a process that should help aid educators and not
make the process more complex. As a future educator, I believe that if I had not become well-versed in using multimedia tools when I was younger that it would be a challenge for me to include multimedia into my future lessons. It is imperative for all teachers, incoming or present, to become aware of the technology that is right under their fingertips. There are plenty of tools out there that are user-friendly, that are easy to use and the word that teachers all over the world like to hear -- FREE! It's all about taking the initiative to seek out these tools for use in the classroom.I duly enjoyed creating my multimedia lesson plan, as well as designing a website for it. Before I would design websites for fun and for dispersing information to my classmates (like lecture notes for a history class). But now i have learned to integrate my teaching lesson plans and making them come alive using multimedia tools as well as technology tools.
Works Cited
Saturday, April 12, 2008
The Impossible Made Possible
Appreciating one's own capabilities is a hard concept to grasp for some individuals. A body that's able to move, sway, push a couple million buttons, lift a coffee mug or turn pages of a book with ease. Ever wondered if something hindered you from accomplishing those small, what seems like insignificant life tasks, how difficult it would be. If you could see people singing yet could not hear a note reverberate in the four corners of your mind. If you were confined to a chair, arms & limbs unable to move. How would you get around? How would you go to school to get an education? Or better yet, how would you go to the bathroom? That's what it probably would feel like..an ounce of the life inside... a disabled individual.
And like human nature, resilient and true..that something...that block that hinders, is nothing but another obstacle that is surmountable in this day in age because of something called assistive/adaptive technology. Amazing man-made tools to help those short of a few steps..go the extra mile.
Educators in the twenty-first century have alot riding on their belt. Not only do they have to mold brains equipt for the hard knocked life, they ALSO have to mold their own thinking caps to evolve into witty, in-the-now tech savvy persons. They have to do this because they will have students in their class who need all the help that they can get & then some.
As an aspiring educator, I believe that assistive/adaptive technology will take great importance in my future classroom. I was a child that was born into the digital age & I believe that technology is the key..if not the best key to help students with disabilities with their academic & life experiences. In preparing lesson plans for these students special emphasis needs to be taken to account of each of the student's capabilities & what technology is needed, if not already given, to make sure that the student will be able but also challenged to fulfill the lesson's tasks. A particular lesson, in my opinion will be a success if the disabled student is treated as an equal to the other students regardless of capability. If this equilibrium is acquired then the use of assistive/adaptive technologies will provide an enriching experience for both the teacher and the student.
A double dose of creativity will be needed for a lesson that includes assistive/adaptive technology. Especially if each technology that each student is using is different and unique to his or her own disability. What is needed, in my opinion is a lesson that will appeal to the masses, a lesson that is relateable, yet teaches something garnered from the common ground. Maybe a simple lesson like learning how to send an email message can be skewed into a simple computer format and be accessible to all students, disabled & not, through a computer. Teachers can add activities that allow the students who are disabled feel like that they are one & the same with students who are not disabled.
It was interesting to witness a musician student being able to play music using A/A Technology. A musician myself, I understand the passion and dedication it takes to learn and to progress in playing an instrument. Being able to actually accomplish that feat with capable limbs, fingers, and arms is a challenge in of itself, but to do it without those body parts practically seems somewhat closing in on impossible. The music student in the video certainly proved all skepticism wrong. With A/A technology anything is possible.
And I guess, that's the best message that A/A technology instigates...that is that what disabled students thought was impossible 20 or 30 years ago is now possible. A wish forever granted. A means to a road to becoming self-sufficient. Something that disabled students who want to get the most out of their academic careers want more of. For they already appreciate, grasp the scope of what they are capable of..of what their slight push of a button, slight sway of the nose can do. It's their inch closer to being normal..of a belonging to a world that sometimes does not listen. Assistive/adaptive technology gives disabled students just that..a way to communicate, to see, to hear, to learn...as others do.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
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