Medieval Flow Chart

Below is a link to a Genealogical Chronicle of English Kings. It is an early use of graphic design.

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/virtualbooks/#

The use of a roll in creating the Genealogical Chronicle of the English Kings was very engaging. A continuous timeline providing information about the royalty is presented in flow chart. This provides ease of use and understanding. The contrast of color and shape is used to represent changes and progressions. Blue is used to denote royalty and red to denote the bloodline. There is the obvious use of a tree to represent the ancestry. The circle is repeated in the use of the portraits, however, the size of the circles are different depending on the strength implied. Alignment is evident in the generations with the horizontal rows representing immediate family and the center is saved for the portrait of the family member who is/was the direct heir to the throne. Proximity is shown again in the horizontal grouping of siblings. The roll and the timeline is the proximity. At fifteen meters, the distance between the beginning and the end of the rolls represents the difference between the years 1272 and the 1400’s.

Web Conference Reflection - June 4, 2012

This web conference was about the making of a digital story. I really enjoyed creating my digital story. The greatest challenge was the time constraints. The possibilities using this particular technology is amazing. As she said, it will provide evidence of the positive aspects of educational technology. It was good to hear about the other students discussing the assignments and to learn of the assignment changes.

Web Conference Reflection - July 1, 2012

This conference was helpful. I appreciate the clarification on assignments. This course, more than others, has an unnecessarily complex assignment structure, so this was helpful.

Web Conference Reflection - July 8, 2012

I attended today's video conference, July 8 at 5:00. Unfortunately, Dr. Abernathy has just suffered a broken bone. We briefly discussed Tk20. It seems it is having issues. I was happy to find out that it will be open until July 31 to finish submitting assignments for EDLD 5363.

Below is my first attempt at a podcast using Audacity

How To Use Windows Live Movie Maker
      

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Above, you will find my first attempt at an iMovie project. This part of the process was very easy. The software is incredibly intuitive. My hope is to add music to this, sometime soon.

Sharing the video is another story. Uploading this to the blog has been very smooth. Uploading to TeacherTube, YouTube or my wiki, on the other hand, has been troublesome. The size has been prohibitive and I am in the process of working this out. My first attempt has been with compression. Cross your fingers.

Total Immersion

The use of video games in teaching is total immersion. Video games are one of the most remarkable uses of information and technology for education. They drop the student into the deep end of the learning environment. I found it difficult to cut the following quote by Max Lieberman:

“One of the more sophisticated arguments for teaching with content-aligned games is that such games present players with an entry route to expertise in a given field through what educational theorists call "epistemic frames" (Shaffer 227-228). These frames are collections of skills, practices, values and identities held in common by "communities of practice" (227). Games can create these epistemic frames by embedding a player in a virtual community of practice, where he or she will learn these ways of seeing by acting as an expert and interacting with other experts, in the form of teachers, other players and "non-player characters" controlled by the software (Shaffer, Squire, Halverson and Gee 9).  These epistemic games spur learning even outside of gameplay, as players share information about game mechanics, game narratives and real-world topics that bear on the problems they are solving within the games.”

So many different standards and goals are met through this use of technology. The fact that students continue to learn after the game is over, is wonderful. As a teacher, I have had students come to me after a lesson or unit and tell me what they found out on their own. At that point, we became an epistemic community. I consider this one of my greater successes in education. Learning more about how to teach with technology, will allow more such successes. Throughout this course, I have become much more interested in the professional development needs of our teachers. The project we completed gives me the experience, albeit just one, to share with other educators. At the end of this course, I am eager to show my colleagues the possibilities with educational technology.

Lieberman, M. “Four Ways to Teach with Video Games”, Currents in Electronic Literacy, University of Texas at Austin, (2010). Retrieved from http://currents.cwrl.utexas.edu/2010/lieberman_four-ways-to-teach-with-video-games