Module 4: SMARTBOARD

The SMARTBoard is a really cool program that lets users create their own interactive smartboard lessons. I was really excited first but quickly got frustrated at how things worked. I wished it was more user friendly and had an interactive tutorial that would let you mess around with all the features easily. I felt like most of the time I was confused trying to figure out how to navigate the different aspects of the program trying to make it do what I want it to do. I was frustrated at how long it took for me to develop a five minute lesson but I realized I was also just trying to figure out what needs to be done most of the time, so next time when I am supposed to make another one it shouldn't probably take as long.

The other issue is that I felt that the SMARTBoard caters better to groups of elementary school children and smaller groups, as it seems impossible for it to really engage large groups of students, especially high schoolers to get involved directly with the board. The ISBE standards requires for them to synthesize and analyze and it is kind of difficult for students to do that in a SMARTboard and in a very short time frame. I would perhaps think that it would be great if it had features that would directly engage with older students, but it could also perhaps be with a longer time frame than five minutes.

The SMARTBoard can be used by secondary school teachers to teach about graphing in Economics and Mathematics, mapping in Geography, text close readings for English and Language Arts, but the features for it is still limited. Most of the animations are geared towards younger children, and wouldn't be deemed "cool enough" for highschoolers.

Concerns however, is that SMARTBoards costs a lot of money. And with debates of funding and what to spend, I think spending on SMARTBoards is less likely in contrast to spending on Google Chromebooks. I think Chromebooks have a better way in getting all the students engaged and covers a wider scope of age groups, and is more flexible to how the teachers might use it to assist in students' learning. This also makes it seem that only richer, privately funded schools have access to these SMARTBoards, and if these boards actually boosts achievements, it could possibly be causing a greater disparity in achievement acquisition in the different socio-economic groups.

Overall, I think with more practice and experimenting with the program, I might be able to give a better review over the program. But for now, I would say that incorporating the SMARTBoard in the classroom should be something that teachers should at the very least learn to try to do.

Module 3: HaikuDeck and ScreenCast

This past week I've been learning how to use HaikuDeck and subsequently, talk about it in my Screencast project.

I enjoyed using HaikuDeck as it was a very simple presentation tool that creates simple, beautiful presentations. I think it enforces teachers and professionals to not depend on powerpoint to explain things but instead use it as just an aide, as it is supposed to be.

I could see how in older students it would be a struggle because they are dependent upon the powerpoints for notes, but I think that isn't as good because then they are just busy taking notes instead of paying attention to the lecture or the explanation the teacher is providing.

It also enforces teachers to be effective teachers. I recall my old biology teacher who is so dependent upon his powerpoints and just reads them off to us. It was very boring, unstimulating, and nobody cared as they can just get the information in a web search or school systems such as Moodle pages. Students are not engaged and are not learning, and teachers aren't able to teach without their powerpoints. Enforcing, short text in powerpoints and instead emphasize on the visuals makes powerpoints a visual aide, and keeps the focus on the teacher's lecture and explanation.

It's also good for students that are easily distracted to make their powerpoints as it could search for related pictures from within the site, and so it does not need for the user to go to another tab and look for pictures and then save and reupload it. Haikudeck also connects to Facebook, Google Drive, Picasa, etc so that getting pictures from these sites are easy and straight forward, without being distracting with their newsfeed and anything else.

Aside from that, I learned about how to use Screencast. I thought it was interesting as I've seen some people do it when I seek for tutorials on Youtube and always wondered how they did that. I tried Jing to do so, but for some reason it did not capture my screen and instead just showcase it as a black screen with voice. So I don't think I'd recommend Jing to do a screencast.

What worked best was Screencast-o-matic, which did it smoothly and uploaded it directly to Youtube, which was convenient for me to easily share it with others and link it to my portfolio. It eliminates the step to download the video to my computer and then upload it to Youtube. It's faster and more effective in sharing. Screencast was not able to do that and instead just share it in it's own site.