Week 5 - Engagement Activity 5-7 tool 4 Google Map

Activity 5-8 tool 4 Google Map

Both Google Earth and Docs are great tools for me to prepare and plan for my classes, but the tool I would like to explore with students during a class session is Google Map.

Google map is similar to Earth in their functions. They can both show satellite imaging as well as street layout, however Google map does not require any software to be downloaded. It is an online based tool, and Google is updating their map information constantly. I can demonstrate the concept of transportation speed versus distances for math classes using the options for “walk, car or bus” for distance calculations under Google maps. It allows user to input multiple addresses and instantly calculate the traveling distance and the time spent between those locations. User can choose the options of car, bus or walk, even cycling if people prefer a more active lifestyle.

After relocating from New Zealand to Rockhampton, I use Google map on a daily basis. It is great tool to show me where to go and find things in this new city. Its various user friendly functions are easy to demonstrate to students. It helps them to see how applied mathematics behind the tool does wonderful things for people’s life. I would encourage them to find out what else we can use this tool for, besides comparing distance, time differences between using different transportations, decision making when choosing routes and so on. 

However Google map does have some shortcoming. There are commercial purposes information embedded in the images which could cause legal concerns; and unsuitable behavior may be captured in the street view which can be upsetting. So I need to spend time to go through the material before classes, make sure there won’t be any legal or safety issues in my demonstration. It is a time consuming process, luckily there is function in Google Maps called “my places”,  it allows me to save locations and list them under my own map folders, and help me to organize the locations from Google map that I will use for the classes.

I can come up with a task asking student to use Google Map and Prezi as a combination to do a project such as planning a travel around Australia. The students can find out all the details on Google Map, then use Prezi as a final presentation tool (as the example shown below), I really can’t wait to give this a go.

 

 

Week 5 Engagement Activity 7/8/9- tool 4 Google Earth/Map/Docs

Activity 5-7 tool 4-7/8/9 Google Earth/Map/Docs

Students in the class may from all over the world using Google earth is great tool to get them to see the big picture where others come from. For math class, Google earth can be used to explore distance, velocity and other things.

Google map is similar to earth, but no software needs to be downloaded, and it can be used for daily tasks when looking for a place to go. Finding distance and navigation this is one of the best tools for students to learn. I can use this to demonstrate speed for math classes, since under Google map, there are options for “walk, car or bus” for distance calculations.

Google doc, I have used this tool for my relocation from NZ  to Australia, me and my family have uploaded list of things to sale to buy or to ship, and we were working on it at the same time. This can be used for students to do their group assignment, working on an excel spreadsheet together is something they might find exciting.

Week 5 - Engagement Activity 4a tool 3-3 Glogster

Activity 5-3 Glogster

My Glogster

Glogster to me is a place to put everything together, my text from blog, my youtube video, my photo, all together for the topic. I don’t see a huge deal of advantage from this tool compare with is there, but it is hard to show them on one screen, the text place might be too small, and have to fit the video on the same page that to me is a bit too crowded.

Week 5 - Engagement Activity 3 tool 3-2 Prezi

Activity 5-2 Prezi

Prezi to me is like a live brain storm demonstration tool, it is a great presentation tool when I need to show how things are linked together, or if I need to show my logic process of a topic. Prezi might be good to show my business classes how the economics are linked, how other part of economics react when something changes such as exchange rate or prices; it is a great tool to show links and big picture.

It has a better visual animation between slides and might be more interesting for students, the changes between slides is an illusion to tick students, and sort of in a way to “force” them to think they are following logic between the slides.

I haven’s spend too much time on this tool, I think the depth of the tool might not be as much as PowerPoint, so might be easy to pick up once I have an opportunity to use it. I had play with it for world maps, and the Easter plan, here is what I have done. I think I will use Prezi if I have a class of students needs to see some chain reaction presentation.

Week 5 - Engagement Activity 2 tool 3-1 PowerPoint

Engagement Activity tool 3-1 PowerPoint

I have always been a basic user of PowerPoint during my previous study or work experience. After the three tutorial materials it is an eye opener for how much power point can do. It is really a magic tool.

o         For presentation support, there is no doubt it is a great tool to hold the learning materials, or the key learning point for the class by highlighting them, or add emphasis animation on that slide. It is easy to capture different types of learners in the classroom.

o         What I learned today is the quiz tool, present the question on the page and followed by the answers next page, that gives the students sometimes to think and then there the next page the answers are there, and I maybe able to ask students if I have missed anything other answers and add their thinking to the slide, which is a great way to engage the learners.

o         Since the tool allows many kind of media to be added to it, it can make the learning material very interesting, hence it will help students to understand different dimension of the knowledge.

o         PowerPoint can be used for homework or projects, a group of students can come up with their own PowerPoint to present their findings or study results. It is depends on the students how much functions they want to use, or they can stick to the basic, which is very flexible. The end result can be captured for assessment record.

o         Another way of using the sound and text combination is for second language learning, I can type the Chinese characters and place the sound button beside it, so students can learn by listen to the sound from the PowerPoint slide, and they can access it outside of school as well.

The function of save word document to a PowerPoint slide is great too; I have not seen it before now it is a new skill learned. However, I don’t really agree with using moving the picture in PowerPoint to create movies. There are better products out there for movie maker, especially I am going to teach secondary, and the animation needs to be a lot more mature for the senior audiences. I think PowerPoint may have the function to support that, but it is more time consuming to use it for movie maker instead just use a movie maker tool directly.

Overall, I can see myself using PowerPoint for my math and business or most definitely for Chinese language classes, it is a great ICT tool for presentation/quiz/tasks inside or outside classroom.

I have created a very basic PowerPoint, but I have not figure out how to link to Blog yet, will see how it goes, any one have any ideas of how to link a PowerPoint to blog?

I found the answer to this one, I uploaded the PPT to wiki, so here it is Easter Holiday Plan ppt

here is also the slideshare version

Power point

Strength

Multimedia: including text, image, sound, video, basic animation.

Easy to fit in to class tasks

Presentation support

Cover variance kind of learners, Visual/Auditory/Kinesthic

Flexible with skill level

Weakness

Time consuming for preparation

Relying on the availability of the classroom facility

Can be teacher focused

Prepared material may not engage students

Opportunity

Mouse Mischief, support constructivism in classroom learning

Powerpoint project for groups

Record of students’ work for assessment purpose

Threat

Lose data if not backed up properly

Power out

Information over load

Week 4 - Engagement Activity 8: upload video

Engagement Activity 8:upload video

Here we go, the no sound video uploaded to youtube, embarrassing, but this is what I experience from windows movie maker.

It was a pain to find out why, and my other touch smart movie maker works at the same time.

At the moment I will stay away from video for the classes, as youtube or all kind of video tubes have too much safety risk. For secondary students, the can easily get off track looking online videos and not concentrating on the subject materials, and it is already too much time consuming. 

Although if there is a holiday project, I will consider getting students to make their own videos and share with each other.

Week 4 - Engagement Activity 7: Digital video

Engagement Activity 7 : Digital video

photo for Guitar

made this little video with windows movie maker, I couldn't get the sound to work, but I do have another movie maker program on my computer which works better, after looking at online review windows movie maker is not the best option, so I don’t think I will use this in the future.