Day 4

When I arrived home, I tested my Prezi by copying the link sent to Tom through the "Share" option on the Prezi homepage. What I discovered was that my hyperlinks opened to new tabs, but only behind the full-screen Prezi window, meaning I would have to hit the Esc key each time I wanted to exit the Prezi from full-screen mode in order to access the tabs. The whole back-and-forth between the windows is just not conducive to learning so I thought I might try it in a different browser, such as Safari. Safari was even worse! At least Chrome would create tabs, even if I couldn't see them behind the Prezi window I had open. I poured over several blogs and message boards only to find no solution. The only thing I did realize was that it worked properly when I hit the SHOW button in the EDIT mode. That is what I did during class which led me to believe that it was working well. I find this to be a major limitation of the software, unless there is something I missed that would solve it.

As for the nauseating motion sickness effect from the back & forth of my slides, the only thing that could fix that is a total redesign. I placed the images first, and then paired them up with the principles that I thought best matched them, and as a result, I have paths all over the place, creating that motion sickness effect. Next time I make a Prezi, I'll have the foresight to categorize bits of information first and have the paths moving in a clockwise direction. That would make it easier on the eyes of the viewer.

As I previewed my presentation, I also realized that I need to learn how to adjust the Jing screen casts so that they take a video of the entire screen at once, without the need to scroll up and across. Again, it's just not conducive to learning the skills in Photoshop or Illustrator when one needs to scroll up and over constantly to access the different panels.

This has truly been a valuable learning experience. I hope that tomorrow, the audience will gain some insight into how the software could be used in a different capacity, as I hope too, to learn new applications of the programs as well. I truly believe that my students will appreciate the use of the screen casts when they need to review techniques in Photoshop & Illustrator. It will be a relief to me too not to answer the same question a dozen times! I can just direct them to the screen cast that I'll have available for them! Although Prezi has a long way to go in terms of making the software more intuitive, I plan to revamp my former powerpoints with Prezi, particularly the back-to-school night presentations, as a way to impress parents about the dynamic art program at our school that fully embraces new technology!

Day 3

Today was a very productive one for me as I spent much of the day developing a Prezi. Initially I couldn't quite get the software to work for me, but after watching the 5 minute tutorial on youtube, it was enough information for me to get started. I decided to develop the lesson on poster design for my 8th grade Digital Art class. I first converted the two powerpoints I had to PDFs and then imported the PDFs into Prezi. They converted the slides into images but since each slide had black backgrounds, I had to edit them to eliminate the extra space. In hindsight, it would have been best if I had a file of the images separate from the powerpoint so I didn't have to do so much editing. After that, I added text and experimented with the frames, color choices & fonts. I was a bit disappointed to discover there were only 8-10 fonts but Amy made a great point adding that they probably offer more fonts with the paid version of the program. Once I had all my images and text together, I had to complete the paths. Since I had so many images on the canvas, it took me a while to make sure that I hit each image with a path.

I was pretty pleased with the results, but when I came home to review my work, and decided to take another look at the Prezi examples from the website, I realized that many of the Prezis there zoom in and out during the presentation. For instance, they take one small area of a larger image, zoom into that part, and consequently, zoom back out into the same spot, rather than dancing around from one image to the next. I wondered if that was a result of my lack of knowledge of the software, or if again, that might be something that is possible with the more advanced, paid version. I also noticed that a lot of the Prezis on the site spin images around on their sides as they zoom in. While it seems really dynamic, I didn't spin any of my images because I felt it might be too distracting and perhaps even nauseating to the viewer. As it is I have about 18-19 paths, so there's a lot of moving around about my canvas.

As I continue to think about my presentation, the next steps I'd like to take is to create a Jing using some of the Illustrator/Photoshop skills that the students will need to employ to design their posters. I had wondered if it's possible to create the Jing and then import it into Prezi? I'm not sure if Prezi supports flash files such as Jing. I will have to experiment with that tomorrow. Also, in terms of the Jing itself, I became aware of the fact that I really need to pare down which skills I'm going to demonstrate on the screencast. There is so much I cover in both Illustrator & Photoshop, but considering that the time of year of this project is late October, the students are all really new to both programs. The poster project arises out of a request from a colleague to have the students design posters, advertising for the Middle School play. The play is always in late October, and although they're just learning Illustrator at that point, they need a few Photoshop skills to get the effects they want to create. For instance, many of them want to import images into their posters but quickly learn that in Illustrator, they cannot eliminate a background color of that image or select or crop it in any way without the use of Photoshop. This usually throws the students through a loop since most have never even opened Photoshop before. I see this as a great opportunity to create a tutorial of how to edit an image quickly in Photoshop, save it as a PNG, making it transparent, and then importing it back into Illustrator for their use. By doing this, I could place the tutorial/screencast on the server for all students to access when they reach that point within their work.

Lastly I need to also create a voicethread for the student work as a place for students to comment and reflect upon each other's work. Likewise, I need to develop my rubric further to reflect the student's responsibility for uploading images and commenting on voicethread. One last thought....I'm interested in exploring posterous.com as a means for blogging and camtasia as an alternative to Jing.

Day 2

I really enjoyed learning about Prezi as an alternative to using Powerpoint. I often find Powerpoint presentations to be too linear and boring and Prezi allows the user to create something much more dynamic. I am still experimenting with how the software works but my hope is to use it as a means to present the information to my students (and to our class audience as well).

The tutorials on the Smartboard were also effective, although I don't know how often I will actually use those skills, considering I don't have one in my classroom. My colleague has one in her room, which I could use if my classes are scheduled there. Personally, I don't think I would use it much anyway, even the image gallery, because I find Picasa a much more effective tool to keep images organized. I would use it just as a means to be more interactive with the board and to be up and away from my computer, rather than using it for its note-taking abilities. However, I do intend to look into celtx.com as a way to get students to storyboard and plan, and how I might use the Smartboard as a means to import images.

It was interesting to learn about socrative.com as well and I will share that with some of my colleagues who have had some experience using the Smartboard remote controls for a similar quizzing purpose. I also appreciated learning about how to create my own personalized map within Google maps. I will likely use that feature more for my personal interest than a professional one.

As for the final project, I am considering a presentation for my Digital Art 8 class. I would like to focus on either our poster design or CD design project, and I'd like to learn to use Prezi as a way to present the four basic principles of design theory: contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. Then I was thinking of using Jing as a way to create some Photoshop or Illustrator tutorials, demonstrating exactly how to put together the software skills to create a poster or CD, followed by a voicethread that reflects student project work and their critique or comments. I also plan to use Google docs as a way to list the resource links to the students. Although I have a set of rubrics that I developed over time, I think the most challenging task will be to alter the rubrics to reflect the use of technology in a way that is both effective and fair.

Day 1 cont.

One last thing to add....I am curious about Prezi. I noticed it on one of the Google docs sent to us but we haven't addressed it yet. Some of my colleagues have been using it for presentations and I'd like to learn more about it. thanks!

Day 1

I really enjoyed learning about Jing because I teach a Digital Art course, where I cover both Photoshop and Illustrator skills. This coming school year, I would like to introduce a unit in Flash animation as well. Considering that setup of my classroom computer lab places some students with their backs to the projector screen, this tool will be incredibly useful as I create tutorials for students to use. It would allow for differentiated instruction, as students who need to review a particular skill multiple times may do so on their own, while other students may move on to other skills.

I see Voicethread as an effective tool to set up a forum for students to upload images of their work (paintings, drawings, etc.) in progress and to create a dialogue for critiques. Picasa, too, is a great way for students to keep images of their work organized according to project or technique. Keepvid.com is also another great tool that I can use to convert videos from everything to oil painting demonstrations to using the pen tool in Illustrator.

I can see the validity of Google docs as a way for students to share their information with each other and how it can eliminate the need for school server space, especially when it comes to sharing large files. For myself, however, I think it will take more time for me to adapt to using it for my own personal files. I love using my western digital & lacie 200 GB hard drives for everything I do, whether they're photoshop files, or word documents that carry my rubrics. Thus far, I haven't had any issues with my drives, regardless of the operating systems I'm using. However, I do like the feature that Google docs automatically saves in live time.

As for Friday's presentation, I'm not quite sure yet about the content area I'd like to address. I introduced a new course last year called Creative Crafts which covers everything from paper making and altered books, to weaving and ceramics. It is a curriculum that is new, and that I am continually improving. On the other hand, there is so much content for my Digital Art class, with its Photoshop & Illustrator skill building, that would lend itself well to the screencast videos using Jing. Lastly, there is the content from my Drawing & Painting courses that would easily create dialogue among my students.

It was a great first day and I'm excited to see what's in store for us the remainder of the week!