Flipcharts

Flipchart is a very new idea for me. Prior to this technology class, I had never heard about or seen a flipchart. I have always found PowerPoints to be lacking in something. They almost seem one dimensional to me unless teachers use them in a more creative way. Flipcharts fill in what Powerpoints lack, and that is the ability for students to interact with the lecture/presentation. I love how interactive flipcharts are. I can see how students would be very excited to use them and learn the information they provide. Flipcharts turns the focus back onto students rather than the teacher being the only one talking and presenting. For deaf eduation I think they would be very useful. Deaf students really benefit from hands-on, visual activities. I think flipcharts can be designed in a very visually aided way that deaf students could respond well to.

Scavenger Hunt and Digital Images

I thought I knew a lot about digital images before this course, however, I have realized that I actually knew very little. When I have posted pictures onto the internet in the past, I have always just taken them from my camera and put them directly on the web or taken them off of one website and moved them to another. I did not realize that the resolution was so important. To become more familiar with working with digital images, our class was separated into small groups to go on a scavenger hunt. We were given a list of shapes that we must find around campus. With our phones, we took pictures of items that were one of the shapes listed. Once we found all the pictures, we had to upload them to the computer and change the size and resolution. We also had to rename the pictures using all lower case letters and an underscore to separate the words. This was for easy retrieval and organization. Once we had all our photos resized and renamed in a folder, we used Google presentation to put all our photos in a slideshow and share with on our website. Now I know that for pictures to be the best quality on the internet, they need to be set to 72. If not, it can take a very long time to load because the picture is so big. I have always wondered when I am on certain websites why it takes so long for some pictures to load. I become frustrated because I have to wait. Now I know how to fix this so when people come look at websites I create they will not get so frustrated.

Resource Wiki

The past couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to collaborate with other classmates on a resource wiki. It was a new experience for me, working working together via the internet rather than face-to-face. I can definitely see the benefits of interacting through the internet. You all have access to everyone's work. In other words, you do not have to worry about making copies or copying down notes. Also, you have the freedom of working on your own time. I found communication to be more difficult. While you can leave comments to one another, some things are more difficult to explain through only text. Therefore, I felt that there were some communication breakdowns that occurred because we are not all used to using this type of communication. Once, we are all acclimated to collaborating through wikis, I definitely feel communication will improve and group wikis will become more preferable to use with groups.

Also, I felt much more comfortable using a wiki than I had at the beginning of the semester. Now that we have had quite a bit of practice with them, I was more confident in what I was doing and had very little trouble maneuvering around and editing the wiki.