W200 Emerging Technologies: Communication

In this post I am showcasing an online application used to aid in communication.  These applications are used to share ideas, agendas, flowcharts, just about anything you can think of back and forth with a chosen group of individuals. After researching a few of the sites suggested for this module I decided to share monkeyon.com purely because this application makes me laugh...hard. Thank goodness there was no Internet when I was a teenager! (You'll see what I mean...)
Monkeyon.com allows one to create a to do list online and delegate the items on the list to whomever they choose using only their e-mail address. Each item on the list is a "monkey." You assign a description of the task you want done and a deadline. Once you send the "monkey" to the person you want to do the task, the application continues to send the monkey repeatedly until the task is completed or the deadline passes. In other words, the monkey is on their back until the task is done. When the task is done, the receiver "kills" the monkey which prompts an e-mail message bask to the sender. When the task expires the monkey "dies of old age." Dead monkeys can of course be revived and re-sent. Once signed up for monkeyon, you will be able to manage your monkeys sent, send new monkeys, and view monkeys sent to you all via tabs on your homepage. The free version of this application allows 5 monkeys to be active at a time. To have the ability to send unlimited numbers of monkeys there is a $20 charge.

Example of a monkey:

Since it may be hard to read, the e-mail states that "Heather has sent me, a highly trained and super-intelligent monkey, to remind you to: Finish Your Homework!"
I think this application is a cute non-offensive way to communicate that you're holding someone accountable for something. It could be a fun parenting tool. A teacher could use this application to follow up on tasks assigned to parents or students alike. Follow the link, check it out & tell me what you think!

http://monkeyon.com/

W200 Emerging Technologies: Photosharing

I LOVED THIS ASSIGNMENT! For this lesson we explored photosharing applications available on the Internet. Being that I'm an avid photographer and scrapbooker this was right up my alley! I began my search for websites using this website: http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/  This site was provided to us by our professor and it has links to many useful sites. After reviewing a few I chose to use Hallmark's Smilebox application:  http://www.smilebox.com/
Smilebox is a photosharing website that allows you to create your own photo slideshows, videos, and e-greetings using pre-designed templates. The program recognizes photos already stored in your computer's My Pictures folder, you just choose the ones you want to use. The program has a free version with limited choices of templates, or it has a membership version for which you can pay monthly or annually. The paid version of this software allows one full access to the templates available as well as the ability to upload your own music and the ability to print your creations from home.
The program was very user friendly. After choosing a template, the program walks you step by step through the process with easy to navigate icons and instructions. I think it took me about a half hour to complete my slideshow. Even the task of attaching my creation to my blog was made easy as Smilebox has a "share it" tab that allows one to post to blogger accounts.
I think this tool is universal. It will benefit anyone who wants to share their photographs. The program is easy enough to follow that even young children could use it to create photosharing presentations for school projects. For this assignment I chose to demonstrate the technology from the perspective of a teacher advertising an annual field trip. The pictures in my show are actually pictures of my boyfriend and I during our last visit to Chicago. I highlighted different features of the trip by adding text to some slides. Since the slideshow creation went fairly quick, I also created an invitation to the event. My thought was that this would be something sent to students or parents of students. The slideshow advertises the event, then the invitation gives the participation details.

My photosharing creations:

Free slideshow personalized with Smilebox

This free invite card personalized with Smilebox

Like I said, this program was so easy to use. The only suggestions I can think to give would be to have your photos edited to your liking before applying them to a template on Smilebox. There are really no photo editing options on the site, so do that beforehand using whatever software you edit your photos with. I use Google's Picasa program. My other suggestion would be to consider the paid membership. I got a kick out of using "Send Me On My Way" by Rusted Root for my background music as opposed to the generic music provided by the free version. Please comment and let me know what you think!

W200 Emerging Technologies: Podcasting

For this assignment we were to create a podcast or vodcast and explain to others the process in which we made it. I chose to create a vodcast. A vodcast is a video that others can download to their computer or mobile device to watch. It is a useful tool, especially for teachers, because you can create videos of the material you want to communicate to your students and send it to them via their subscription to your feed. I see where this could be a very valuable tool also for an artist who wants to share their work or instruct others on how to create certain projects.

My personal testimony of my experience could be summed up in one word: DUH! I went about creating this project with some really complicated process in mind. I spent two evenings up until the wee hours of the morning Google-ing websites of "how-to's" and video editing and podcasting and media share sites. Now that I have filtered through all the information I found, I ended up using programs I already owned or that I was familiar with before this lesson. Like I said...DUH!

After recording my video on my digital camera and adding titles and music to it on Adobe Premiere Elements, I saved it as a podcast ready file in my documents through that option on Elements. My edition of Elements is a trial offer, so I apologize for the black bar across my face in the video! When I purchase the software, the bar won't be there anymore.

Next I made my blog subscribe-able through Google's feedburner site. This allows people to be notified when I update my blog. This was a completely new experience for me. I think I have the connection on there the way it should be, but I will re-post if I find out I have it wrong.

Next I uploaded my video to You Tube. Why it didn't occur to me before that this was a video sharing site, I have no idea, but my video is now a part of their archive. Below is the URL to connect to my first podcast:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuJ_d14V1K0

It's not exactly Oscar material, but I feel like I'm closer to understanding how to use this tool. As with anything in technology, the more you use it, the better you get at it. My tips or advice to anyone looking to create their own vodcast would be to not be overwhelmed by the idea of it. This was a fairly simple task that I made into a monster! Take it one step at a time, and don't forget to use the programs you are familiar with!

W200 My Definition of Technology

I define technology as inventions that make tasks and self expression easier. It’s the use of our knowledge to create tools that help us achieve the things we want. My thoughts on that are: it’s all about what the inventor or user wants to achieve. Hopefully things like building a safer automobile, finding a cure for a disease, or connecting with and old classmate are the goal instead of building a bigger bomb, manufacturing an illegal drug, or stalking an ex-spouse. Technology is what we make it! Personally, I think it is more help than harm, but I acknowledge the possibility it has to harm.

I have used technology since the beginning of my education and it is hard to narrow it down to three examples. I suppose an early example that comes to mind would be the educational toys I had as a child. Speak ‘n’ Spell, See and Say, and Alphie are examples of electronic toys used to aid a child in language skills and I used all three of them. Later, I used Apple computers while working on my high school newspaper staff. We used a publishing program to arrange the layouts of our pages before sending the files via hard disk to a printing service for printing. Oncourse is my most recent example of using technology in an educational setting. While working on my undergraduate degree five years ago I used the service much the same way as I’m using it today for my current classes. It is interesting to see how much the Oncourse service has evolved since I used it before and how much easier it is now to navigate. Three basic examples of my personal use of technology would be my pickup truck, my smartphone, and my scrapbooking die-cutter. I think sometimes it’s easy to not acknowledge older inventions as technology which is why I chose to mention my truck. It has over 150,000 miles on it so I think it’s safe to say I use it often! My smartphone is my “connection to the world.” Since disconnecting my home phone service, it is the only phone line I have. So my dependency on this device has grown and it is hard to imagine a time when we didn’t have mobile phones. My last mentioned device is my die cutter. It connects to my computer and I am able to draw and create images that it will then cut out of card stock to be used as embellishments to my scrapbooks I like to make. I could always draw the image and cut it out by hand, but the die-cutter does it quicker than I could by hand which allows me more time to do other things.  Also I am able to save the images on my computer to cut exact duplicates later if I ever have the need.

A time that technology enhanced my education experience would be the use of an overhead projector in my undergraduate History classes. I was never very good in History and dreaded the requirement of taking it in college. My instructor used an outline written on acetate which he projected on to a film screen at the front of the class while giving his lecture. Something about that method clicked for me. I have learned since then about the differences in the way people learn and how some people are more visual in how they learn. I definitely fall into the visual category. I’ve used that knowledge about myself to help me get better grades in other classes and it is all thanks to the overhead projector used by my instructor in my undergraduate History classes. It’s difficult to think of an example of a time technology didn’t help at all when being used for educational purposes because I feel that opinion varies dependent upon the individual. Personally, listening to the radio during art class or watching the movie “Cool Hand Luke” during my high school literature class didn’t benefit me in either class. But it may have been inspiration or a needed break for someone else in the class. I see value in using different approaches when incorporating technology with educational environments.  

W200 My Slogan

I chose to use Microsoft’s slogan “Where would you like to go today?” because I feel it describes my personality very well and because it is also a “wink” toward our class material. It suits me because I have spent the past ten years on a journey correcting decisions I made when I was younger that took me off of the path I had planned for myself in high school. During this time I have accomplished major steps in the direction of the life I want to have: a good job, a home of my own, and a college degree. I still have lots of places I want to go in life and I’m getting there one day at a time. Life throws curve balls at us every day. It’s up to us to decide which direction they take us.

Attached are pictures of me with my boyfriend Ryan outside of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and with my best friend of 30 years Jackie and her daughter Jenna at Disney World.

W200 PowerPoint Presentation

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

W200 ppt module 2

View more presentations from coaltrain423.

I've Got Something to Say!

"It's better to burn out, than fade away!" Sorry, couldn't resist, if you read my profile & know anything about 1980's rock music you'll know where that came from. My name is Heather Fouts and this is my first blog. I'm going to use it to organize my projects and get input from others for my class on using computers in education. I hope that it not only gets me a good grade in my class, but also becomes something I can keep on using to showcase things going on with other classes I take, stuff I'm doing, art I'm working on, or just things I'm interested in. So far the experience has been enjoyable. The most difficulty I have had so far has been with my module 2 PowerPoint uploads. I think I made him too fancy because he does not travel well to all the places he needs to go. I hope to have a little more success with blogging and I welcome classmates and anyone else creating or thinking of creating their own blog to post so we can work on this together!

A little bit about me:

I'm a graduate student at Indiana University taking classes toward my master's degree in Art Education. The most common reply I get to that is "Where are you going to find a job with that?" or "They're cutting the art programs in schools." If I had a dollar for every time I've heard something similar to these statements I wouldn't need to worry about having a job at all! It's like the knee-jerk response for most people. I have faith that I am on the right path with my education. I'm expanding my knowledge on something I know I'm good at and hopefully someday I can make a living off of it.
I live in Kokomo with my boyfriend Ryan and my tomcat Coaltrain. Ryan and his mother, Linda have been really supportive of my decision to pursue my art career. Coaltrain has posed for a few sketches. I'm an only child of Hiram and Posie Fouts. My dad worked for forty plus years as an electrician at Delco/Delphi Electronics and my mom has always worked at home. I can tell that my parents aren't 100% sure how to feel about my decision to move on from my semi-successful past ten years of employment at STAR Bank, but I think they will be happy for me in the end. I've rushed in to less intelligent commitments in the past and my parents were there to see me through it, so I get their hesitance to jump on board with any of my latest and greatest of ideas.
I serve on the Board of Trustees for the Howard County Historical Society (HCHS) and Museum. I help them arrange special events and plan exhibits at the Seiberling Mansion. Before HCHS, I worked as a volunteer at the Indianapolis Children's Museum. My job there was working in the Dinosphere exhibit as a lab technician removing the matrix of dirt and rock around fossilized dinosaur bones. I explained what I was doing to people when they approached my window in the lab. In October I can usually be found working the Headless Horseman event at Conner Prairie Living History Museum in Fishers, IN. I'll be somewhere near the hayride, loading people into the hay wagon of doom and sending them off into the forest to meet their fate with the Horseman.

I'm going to work on attaching links to the events and places I have mentioned so far as well as to some of the things mentioned in my profile. My coursework for W200 will also be accessible here. I hope anyone who decides to follow me enjoys what I post and I look forward to seeing what they "have to say!"