Up and Running!

To begin with I had a few issues with how to change the font and the font size and also I was unsure how to add a hyperlink to the wiki page. I had mastered how to add a hyperlink to my website and I thought it would be quite a similar process but I was wrong. I found it quite difficult to figure this all out but once I took my time to have a proper look around the settings of the wiki it was very simple. I began to transfer all my information onto my Teacher Resources Page and then the last thing I added was images on Canopic Jars and Ancient Egypt. I have found that learning these processes for my webpage and Wiki instills confidence in me for the future, the more comfortable and confident I am with using technology the better I can teach students to learn using this vastly growing resource.

Check out my Teacher Resources Page!!!!

Planning of my Teacher Resources Page!

                                                                                   

Our task for this assignment was to create an authentic learning resource on an educational topic of your choosing to share with other teachers. Our group decided on creating a project on Canopic Jars, so as it was my job to complete the Teacher Resources page I needed to find the resources that teachers would use in completing this project for the students. I started by finding a lot of background information about Ancient Egypt as in the classroom the students will need this information so they have some understanding of what Ancient Egypt is like and what Canopic Jars are. We found the idea Canopic Jars from a book called 120 Great History Projects that Ashlee already had. I found that this book was a great help for our project as it showed a step by step process in how the students would complete this task and gave a list of all the specific resources that they would need. YouTube, BBC and Discovery gave me some great video for students to become engaged in Ancient Egypt and Canopic Jars. I also found a lot of Interactive Games for students to learn from and enhance their knowledge about the topic. 
Another great thing that our group came across was that the Western Australian Museum had an exhibition on about Ancient Egypt and the Afterlife called Secrets of the Afterlife. I thought that this would be a great place for the students to go for a class excursion. Class excursions are a great way of engaging students in their class work. It gives them another perspective to be out of the classroom and interacting with their topic.
The students will also be blogging so I found a great website called Kidblog. This blogging website is specifically designed to allow primary students to use technology and blog safely. It provides the teacher with administrative control over all student blogs and accounts. I was really happy about finding this blogging site for the students as they are only in primary school I believe the students don't need to be using an adult blogging site for this project. 
Now I have found all this information for my Teacher Resources Page I am off to transfer these resources to my page on our wiki.

Working Together!

 

When it comes to group tasks I become quite scared and worried as I always get the feeling that working as a group will be hard. I have discovered that group assignments stress me out because I can't control what happens, I have learnt to collaborate, compromise and trust other people to do their part. This week our group received an email from Val our tutor saying that another person has been added to our group, Jeremy was added to our group so now we have 5. Our group decided that we would meet up in the study week to get the ball rolling, we all met in the library and we decided that we would start researching about Ancient Egypt and then bring all our ideas together the next group meeting we had. We all decided that we should initially create a Wiki so then we could have a look at how it all works so we can get it started when we were ready. I created the Wiki for our group and sent an invitation to all our group members to accept so they can then have access to our Wiki.  

I decided to suggest that we each take a page or part of the task and work on it and add it to the group wiki. This way we could concentrate on one area each and collaborate through the construction of the wiki but also still share ideas, gain feedback and advice throughout the process. The group members agreed with my reasoning so that's how we proceeded with the task. I volunteered to do the Teacher Resources Page. I am now going to take a look at the sample wiki sites from last years students to help me get some direction with creating the Teacher Resources page. 

The Beginning of Task 3!!

Now the time has come for us to start working on Task 3 which is a group assignment!!!! In our tutorials we split up in groups of four. In my group was Elise Smith, Sarah Kee and Ashlee Kujawski. Val introduced Task three to our class and immediately we started talking about what we were going to do for this assignment. We only have a few short weeks left of the semester so we needed to get it started as soon as possible as it being a group assignment they normally take a lot longer to complete compared to other assignments. Val talked to us about the Google docs brainstorming document so our group decided to use that and write all our ideas and notes on this document so our whole group can see!! I thought this idea was great!
We talked more in class about what area in the curriculum we were going to base our wiki on and we decided we wanted to cover History with our topic being Ancient Egypt we looked on the Australian Curriculum website and found that Ancient Egypt works in with the Year 7 age group. Now that we know what we want our authentic learning experience to be based on we have to as a group, design our learning experience, make our wiki, make a presentation to show the processes we go through as a group and add resources to our wiki that will be useful for both teachers and students.

 At the moment I am really worried about how we are going to organise all this so that it works effectively, I hope we can communicate and collaborate well or this task may be a disaster.

Recording My Video!!!

Now it was time to record my screencasting video!!!

I found myself very nervous during the recordings and made quite a lot of mistakes to begin with. Once I felt confident and began to understand what I was talking about and where I was going wrong I stopped making all the mistakes. I eventually made a full video all the way through without making any mistakes and then I played it back to myself and it actually sounded pretty good. I was really happy that I had finally recorded my screencast and felt confident enough to link it on to my website!


I now had to upload my video to my website! I had out from a fellow peer that Yola and Jing were having a problem with embedded the screencast onto the website so I just decided that I would add a link onto my website. I already knew how to link things onto my website so I knew it would be easy. Little did I know that the file had a large amount of megabytes and when I had signed up with Yola I didn't know that you couldn't upload anything bigger than 500mb without subscribing to a higher level within Yola. So as I had already made my website and completed Task 1 I knew i couldn't change website creators now so I had to make the upgrade. I paid an amount of $12.95 just so I could upload my video... It had to be done though so I didn't mind :)
Now I have finally uploaded my video to my website.. So happy it is finally complete!!!

What is Screencasting??!!

I had no idea what screencasting was when it came up in the assignment.. So I decided I would find out what this was!!!
Screencasting is defined as "a digital recording of a computer screen output...accompanied by audio narration" (Wikipedia, 2013) As I was reading about Task 2 in my learning guide I came across that I needed to download software to be able make my screencast, the two options I seemed to have was Screen-o-matic and Jing, i asked my peers in my next tutorial what they were using and it seemed that majority of my class was using Jing. I did my research on this software and it seemed like the best one to use!!

And the winner is JING... I decided to go with Jing because I liked that it’s a program that is always on your computer and you don’t need to be connected to the internet to capture videos or images. For our assignment the video is limited to 5 minutes duration so it wasn’t an issue that Jing only allows users to record for only 5 minute periods.



Check back to see how I go creating my screencasting video tutorial of how to add a reference using EndNote!

Choosing my Referencing Technology!!!

 I had a good look at the referencing page on the Technology Toolbox and read up about each of the referencing technologies, i.e. EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley. As i was navigating through the Murdoch University website I discovered that the University has purchased a license for EndNote X6 that enables students to download the software to their computer and use it throughout their studies. I also noticed in the learning guide for this unit that it has a section dedicated to EndNote and how to download it. EndNote is also free for Murdoch students so i decided i would go with it!!!!!






I read the instructions carefully on how to download EndNote to your own computer and i thought yes I can do this! Little did I know I was going to struggle to read the instructions properly and not be able to download it.. I thought that possibly having a Macbook was my problem as to why it wouldn't download on my laptop so i decided that I would go into the Murdoch IT Department in the library and see if they could help me out! As so as I went in there they helped me download it straight away and it worked first go when they helped me out. So off i went.. I was so happy I finally had EndNote downloaded.

I started looking around the EndNote program so I would start having some idea of how to input the correct details into my chosen resource type.. It seemed really simple so far so I decided I would do a trial and error to see if I could properly use this referencing technology. I used the webpage that I was going to be using for my Word Document. YAY I got it the first time I input the details into EndNote!!!
Now I think I'm ready to start my screen casting video..

Wish me luck!!!!!

Finding My Resource..

The next question my group had to decide was 'What teaching area topic were we going to choose'? We didn't want to choose a common area that everyone was going to be working on so we decided that we would go with the teaching area of MUSIC!!! I was happy that we choose this area as what child doesn't like using or seeing some sort of musical thing happening in their classroom!!!!

After choosing our topic we all needed to choose a resource type, as I had five people in my group one of us would have to double up on a resource type. I decided that I would use a website as my resource type as overall i thought it would be relatively easy to reference. All i needed to do was to find a webpage that was about music and technology so i thought i would use Google to search for a particular webpage based on these topics.

After finding the webpage that i decided that i was going to use, i then had to write a brief summary in Microsoft Word explaining how teachers could use this particular technology and what the webpage was about.  After writing this brief summary i thought i had better start researching what referencing technology I was going to use. So I am going to check out the ALWAYS useful Technology Toolbox for Educators wiki to see what technologies are available and get some more information about them...

Check back to see how I go!!!

Task 2-- Researcher!!!

We have now began on Assignment 2!!!
In our tutorials this week we were introduced into Assignment 2.. " The Researcher"after talking about the task in our tutorials we found out that we needed to get into groups for this particular assignment. I was sitting with a group of 5 girls so we all decided that we would be in a group together. The girls that are in my group are Candice, Megan,Elise, Ashlee and myself. Next we thought we should break down the assignment so we have a better understanding about what we actually have to do. After talking about the task with the other girls i think i have finally figured out what we have to do for this task as at the start i was quite confused. 
The breakdown for this assignment is:

• Form a group of four or five, choose a common teaching topic area (e.g. Maths, English, Art, Science etc.
• Select one of four resource types (book or ebook, journal article, website blog or wiki, video or audio podcast) and use a library database or search engine to find a resource that relates to your chosen content area and how technology can assist or be used in the classroom.  
• When we have found the resource we need to write a short summary of the resource in Word or Pages.
•  A major component of this assignment is how to use a referencing technology to assist with referencing. Individually we need to research some referencing technologies, select the one we want to use and download it.
•  I need to create a screencast of how to use the technology to add references using APA 6th style (Murdoch's preferenced refencing style), and then how to insert citations and references into my Word document.
•  I need to upload the screencast to my website and add some information about my selected resource.

Finally I need to get back together with my group and peer review all four of the other group members assignments.
 I am so happy that i have been able to breakdown the assignment because now i can finally get cracking on it as i only have 3 weeks to complete it before the peer review begins!!!

Week 4: Finalised my Social Event!

Yay!!!! 

I have finally made up my mind and chosen what social event i am going to do!!! Host a cocktail party.
At first i thought i would take photos of the night and then share the photos through a photo sharing site. I explored through 3 different technologies, Photobucket,  Pinterest and Webstagram. I found Pinterest and Webstagram very confusing and Photobucket was the only one that i could potentially use, i thought that because i had only found one resource that would be effective i would look into sharing cocktail recipes through hosting the party. 
Now i have started looking at technologies that would be useful for menu planning. I found 3 more technologies appealing: Taste.com, Real Simple and Punchbowl, AT LAST i know what technology i am using for my social event.. Taste.com i found this to be the most effective and best way to share cocktail recipes with my family and friends.

Deciding on what technology i was going to use was stressful and time consuming i spent so much of my time deciding what one to choose as i wanted it to be the best!!!
I have now signed up to Taste.com and i am exploring the many options it has to offer it is also so simple to use which i am thrilled about.  

Now i am off to write my step by step instructions on how to contribute to my social space.... Wish me luck!!!

Week 3: My Social Event

This week has been stressful!!! All i have been thinking about is my idea for my Social Event.
An idea i came up with was hosting a cocktail party. I was thinking that i would use a Party Planning website or a website that was effective in Menu Planning. I wanted to be able to share cocktail recipes between my friends and family and then they could contribute their recipes and i do the same and when it comes to the night of the party we would have a delicious range of cocktails that everyone can choose from!!
I had a quick look on Punchbowl and found that it would be too hard for it to be open for everyone to contribute. I then looked on Taste.com and that seemed like a great website to use as it had a Menu Planning section which is what i needed. I registered on the website and started working through it to see if i would definitely use it for my social event.

Over the next few days i think i will do a little more research into the the websites and hopefully i will make my final decision as time is ticking away super fast. 
Meanwhile i thought i should take a look into "how to create a PDF file" i googled those exact words and it came up with a whole lot of different things that i could try. I clicked on a range of different links and found these all very confusing as i find that for me alot of instructions have to be simplified for me to understand them, so i decided to leave it and then when i have my tutorial i would ask my fellow peers and see if they have figured this one out!!! 

AND.... YAY they were all a great help! I realised that as i had a macbook that all i would have to do is create my instructions in a Word document and then just save them as a PDF file and it would automatically be changed!
 
It was as simple as that!!