My idea for a lesson is to have a QR code scavenger hunt around the school. Students will have a sheet of paper that has boxes on it with clues under each box to where you would find the QR code in the school; office, gym, media center, etc... They would then have to go through the school and find the QR codes that I had hung up. After they found the QR code they would scan in with their phone and it would take them to a resource. They would have to read the question below the QR code and answer the question using the resource given. They would then record the answer on their paper. The first one to complete the exercise would get a prize.

                Another idea I had was when we talk about animal taxonomy I usually get out a bunch of samples of different animals that belong to different categories. I could label each specimen with a QR code that takes them to a website that has more information about that specimen.  

 This could be a fun adventurous exercise for any class or any topic. This could even be used as a review game. The learning objectives that apply here would be based on what topic you chose for the QR codes to take you to. The factors that could influence the success of this are the cell phone use policies. I teach in two different schools, the middle school and the high school. At the high school we have a more relaxed cell phone policy and at the middle school they are not allowed to have their phones in class at all. In order to do this activity the students would have to be allowed to use their phones. Another issue is that students need to have a barcode scanner for this to be able to work. If they do not have the app then they would need to download it and most app stores do not work on the schools wifi. So I would have to find a way around that as well.

My thinking has changed this week because I think this augmented reality stuff is really cool. Awhile ago a colleague showed me a cool way to use augmented reality and it is called sand box. It is pretty cool some of the stuff you can do with it. Here is a link to the video about sand box

I have attached a couple QR codes to the websites that I use for my classes.  

I am using this video as an extension of an assignment that my students already do. In my technology class I have the students create a digital portfolio using weebly of all of the assignments that they do throughout the trimester. They have to include the 3 presentations that we did in class as well. I used to have the students screenshot each individual slide and then put each image into a slideshow on their website so it could be accessible online. That became extremely tedious. Last week I learned (with one of my students) that you can embed Google drive documents and prezi's into weebly by creating imbed codes with them. It is a little difficult to explain to each student so I decided that I would use what learned in week 4 and I would make 2 short videos to help them along the way. I can't think of any instructional outcomes that I can tie in to this. I feel like the creativity comes from the students creating the presentations throughout the year.  The factors that influence the success of this is the microphone. A good microphone is critical for making a screen cast. I have wasted a lot of time creating screen casts for my class that did not work out due to poor quality audio. Just recently I bought a USB microphone by Logitech and tried it out for my first time this week, it works really good. My thinking has changed this week because I chose to learn a new program for week four.  About a year ago a colleague gave me a program that they won at a conference called snag it. They were never going to use it so they gave it to me. I have been putting off learning how to use it because I have been using screencastomatic for a couple years. The new program worked very well, the quality of the video is good and editing was a breeze. 

Here is a link to my videos, I made two of them for my technology class. I hosted them on my own website so I cannot embed them here. http://computersaregreat.weebly.com/digital-portfolio.html 

My Idea for this lesson is going to be to teach my students how to edit an image using pixlr.com. I teach a technology class and I think the kids would really enjoy doing this activity. This will be going along with talking about copyright because they can search for the image on pics for learning. At the end of the lesson the students should be able to apply the skills learned by creating an original work from an image with the appropriate licensing. I will have them post the images they have created to their weebly websites that we create as a digital portfolio. A consideration that could be made is that some of my students do not have the tactile ability to operate a mouse with enough coordination to use some of the tools in PIXLR.com, I would have to find an alternative program or assignment for them. I could play a part in the lesson by modeling for them how to do it by creating my own image for them

                The readings from this week align to my lesson because we are modifying a picture and much of the reading was about the ethics related to modified images. I could also teach about the ethics of modify an image but I felt like the ethics related more to modeling. I didn't really apply much from the readings to my lesson because I could not think of a way to do it.

                My thinking really did not change this week about technology use or the ethics of images. I felt like the ethics of modifying an image does not really relate to education as much. The strengths of this week for me was learning how to make a gif. I use gif's all of the time in my class. I usually have one  on the board everyday embedded in the PowerPoint with their daily schedule, this way the students look up at the board to see what their supposed to be doing. It is also a fun way to start the day and I usually have a little mini lesson of something that can be learned from the gif that day, which is usually not related to the class or current topic. Now that I can make my own I can find more creative ways to relate them to the days content. I did not enjoy learning about access or ethics because I felt like they did not really relate as much for me.  

Global Warming
Create your own infographics

Video from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX3Y5bzNDiU

Photo from: http://jcantelo.deviantart.com/art/Cloud-Background-283925811 

Padlet lesson and reflection

I think it would be fun to use Padlet as a way to teach my weather unit. I could have each student create a padlet on a weather topic of their choice but let only one person do each topic. Some of the topics would be Pressure, Temperature,  Layers of the atmosphere, Fronts, Global winds etc... Then we could post the padlets to the class website and review each other's work. I will design a rubric that sets outcomes and expectations for the things that need to be covered for each aspect of the assignment. Students will use technology to create a multimodal representation of a weather topic of their choice.

The readings from week 1 align with the activities that we did this week because it gave me a tool that I could use to have my students create multimedia online for an assignment to learn about it as well as an assessment. The principals that I feel applied when I created my padlet was that a lot of the things I found myself adding to the padlet were media rich digital resources.  The principles I intentionally used was that I wanted to use multi media as an assessment because I usually only used it as a teaching strategy and students usually don't have an opportunity to demonstrate what they've learned the same way we're learning about it. This is one way that my thinking has changed. It seems like such  a simple concept to allow students to use multimedia as a way of showing mastery for an outcome but I had never really thought about it before. Sure I have done projects but I didn't really think of it as an assessment.  I feel like the struggle now is going to be to design projects that assess using multimedia. The information that stood out in my mind is the lack of knowledge that a lot of students have about copyright I had some conversations with a few students to see if they've learned about it in any of their classes.  I do not think that it is part of any curriculum in any of our classes. I enjoyed learning about multimedia last week more than I enjoyed about copyright this week.  Copyright seems dull and boring to me, but I did like the guys analogy in the video comparing copyright to speeding. I used that when my class was in the computer lab the other day and we were talking about what plagiarism is.

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