Week 3

This week I found our activities rather useful. Not that the last two weeks have not been, but I have yet to find something that I could directly use in my classroom. This week I found that something with the google docs spreadsheets. I use Xcell in my personal life for organizing my massive golf club collection, organizing expenses, and at my second job for managing shipping and sales. I am not an expert in this program, but I use it pretty well. I have used formulas before simpel A1+A2=A3 type stuff, so the recipe one was alittle more complex, but it worked. For me the google aplication worked just as well or even better given the web based format and easy access from anywhere. The only problem I had was that it didnt display the formula of the cell in a header at the top of the screen. Other than that I thought it was a good program and I will implement it in my own life and in the computer class that I am going to teach next fall. I hope this marks the beginning of some really useful technology tools!

Ced0515 wk 2

Boy February seems like it is flying for me! Its fun to look ahead on our schedule and see that we are almost done in one year even though we are just starting. Thus far I have found most of our activities to be very useful. I was wondering going in to this program what I would learn. I have already gained from activities like online word processing and bookmarking. Both of these are tools that I haven't used before and now I don't see myself ever working without them. The online word processing has been great for these classes, allowing me to collaborate with others and share documents, as well as being able to work easily from one computer to another. The Delicious bookmarking has done a lot of the same things for me and has made keeping track of all of these different websites we are using a lot easier. I don't currently have a lot of use for some of our exercises in the classes I teach, but they are all things that I find useful in my life and in preparation for my classes. I also think that in the future the use of presentation programs like empressr will be something useful for me. A lot of what I am working on in my professional development is the updating of my curriculum and the use of technology that goes along with that. I am excited about what we have learned thus far and am looking forward to including it in future classroom presentations and lessons. I am satisfied with what we have done so far and I hope that the rest of the program will build on many of these same ideas and tools that will help me better relay information to my students!

CEDO515 week 1

The programs we used for class this week were interesting. I found the graphic programs roxik and offtype to be kind of fun. I started by using roxik, but then realized that I can never draw people or anything like that so the template that looked like a scarecrow did not work for me. I then switched to offtype and found myself faced with a blank canvas and a complete lack of inspiration, which is why I could never be an artist. So putting aside cabin fever I drew a nice golf montage that you can see on my profile page. This was kind of fun but I dont see any use for it in the classroom.

The presentation programs were different. I veiewed quite a few of them and I didnt know what to make of it, they kind of reminded me of youtube. I had alot to look at, but I didnt really see the point. Finally I made a account for empressr which I found to be like power point at first. Then I began to use it and found that I had a lot of other functions than I would with power point like the share button and the ease at which you can embed music files. I have made power points with music a few times and it never seems to work out easily. Empressr had a menu that dropped down and you controlled the audio file from there. Sweet! EASY! I could find myself using that in the future as soon as I figure out how to make those slide shows private.(if you can)