Kritzer/Reflection 4

When you teach 30 classes in a week. It is important for me to stay organized and keep my delivery fresh. I want to keep my students engaged and I don't want to get bored teaching the same information year after year. I want to make my life as a teacher more effective and less complicated whenever possible. This course has taught me how to effectively incorporate programs like iPhoto, iMovie, Picassa and YouTube in my classroom.

As an Art teacher I use images in my teaching daily. Before this course I never used Picassa, now I know how to create online albums of student artwork and I can access it from any computer ANYWHERE. Now I can take all of the images I dump into iPhoto and create slideshows of student artwork. I like to show examples to my students before beginning a project. I also learned how easy it is to make adjustments to photos in iPhoto. I have been teaching elementary kids (starting in 3rd grade) how to make alterations to images in Adobe Photoshop. Students in 1st and 2nd grade can easily alter an image in iPhoto.

I learned that a lot of Mac programs have a very similar format. I was nerveouse about working in iMovie, but when I started playing with it I noticed that there are a lot of similarities in Garage Band (a program that I am very familiar with :). It made navigating the program easier than I thought. Jean and I created an iMovie for our 8th graders. We covered a review of digital camera functions and introduced a project. This is something that can easily be used by both of us and now that it is on the web students can have easy access too. It is nice to know how easy it is to upload mov files to YouTube. Now I can upload demos and students can access them at home if needed.

It was really great to get some clarification on copyright. This is such a touchy subject and there are so may things to take into consideration. It is tough for kids to understand why it is so important to honor the copyright law. I came up with the idea of having my 8th graders copyright a piece of their artwork. I think it will be a lot more relevant if they can relate it to themselves.

It is an understatement to say that I learned a bunch in this class. It was very hands on and the small class size was really great for one on one help from our instructor. It was exciting to make connections with the information I already knew. I highly recommend every teacher to take this course. Mr. Kafka has provided us with many online resources and helpful handouts. The information I learned will not only help keep my students engaged but it keeps me engaged as well.