Blog Post #8

For this blog post, I will be providing you guys with my technology toolkit, which contains the different sources or multimedia components that I found best helpful throughout the duration of this class. Yes, I did specifically choose the tools that I found interesting, but I decided to use these ones because I found them to be the most helpful to me. Starting this class, I did not have much design or multimedia tool experience, so I was on the lookout for easy to use tools that can enhance my creations. The different tools included are extremely user friendly, and with some practice, there are high possibilities of becoming very compatible with these tools. This toolkit was used on the site, PearlTrees, which I would thank my classmates for making me aware of this tool.

1. Aviary- Aviary is an easy to use photo editor that allows users to make many changes to the photos that they choose to add. The reason that I chose Aviary was because it was a free editing tool that I would be able to use on the photos that I show my students during lectures. I could highlight the pictures to make it easier for students to examine or crop and blur certain parts of the photos to make clear what the focus of the picture should be.

2. iMovie- iMovie is a video editor that I have used for a couple different reasons. During student teaching, I took a video of myself teaching, however, the total video length was 45 minutes, which was way too long for the 10 minute requirement that I had for my class. I used iMovie, through an app on my phone, to cut out certain parts of the video and create smooth transitions. It can also be used to create vibrant slideshows because you can add fun transitions, sound, and captions.

3. Google Slides- Google Slides might seem like a very basic feature that is very well known, but it is still my go-to slideshow maker. The reason that I like it is because of the accessibility aspect to it. Knowing that I would be able to pull up my slideshow creation on any computer makes me much more confident in my teaching. Also, if you need to upload your slides to a certain website, you can easy download it as a slideshow and upload it from there.

4. Animoto- Animoto is another tool that can be used to create a slideshow of photo. A good use of this would be to create a sort of a "virtual field trip" for your students. If you have visited a certain place, that might be too far or too expensive to bring your students, you can show them all of the pictures that you took so that they can have the visitor experience.

5. Screencast-o-matic- Screencast-o-matic was one f my favorite tools throughout this course. Beforehand, I would see screencasts and think that they were very difficult to create. With this tool, it makes screencasts very simple. You just have to launch the recorder and it simply records what you do. Once you're done, you just save your video as an mp4 and its just as easy as that.

6. Vocaroo- Vocaroo is a tool that can be used to record audio that you create. It is extremely easy to use. The reason that I chose this website it because you can have your students create podcasts that express their opinion on certain topics that are being discussed in the classroom. It can take classroom collaboration and discussion to a whole new level.

7. Weebly- Lastly, Weebly is a tool that helps you design your own website. I ran into trouble on my MMP and had to start from scratch twice, so I decided to switch things up and use Weebly for the website for the project. I found that it is pretty easy to use and has different design templates that gives your site a professional design.