Web Quest Final Touches and Pod/Vidcast Reflection

What?

As my partner and I put on our final touches to our blog today, we were very impressed with the turnout of the hours and hours of work we put into our web quest.

As we started planning for our vidcast and podcast, we were bouncing ideas off of each other and are excited to get together again to learn a new teaching strategy by planning our pod and vid casts.

So What?

As a teacher, this means that I will be able to put vidcasts and podcasts on my web quests and gather all my information to make amazing lessons. As a student, I can create organized and impressive lesson plans with web quests and I can make them interesting with pod/vidcasts. As a colleague, this means doesn't mean much now, since I'm a janitor. But I suppose if they ask me to do a tutorial on 'how to be the world's greatest janitor', like I am, I could do a very cool 'how to' vidcast. I can see it now... "How to be like Ally, the world's(UVU's) greatest janitor." We are learning how to create these web quests, vidcasts, and podcasts, so that we can use them as tools in our future classrooms. This new information can apply to me as I put it to use in teaching new concepts in regards to my presentations given in my other classes and come up with innovative study songs and memory techniques I can record.

I can be more creative. I can have a method to the madness going on in my wildly over-creative mind. I sadly don't have any colleagues at my current working position, just bosses, but my bosses could definitely be more effective teachers to their students if they would use things like this. They could create a site with podcasts and vidcasts demonstrating art techniquest in print making and drawing. That would allow their students to work from home when their stuff is much too large and unorganized to bring into class.

Now What?

My future students will be provided with a much more prepared teacher- prepared to deliver lessons in a creative, innovative, colorful, and organized way. This current information will allow my schema to reach out to different pathways to find ways to teach and formulate lesson plans for my students. I can give my students assignments in class with all the technology they come with (like ipods, phones, internet accessible tools, and cameras). They could formulate a song having to do with all the continents and their climates and record it and publish it on the class site all in one hour. That would be awesome. They can work in groups to collaborate all their tools, and they could use songs from each other's ipods to come up with a good rhythm for their song. If they didn't finish in class, they could google doc it at home, skype, or ichat to correlate. These type of activities that are all inclusive and allow students to use the tools they thrive on and love will allow me to be considered a cool teacher in their eyes, and if I can effectively teach the curriculum along with that, then I will be cool.

This information can help me become a better colleague because if I figure out how to do something really well, that other teachers are struggling with, I can make a how to vidcast. If other teachers have great ideas that need a little more organization to improve upon them, then these tools will be perfect organizers. The department can put together a DVD where all the teachers film the how to of their greatest lessons. The DVD can be used by all teachers to use great classroom study techniques, review games, assessment activities, etc. Technology can help teachers collaborate with each other in so many more ways than just lesson plans. This kind of technology can pass on individual philosophies, passions, and psychology theories to come up with the best balance of everyone's input on effective teaching.