Sorry the blog is late, finals are already starting to beat me up!
The class in which we downloaded and tried out SnagIt was a good one. It may not have been necessary to bring our laptops to class, but now that I have the program on my computer I can use it at will. The program reminds me of a program I used to have on my PC when I was in middle school that my parents had added, called Screen Thief. It's basically the same concept of "stealing" images from whatever windows you have open, including the internet. This is useful because many websites have great graphic images that they don't allow users to copy & paste or save to their hard drive. If I wanted to use certain images for an academic project or paper, I would be unable to without explicit permission from either the owner of the website or the owner of the photograph. Programs like Screen Thief and SnagIt allows users to obtain these pictures. However, since ScreenThief is a late-90s program, SnagIt obviously is much more advanced with many more features. Screen Thief allowed you to take the picture, crop it, and save it to your hard drive, but did not include any other editing features. SnagIt has very similar features to photo editing programs such as Picnik and Picassa, so that you can resize, recolor, add text, etc to any picture you "snag." It's a great advancement and I will most likely use it at some point. I enjoyed the demonstration of Camtasia too, which, from my understanding was basically the video version of SnagIt. I would love to have some of my favorite YouTube videos saved to my hard drive, and Camtasia sounds like the best way to do it.
I thought the editing of our portfolios during class was really helpful. Since I had set my links up incorrectly, it gave me an opportunity to fix them with feedback from my peers and professor. I now have a fully working website complete with files that are both linked and downloadable. I also enjoyed discussing my lesson plan with the others in my class. Everyone else had some really interesting ideas for how to integrate technology into a daily lesson, and they liked mine as well. Bouncing ideas off of your colleagues can help you tremendously in the teaching world, which is why we've spent so much time on websites that have lesson ideas posted for us to see. Teachers are great at sharing their information with each other, because their main objective is to help students learn the best way possible, whether it's their own students or not. I find that teachers don't worry about whose idea is whose nearly as much as people in the business or science world, as long as kids are getting the education they deserve.
I'm also glad that we got the final date and last class date straightened out. I will most likely be submitting my final website early, because I have a break of a few days inbetween finals. I'm excited for creating my own website. I might have to do this for an actual class someday and it'll be great practice. Plus, I get to pretend I'm a teacher, which gets me excited for actually being one soon!
1 comment:
I'm glad that you liked SnagIt. It definitely will come in handy with your college courses, as well as your teaching.
It seems that having the students collaborate in class with lesson plans and the portfolio was liked by all according to most of the blogs. I must say though that when you become a full time teacher, administrators very seldom allow teachers to meet and collaborate. They always seem to stress the testing and necessary forms that need to be filled out from central office. Remind me to discuss this topic in the classroom. I have ideas to compensate for it.
Your last paragraph was very touching. I can tell that you will definitely be a great teacher because of your enthusiasm.
Post a Comment