#9--The final post

Wow, it's finally here, my final post! Technology is fascinating! That's my overall opinion. Deep isn't it? Let me share some of my thoughts with you. Like you're really that interested, but here it goes anyway. I am sometimes overwhelmed by the possibilities that technology allows us now a days. We are able to type something into a keyboard the the world is literally opened up to us. Back, way back, when I was in high school I was introduced to a computer for the first time. It was an Apple II and let me just say that we were taught how to write the programs that ran this computer. It was the only way you could get it to do anything. Wow, have we come along way baby!
We, as a society, don't go to books hardly anymore for information. We just sit down at our computer and Google, search, Wikipedia, whatever, but we don't really have to "search" for anything anymore. My son, who is 11, doesn't really know what an encyclopedia is and what it is used for. I can remember doing research papers in middle school and most of the information was gleaned from an encyclopedia. Now, my son asks to use the computer to find out any information he needs to know. It is amazing!
Could you imagine being a person from 100 years back and seeing a flash forward of today? They didn't even have telephones on the wall, now we've got them almost growing from our ears. Someday, they probably will really look that way. Earpieces will probably be fitted like hearing aids, unable to be seen, and the phone part may be attached to watches? Who knows.
Technology is opening all kinds of doors. Although I'm not creative enough to invent anything, I'm glad that others are. The Internet. What a fabulous invention.
Website capability is something that I will use in my teaching career. I'd like to get a grasp on Podcasting to be able to utilize it also. My students will probably know more than I will sometimes about technology. We need to be able to learn from each other. Total classroom instruction on computers? Happening now isn't it? Great possibilities.
Well all, it's be fun, glad to be done. Look forward to seeing all of you next Fall. Thanks for the kicks and giggles. I commented on Bryce's and Josh's website designs.

#8-Learning Experiences

So here we are again. We (the class) are supposed to share some of our learning experiences that may help others. Let me just say this about the subject, it was definately interesting, frustrating, and sometimes fun over this quarter. Thankfully I already had this blog set up from last quarter so I didn't have to tackle that project again. I've stated previously that blogging is not my thing so after these last few required blogs, this blog will be going dead.
I was really interested in Podcasting when I read that we would be learning about it, but for anyone who read my blog before you know that my experience with it was horrid! I was to the point of throwing my computer out of the window. Here is what I did learn from that. Leave it. Go away from the computer, do something else, and come back later. Isn't that what we should do when we get frustrated with anything? I think that is an important thing to remember, especially as a future educator, my students are going to become frustrated too. As the teacher, I need to let them have the opportunity to walk away from it for awhile, and then come back later, maybe it will be easier then.
Building of the website wasn't as frustrating. I actually enjoyed it once I got started. This website was very helpful in locating some information that I didn't know. It was actually very user friendly. I used SeaMonkey because I knew it could be a program I would be able to use with students. The only problem I really incurred and couldn't fix myself was trying to get it loaded onto the Internet correctly.
Overall, I enjoyed this class. I always do when it is a hands-on course which I'll be able to utilize the knowledge in the future. I commented on Karl's and Josh's blogs this week.

#7-Video websites

Alright an assignment that I can handle. You see I'm going to share with you three websites that I frequently use that contain video. The first is probably one that some of you have had to use since you are students here at The Ohio State University. The videos are done through Carmen. These are typically used when doing distance learning courses. I've had alot of experience with learning in this fashion. If the course is available through the regional campus at Marion it cost me less, so more bang for the buck. Some people may not like this style of learning, but I've grown accustomed to it and like it. I can access Carmen any time I like and watch the video of the instructor to learn. I'm not able to link it right now because I'm not currently taking any courses this way right now.
A second website that uses video really well is 10tv Columbus news channel. I'm sure most of you are familiar with this local news station. I like the fact that I can watch the video of a news event that I may have missed for some reason. Here is a great example of using the video. When I got up this morning I turned on the TV to watch the morning news. Well when I did I caught just the tail end of a story where a church had caught fire and burnt last night. I heard the church's name and thought I knew where it was, but wasn't sure I heard it right. So, I jumped onto the 10tv site and watched the same video I had just missed on the TV. Turns out this little small church was one that my best friend in high school used to take me to every once in awhile. It's heartbreaking to think that this country church is no more.
The last site I'll share with you is one that it a must for me. Since we're in class on Thursday nights learning the wonderful things that Fawn is teaching us, I'm not able to watch my favorite television show. I love this website to catch up on Grey's Anatomy. This seems to be a new trend with television shows. The use of the Internet for them is huge. You're able to access their site and watch episodes in whole. It's great! Every once in a while there is like a 30 second ad, but other than not no extra advertising which cuts down the actual viewing time. I love it! Try it out.
Whew! I'm glad this is over for the week. An assignment that I actually knew something about. Now I need to go surf and see what you guys are saying. Will post later on who's site I found interesting for this week. Commented on Kern's and Tia's websites.

#6 Podcasting

This whole idea of the blogging thing is to share feelings with others right? Let me just tell you for the first time using my computer for any of these assignments I want to pick it up and throw it through the window. I am FRUSTRATED to no end. I'm in the beginning of trying to do what Fawn wants for this blog and I can't even get iTunes downloaded properly. Podcasting, great idea, not for me. I'm so frustrated and angry by the time that I get to search for different podcasts that I decide I need to seek out some religious help. Forget about five different podcasts, for me it's trying to get one. So after about 20 minutes of messing around trying to figure out how to get to the "podcast" page, I don't care anymore. My process stinks. I really didn't find iTunes that user friendly even after watching/doing what Fawn did in class last week. Ultimately, I did finally get the thing downloaded on my computer. Went and downloaded one podcast which was Joel Osteen, he's a Christian minister. Started to listen and had to turn him off, I'm still ticked off that I couldn't get this to work better. So I've decided to check out what a few of my classmates had to say about podcasting and then I'm hanging it up on this one for today. Maybe when I get brave enough I'll go back and see what all the "hoopla" is really about when I'm in a better mood. I went and read about what Laura and Scott had to say on the subject.

#5 del.ic.io.us

Well this week we were introduced to the idea of social networking through del.ic.io.us. I posted a few of the sites that I like to frequent and also found a couple of blogs that I felt were pretty interesting. I'd like to share them with you here. I hope that you'll find my entries interesting.

I'm really not much of a blogger and haven't gotten into the habit of reading other's blogs. I guess I always felt like blogging was like a diary to somebody. I never understood why people would want to share their feelings like that with people on the Internet that they have never meet. I understand that it is quite the rage now a days. Oh well, it's my choice whether to access them or not. What are your feelings about blogs?

#4 Licensing

All right I'll be the honest one. I didn't come across any licensing problems because I just chose clipart that was available on yahoo and I'm using SeaMonkey making my own backgrounds and templates. When I did research on Google this is what popped up during my search about Creative commons. As far as fair use my understanding has always been that you can use something for your own purposes as long as you weren't distributing it to others. Apparently I wasn't too far off because Wikipedia pretty much says the same thing. That you can use materials without having to worry about copyright issues. When I read other's blogs about this same topic I felt that Josh did a really good job of explaining the differences. I also commented on Kern's site this week.

#3 My website ideas

My intentions for my website is a site that allows my students, parents, family, and just anybody who might be interested to access information about me, courses I teach, or other educators. I'll have four main links available-one for my high school students, one about OSU, one for my family (if I can figure out how to passcode it), and one that sends you directly to email me. I'm working with SeaMonkey, which is a whole new experience for me. I chose to go ahead and work with this program because it is a free download from the Internet and I thought that in the future my district may not be able to afford something like DreamWeaver of FrontPage. This will allow me to learn how to design a site that I could potentially teach tostudents one day. I intend to keep my site simple and easy to navigate. I want to be able to show students that a site can be appealing without too many flashy icons and that anyone can actually create a website. The site will be in my home school colors of Orange, Black, and White.


There may also come a time that I would like to design a website for an organization that I am the advisor for at school. I enjoyed reading about Josh's intention of designing a site for his FFA program. I also enjoyed reading about Scott's idea of keeping his site more personalized for family and friends.

Post #2 My Favs

Alright, well I guess this week we're supposed to talk about our favorite websites. Well I'll share with you a couple and explain a little bit about why I like them. One is JJHuddle, this is a website that is geared towards those who like sports. I particularly like the discussion board where you can read and discuss with others your opinions about the different sports from high school to college forums. This discussion board really has nothing fancy about it, but it is very easy to navigate. The second site that I frequent on a daily basis is our local newspaper, The Marion Star. To be quite honest, I read the paper online because it is free. Sometimes I wonder how a newspaper can have a free website and stay in business actually. I mean I realize they make most of their money from advertisement, but just think of how much revenue they're losing in subscription fees. This site usually has a leading story including a picture in color and other articles below that. I really like the tabbed "Breaking Story" and "News Updates" links that allow me to access the latest news. The last site that I like to look at is a photography site dedicated to sports. Oh boy, here is the sports thing again. Well for those of you who don't already know both of our children are involved in sports and Momma got a new camera last summer. I absolutely love to shoot sports photos, but I'm still in the learning process. This site, as you can see, has a menu option on the left side of the screen that allows me to easily surf it's contents and read others comments and suggestions about how they are taking or shooting their photographs. One thing that I don't particularly like about this site in the black background with white lettering. After you have read the context in this color formattion for a while your eyes tend to get weary. It's kind of like when someone takes a picture of you using a flash, you know that blue haze kind of feeling? It's kind of that effect. Anyway, those are a few of my favorites sites. I'm going to go comment on Tia's and Janet's sites now. Bye!

#1 Hi! Nice to meet you!

Hello my name is Peg. I'm a full-time student undergraduate at OSU working toward my Bachelor of Education degree in Business Education. This is my second go around with Fawn and one of her technology classes so if you will scroll down you will see that there are previous comments about class. Oh just a perk for her class, I did enjoy what I learned last quarter so let's hope this quarter turns out as good.

The good-looking guy that is with me is my husband, Rich. We've been married for 20 years now. I almost can't believe that he has put up with me for that long, but thank goodness he does. I also have two wonderful children, Colleen (14) and Nate (11), which I'm sure you'll be reading more about later.

At this point in my life I use the Internet daily. I feel like I'm in front of the computer screen constantly, but I do enjoy the technology. I use the Internet for emails (both professionally and personally), research for school, and as an education tool for myself. One day I will be teaching students how to navigate the web so I need all the practice that I can get to know what I am doing. My goal is to be employed at my home school district of North Union.

I do not have any previous experience with working with web design. Actually, I'll be honest after Thursday night's class, I'm probably even more confused. It'll be alright though. I know that I'll get through it with the help of my classmates :-) I think I'll concentrate on designing a page that I may be able to use in the future for classes that I will be teaching.

I posted on Scott's and Janet's websites this week.

Blog #9

Wow! I can hardly believe that this class is almost over. My understanding and use of technology has grown tremendously this course. I can honestly say that I have enjoyed using Photoshop and Movie Maker to make my own creations that meant something personal to me. By actually using the software I would feel comfortable introducing them to my students to see what creations they could come up with for their projects. I have tremendously enjoyed the on-hands approach to learning for this course. I believe that as an educator if we can get our students involved in their learning that they too would actually learn something. By that I mean, that hands-on learning is tremendously important. It allows students (us too) to explore, make mistakes, and then fix them which stays in our minds much better than just to read it out of a book and try to memorize the information.

I probably won't keep up the blog, as it isn't really my style, but it was fun to read other people's blogs to see how they were reacting to the class. I know that if I could actually afford it I would be out there purchasing the software for my home computer. Let's just hope that when I get a teaching job that the school district will have the software. Better yet, they'll let me purchase the latest version!

I wish you all continued success in your careers. Remember that networking is a wonderful thing, and by meeting new people each quarter you never know when you might come in contact again for some purpose. Good Luck at The Ohio State University!

http://dendinger1.blogspot.com

Blog #8

The idea of using video production professionally is a very interesting one. First of all, I believe that this is an area that would actually excite students and make them want to learn the process of creating their own movies. By using a software program like Microsoft Movie Maker it could allow a student who is very creative an outlet to their creativity. I believe that there are very creative students in our schools who may not be doing well in core classes because they are so creative and unable to use their imaginations in those courses. This in turn bores them and they may not put forth the effort because it is not something that they "like" to do. Whenever we can tap into something that our students actually want to learn and do is definately worth the effort of teaching it to them. I could also see students producing their own movies, documentaries, or maybe even creating a recruiting tape for the business program. I know that my own home school district is looking for more areas in which to open up the media and instructional courses and this could be a course that could be taught very easily. Is it possible that someday you may have to submit a video interview in place of a resume for employment purposes rather than going to a face-to-face interview? The possibilites are endless and only squelched with the possibility of no creativity.

www.livingproof077.blogspot.com

Blog #7

The video that I am making currently with Movie Maker is about my son's basketball team Orange Crush. Throughout his season I have used my digital camera and taken many action shots of Nate and his teammates. I am using them in conjunction with some video I shot of them during a basketball game to create a year end movie of their season. My plan is to show them their movie at the end of their awards program and to present them with their own copies. This is becoming a very time consuming project since I have to search through approximately 300 pictures to chose which ones I feel are appropriate for viewing. Also to come yet is the editing process of the actual video footage which I took of their recent game. Each team member was interviewed on the video tape so that each one of them becomes a part of the overall project. Music is pretty easily brought into the project, as we (my family and I) own quite a bit of Jock Jams CD's which contain alot of upbeat music.

http://audio.search.yahoo.com/search/audio?_&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-501&x=wrt&sngid=52396982262806f42fc773363c481baa&p=get+ready+to+rumble&n=100


Click on the above link and you will be able to download "Let's Get Ready to Rumble", which is one of the songs I'll be using on Nate's movie.

I'm really looking forward to finishing this project. Only because I'm excited to see the boys' and their parents reactions to viewing it. Here's hoping that they love it!

www.richardkayser.blogspot.com

Blog #6

Working on Movie Maker so far has been a really interesting activity. I chose to work by myself because of the project that I wanted to do. I originally had the idea to create a Powerpoint presentation for my son's basketball team, but after hearing about the abilities of Movie Maker I decided that this software would be perfect to create a movie instead. I only chose to work alone because of the topic of my video and I assumed that other's wouldn't really be interested in my son's team. Anyway, it is nice to have a personal connection to this movie, which makes me want to work on it.

http://jennyhinz.blogspot.com/

Blog #5--Literacy

I think that contempary design can help to improve literacy. If we can make a newsletter, newspaper, or magazine article more appealing to the eye then maybe they will want to take the time to stop and actually read it. I think this can really be used with the teen age group. It seems that in this day of technology not many teens actually take the time to read. Emails, instant messenging, and cell phone technology has made communication a very short and quick process. Unfortunately, I think that this technology has caused people to push literacy issues aside. As a future educator, I want my students to be literate. They need to not only be able to read the material, but comprehend it. If I can design something by using contempary means that makes a student want to pick it up and read it, then I'm all for using it.

www.bculver7.blogspot.com

Blog #4

Working with Publisher is another new adventure for me. It really seems to be interesting with all of the layouts and opportunities to create newsletters. Professionally, I can see myself using this software to produce a newsletter to send home to parents about what is going on in the classroom. It could also be used as a recruiting tool to help boost numbers in my classroom. The students could use it to make a classroom or school newsletter similiar to school newspapers of the past. It really is an exciting tool to be able to use.

http://wonderfulworldofchefmike.blogspot.com

Professional?

You mean we're supposed to be learning this for professional reasons? I'm just having fun with Photoshop for my own kicks and giggles. Seriously though, I am very excited to be learning Photoshop in the hopes that one day I'll be teaching it in my own classroom. I feel that students would have a blast being able to make their own creations using this software. I'm sure that we've only scratched the surface as far as what this software is capable of doing. Many students would probably be able to teach me quite alot about it also. As I've mentioned before, I really enjoy taking sports photographs and if I were to dream big there may come a day that I could take photographs for other people and use Photoshop to enhance them. There have been many sporting events that I have been to where photographers are shooting away and them making money off of the reprints later. This may be an area that I would look into for the future.

www.scotterstop.blogspot.com

Photoshop

I can honestly say that I am having a blast using Photoshop. I love playing around with it and seeing exactly what I can do and creating new images. Of course, like others in the class, I have been frustrated to the point where I'm ready to throw my computer out the window. The only downside that I've discovered is that I can spend literally hours sitting on my butt staring at the computer screen. This hasn't gone over too well with my family members at times. My children are getting older and I really want to create some wonderful projects that will capture events that are going on in their lives. I created each of them a sports montage which I printed 8X10's, and will be hanging them in our new family room when it is complete. I would really love to find this software at a reasonable price that I could purchase it. Guess, I'll have to hurry up and create a bunch in the next 16 days. If anyone finds a great deal please let me know.

Weekends, Aren't they Great?!

Well here it is another weekend. I usually love the weekends. It is time to be able to spend with my family and hopefully not have any homework that I need to get done.

Even though most people might try to relax on Saturday and Sunday my family is usually booked up with plenty of activities. For instance, I've already been to my church to deliver a devotional for the Upwards Basketball program. In about two hours I'll be taking Nate into his basketball game today with his team "Orange Crush". This is a traveling AAU basketball team of 11 year olds playing against other schools. So far they are doing really well this season only having lost 2 games.

Colleen, is going to watch the game with me, but has already asked to go see a movie with her friends. Not quite sure if I'm open to that idea, you see she wants to go with her boyfriend. Guess I may be a little old-fashioned, but I'm not ready to see my 14 year old daughter going on a date. Her boyfriend, Casey, is a really nice kid, but that isn't the point. Anyone else have teenagers that they are facing the same growing pains?

My husband, Rich, is having to work today. He works at Honda in East Liberty and they have mandatory Saturday productions scheduled through out the year. I'm sure he'd much rather be at home with us today.

On Sunday we may actually be able to take a small breather of running. We'll go to church and then see what's on the agenda for the day after that.

Classes for me are going fairly well so far. I've got 19 credit hours this quarter. Probably, silly in the head, but I'm trying to get finished as quickly as possible. I'm liking most of my classes, except one. It's an education class that is very slow and last 2 1/2 hours once a week. The 623 class, on the other hand, is fun. I'm enjoying working with Photoshop immensely. Having a new digital camera I like using my photos and creating different pieces using the software. Maybe I can dream a little and consider purchasing an older version of Photoshop for my personal use. My 30 day trial isn't going to last too long.

Well it's off to the gym. Hope everyone else enjoys their weekends!

Go Bucks!

Only about half an hour until kickoff! Wish the commentators would just shush and let's get to TBDBITL! I love to watch the band do Script Ohio. I'll even admit that I get a little weepy when I watch the sousaphone player strut out there to dot the "I". I'm also going to be watching my buddies from class last quarter, Antonio Smith and T.J. Downing. Nice guys, let's hope that they do well tonight. I really don't think that this game is going to be too close, but I'll watch it all anyway. Hoping that all of you are rooting on our Bucks too! O-H I-O

Technology, Gotta Love It?

Trying to work on my blog a little. Jazz it up some. I'm about ready to throw the computer through a window, can not figure out how to post a picture on it using the "Hello" website it suggests. I am certainly hoping that this is not how the quarter for this course is going to go. On the other hand got the "Adobe Photoshop" to finally download this morning and I'd rather be playing on it. The weather outside is really gloomy with the rain and all. I guess I can be glad that I'm not missing anything great outside since I've been inside all day working on course assignments.

Learning a little about Me

Hi my name is Peg.

I am currently an undergraduate at The Ohio State University working on course work to complete my Bachelor degree in Technical Education. My first priority is not class though, it is actually family and faith. I am married to a wonderful man named Rich. We have been blessed to have two children, Colleen and Nathan. I enjoy photography, camping, and reading (anything other than textbooks!).