Teaching, Learning, and the Curriculum:
Educational technology leaders model, design, and disseminate plans that include methods and strategies for applying technology to maximize student learning.
Webquests - As an Instructional Technology graduate student, I had the opportunity to make two webquests. The first one was for my Computer Applications in Education class and is a Career Exploration project for high school students. I used the webquest authoring site www.webquest.org. In addition to learning what a webquest is and how to create one, I had the satisfaction of using this educational tool for three years with high school students in the Computer Applications classes I taught at Hudson High School.
The second webquest I developed was for a lesson on showing gratitude to America's veterans. I used a site called Zunal to create this site three years after I had created the Career Exploration webquest. I found Zunal to have more advanced capabilities for creating webquests , especially when it involved uploading multimedia.
Creating webquests illustrates achievement of this standard because webquests support integration of problem-solving skills as well as decision-making tools to help maximize student learning.
Podcast - I created a podcast on Recording Arts and Technology using the Audacity program for a class I took called Designing Multimedia for Educators. I really enjoyed creating this podcast since I often listen to various podcasts for educational, business, and personal endeavors. It was interesting to incorporate multiple tracks in this podcast. I also learned a lot when editing this project. Podcasts are a tool that I strongly feel lend themselves well to educational applications.
This podcast project shows achievement of this standard because it teaches concepts and skills that support integration of communication and media-based audio tools.
Screencast tutorials - Of all the Multimedia projects I created, the screencast tutorials that I developed were my favorite projects. I had never created a screencast until I learned how to use a program called Camtasia in my Designing Multimedia for Educators class. I liked these projects so well because I had to use both my writing and technology skills since I first wrote a script before I recorded each screencast. I found Camtasia to be a very user-friendly product that I could successfully learn on my own. I feel Camtasia allows the user to make a very professional-looking product.
For my Capstone project in my Multimedia class I created a series of screencasts tutorials called The Excel Extra Edition that reviewed various concepts in Microsoft Excel. I am confident that these screencasts could easily be used by teachers and students in the academic or business worlds. Please click on the links below to view these tutorials:
Creating screencasts supports this standard by designing materials for teaching concepts using media-based video tools.