Third Week of Class

This week we were introduce to an excellent teacher resource called Edcanvas.  Basically Edcanvas is a website that allows for interactive presentation of live websites that can be accessed and played right in the Edcanvas presentation.  The projects are PUBLIC , anyone can access it even without an account.  Better than PowerPoint!  You can even embed PowerPoints within a presentation.  Here is a short Edcanvas presentation I made on the Applications of Trigonometric Functions.

My Son's First Video Upload onto YouTube

My son, who is 9 years old has shown a lot of interest in making Stop Motion videos with plasticine figurines or Lego characters.  He still has some learning to do, like ensuring the video isn't presented vertically.  The video that you see here is a bit on the gory side, but it did require a lot of patience and imagination.  Enjoy.

WARNING THE CONTENTS OF THIS VIDEO MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUNG VIEWERS.  VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Second Week of Class

During our second week of class we set up a G-mail account.

 This will be our mode of communication throughout the course.

We talked about cloud storage which is where data can be stored not in the user's computer, but in a virtual storage online in a site called Dropbox.  Dropbox will be used to crate a class folder for submitting assignments or retrieving files placed there by Mario.  Files placed in this folder are accessible from any computer, tablet or smart phone provided there is a Wifi connection.  I feel this image does a great job describing the concept of cloud storage for the Dropbox brand.

I discovered that Dropbox was created by two MIT students, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in 2007.

Here is the link to both sites mentioned in this blog entry:  Gmail and Dropbox

First Week of Class

We began with a discussion of the 4 C's of Critical Thinking:

1.    Collaboration
2.    Communication
3.    Creativity
4.    Critical Thinking


Technology

Throughout the course we would be introduced to various web-based tools such as:

- Twitter
- Gmail
- Edcanvas
- Dropbox
- Symbaloo
- Edugains
- Photostory
- You Tube
- Easel-ly

...and many others.

For each blog entry I will highlight one of these web-based tools.  Starting with Twitter.

Twitter   an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters.  Here's the link:   Twitter