The Final Reflection?

So this is the last one for the course. YEAH!

I am finished with my website, at least for now, and I feel like I have a decent product. The google sites program is simple to use and really does give everybody a chance to make a site. I hope to be able to put my site to some good use in the future.

Overall, I believe that this course has been quite useful in my studies. I really think that some of the skills taught in this course will be useful, like making and maintaining the site and blog, in my future. The info in this class seemed more practical than some of the more abstract, theoretical stuff I did in the spring time. I would not say that I am fully prepared for the next step, as I doubt anybody truly is, but I feel a bit more ready.

I am overjoyed that we do not have a final in this class. A written test seems silly and superfluous when we have all of the artifacts to present to show our progress.

To bring this nonsense and tomfoolery full circle, I will address my claim that I am a Luddite. In short, I still am. I do not trust the technology one bit. It's nice when it works, but I do not foresee it always being reliable, or even present for that matter. With that being said, I do feel a bit more comfortable toying with the technology. I did things in this course that I never really thought I would do, or even want to do.

All in all, this was not too horribly painful.

Time for Revolution

So here it is. Let the criticizing and jeering begin. I have more or less "reflected" upon this creation before, but I suppose I can squeeze out some more ideas.

I am somewhat happy with the way the show came out. I became awash with ideas for music, and I wanted to make more slide shows in order to use more music and flesh out some ideas that I have archived in my brain.

I have been building a library of songs that relate to my content area and it is nice to be able to finally use some of the entries in the aforementioned library. I'm sure the students will not care all that much, but perhaps some may be hooked by the novelty of the tracks or the connection between the media and the content.

I sure hope so, or else I will be unemployed in the near future!

The second part of MY MOVIE...

...is now much better.

After figuring out the sound clip deal the other night, I had all sorts of ideas for music, so I brought in another disc to class this evening to add some tunes.

I think my new edition is much better than the first. I added three new song clips and I believe they greatly enhance the slide show. Furthermore, they are directly related to the content and slides.

I am not looking forward to presenting the slide show. I think it is cool and I like watching it, but I will no doubt feel like a stooge when others are watching it. I know they will not dig the music, but I hope they see how it relates. We shall see.

This is mildly exciting...now I can integrate some killer metal tracks into my teaching! YEAH!

My MOVIE....

...is totally lame!

I do like it, in a bizarre sort of way. It is a tad embarrassing to watch something that I made because I am so self-conscious, but it is also mildly neat. The song clip totally slays, but I wish I could use the entire track. So much is lost by using only a 30 second clip...woe is me!

This evenings venture was tedious. Very tedious. I figured out how to put the audio track on the slide show quickly, but it took roughly 40 minutes to figure out how to split the track into clips. It took forever and I forced myself to take a break because I was frustrated.

I'd love to make more of these at some point. I quite like playing with the pictures and the music, although I do hate copyright in instances like this. Hopefully I would be able to produce a second slide show much quicker because I have some experience, otherwise I might just move on and use another presentation.

If I became really angry, I could just make a slide show and then bring in my music on my own music player and present both simultaneously. That might not be a bad idea actually...it might be a way around the 30 second music clip limitation!

GENIUS!

Get ready to laugh at me on Thursday when we present our products!

Wiki-Tiki-Tavi and The American Revolution

Hey, the social studies group did well on the wiki project! YEAHHH!

The iMovie project was quite fun last night. I was fairly prepared and had about a dozen or so pics on my flashdrive for my story about the American Revolution, so I only needed to resize them and pick my favorites and I was ready to play.

The iMovie program seemed fairly easy to operate, although I did get a little frustrated with the caption part. I could not figure out how to add captions to a slide, and I tended to be long winded anyway, so I just made a few slides with text that preceded the picture they described. Hopefully that will work.

The music track should be fun to use. I have an instrumental song called "1776" that I want to use by a band called Iced Earth, and I'm anxious to see how lame my iMovie turns out! I could also use their version of the "Star Spangled Banner", but I feel that is too obvious. Their version is also instrumental, but I think I would save it for a later project about the War of 1812 because Mr. Key wrote the poem that goes along to it in 1814.

Oddly enough, the tune to our national anthem was taken from a British drinking song...go figure. We were so angry that we rebelled against the crown but we kept the drinking song and wrote some new words for it. How American :)


I am digressing...I was a bit surprised at how much I enjoyed playing with the program and I look forward to finishing it on Tuesday. It's nice to make something with the technology that I truly feel will be useful. I was not so sold on the wiki and I certainly did not like it, but I dig this movie/slideshow/music amalgam that we are synthesizing.

The Spirit of 76!

I'm thinking of things to do for my imovie project later in the semester, and being that this weekend was the big Fourth, I think I might do something with Revolutionary America. Cliche, I know, but still cool. I have some ideas for music as well...but we will save that for later.

I hope everyone was safe over the break.

I have also been thinking about reflections...and I hate it. I don't dislike the practice of reflecting, as it seems natural to do in one's head, but to be required to publish reflections and to be critiqued is a tad ridiculous. Who can really say whether or not the reflections are of a certain quality?

I would think the only thing that really matters is what we do with our thoughts. If we realize that we did something poorly, then we should rectify the problem and learn from our mistake, or try something different next time. It's pretty simple and straightforward. I firmly believe that some of this "reflective practitioner" stuff is fluff. So...let the backfiring begin.

World War I

Here is my World War I inspiration project. I enjoyed doing this much more than I did making the PLN. It is nice to actually work with some content and mix it with the technology.

The inspiration program is fairly simple to use. I never really became frustrated or wanted to run away. I can definitely see how the inspiration program can be useful because it can make graphic organizers, which everyone seems to love so much.

I think that my inspiration project might be tweaked and used again if I have to teach World War I because these types of webs are helpful for students. It allows them to see how various, seemingly-unconnected pieces of info actually tie together. This will help them if they have to write a short essay combining different pieces of info on a final or a unit test.

My PLN

My personal learning network, as of now, is a bit boring. I had to inculcate some non-academic sources, like Blabbermouth, to make it a bit bigger. That specific website is where I get all of my metal news and release dates for cds and whatnot. I do plan to use music in the class, so I suppose there is a stretched connection there.

I included Tucker and Kristin because they are not only friends, but also in the same "boat" so to speak as I am. Tucker will definitely stay in the PLN as he and I are interning at the same school.

I do most of my "work" at home, so that is why I included the home bubble. I do not rely on any other places (that I can think of) on a regular basis.

I am looking forward to making some webs with some historical content...hopefully that assignment is coming soon.

Scavenger Hunt

So here are the results of the scavenger hunt. As is, it is not too useful in a social studies classroom, but the point of this exercise was simply to figure out how to do all of this digital stuff!

As lame as this sounds, I did have fun doing this assignment. Taking photos and cropping is simple (it is tedious, but not hard). Collaborating on the google presentation was nice because it allowed us to divide the work in half, with one person doing the templates and the slide titles, while the others worked with the photos.

I do see how this is useful in a classroom. Obviously, if one were able to visit a museum we could have the students take pictures with their phones and send them to the teacher as a scavenger hunt activity. The students might actually enjoy the activity and they might even learn something.

Unfortunately, I can see how most classrooms are not equipped for an activity like this because computers are limited. Students would have to work in large groups, which could lead to some management problems.

I wasn't even thinking about our theme all that much, but our theme probably should have been fine tuned. The theme that we had was quite broad and that is why we included so many pictures of us as people instead of artifacts in and around campus. If I had to do another scavenger hunt, I would have toyed with the theme a bit more to make it more specific.

Picasa and Another New Song

Well, I just updated my settings on Picasa so that my name shows up on the slideshow as opposed to a serial number. Sometimes it may be more appropriate to think of us as serial numbers, but I suppose I understand that some people want to know my name. It did take me a long time to figure how to edit my profile settings on Picasa...it was frustrating, but mostly because I know it should not have taken me as long as it did!

Now, on to some music. My last song (see previous post) was a little bit more dramatic and inspirational than some of my past tunes...so I will bring the violence big time with this one.

"Angel of Death" is one of Slayer's most popular tracks off of one of their most popular albums. The lyrics are brutal, and unfortunately, all based in fact. The song is about Nazi experimentations during the Holocaust, specifically those done under the auspices of one Josef Mengele. This man, who was more a butcher than a doctor, was nicknamed "the angel of death".

"Destroying, without mercy/ To benefit the Aryan Race" pretty well sums up what the Nazi doctors were doing to their helpless victims. "Frigid cold, cracks your limbs/ How long can you last in this frozen water burial?" They did terrible experiments where they would place people in freezing cold water to see how long they would survive. While this type of information can be useful to soldiers who work in and around water, and to rescue workers and doctors, their is no excuse for murdering people like the Nazis did.

"Injecting cells, dying eyes/ Feeding on the screams of the mutants he's creating" is yet another lyric founded in truth. Pathogens and other substances not naturally found in humans were injected into many people just to see how their bodies reacted.

So, I leave you with the parting lyric of "Millions laid out in their crowded tombs/ Sickening ways to achieve the Holocaust" to either convince you of this song's utility in teaching about Nazi atrocities, or just to ruin your day. Hopefully it does not ruin any moods out there, but it is a terrible topic and it should not be candy coated to avoid hurting feelings.

Updated List of Tunes

So perhaps you noticed my updated list of songs...or perhaps you did not. Either way, I'm going to explain one of my new choices.

The song "Rooster" by Alice in Chains does not obviously sound like a particularly inspired song by its name alone. Upon listening, and listening closely, one will see that the song is inspired by the Vietnam War.

Jerry Cantrell, the guitarist and one of the songwriters in the band, is the son of a Vietnam vet, and his father's nickname in the army was "Rooster"...hence the title of the track.

The song was written as a tribute of sorts to his father. "Walking tall, machine gun man/ They spit on me in my homeland..." Unforunately, we have heard stories of soldiers returning from Vietnam only to be spit on by people who opposed the war, and this song speaks to those people. "Gloria send me pictures of my boy..." This is an obvious reference to Jerry and his mother, but it also speaks to any soldier's longing for friends and family while they are away on duty.

This song would be useful when trying to learn about a soldier's journey to Vietnam and return home. It is not gruesome in its details of warfare and atrocities, as the song is not about those things, but it instead focuses more on the will to survive and come home to be with loved ones.

WAR!

Here is my digital image collection. Obviously, my theme here is that of warfare. I gathered the images from the Big Box of Art, the web, a scanned image, and a digital photo. All of the images are meant to simply display warfare, or its effects (I'm referring to the graveyard here).

This was a frustrating, but interesting, experience. I have never used a scanner before this project, nor have I taken a photo with the camera on the computer. I feel like a somewhat accomplished something by using those tools. Cropping the images to the specifications of the project was a pain, but it has to be done, so their is little point in arguing or whining.

Reflecting on the class itself, I feel like a huge jerk this evening. I insulted my teacher while she was trying to help me, and I really feel bad about doing so...I didn't do it on purpose, but I should have chosen my words better. It definitely put a damper on the remainder of the class period for me, as I was more focused on apologizing than I was focused on my work.

War Pigs

Here is yet another song for you all to listen to and learn. Black Sabbath is no doubt one of my favorite bands ever and a hugely influential band in general. Just about every good, heavy riff was written by them and has been rewritten by other bands.

"War Pigs" is the first track off the band's second album, "Paranoid." The lyrics, not surprisingly, are about war! It mentions how the politicians "Hide their tails away/ they only started the war." It provides some dissident commentary as the lyric ends with "why should they go out to fight?/ they leave that all to the poor." Teachers often talk about protest songs in school when they teach units on Vietnam, and they usually mention Bob Dylan and Buffalo Springfield, but Sabbath is left out. I think this song is just as "protesty" as the songs that are more popular and it rocks way harder than any of those tracks. Therefore, my students will not be listening to Bob Dylan, but Black Sabbath instead.

This is not the only Sabbath track either which mentions politics or social issues. "Hole in the Sky" has a few references to pollution, "Wicked World" talks about the hardships of working class people, and "Children of the Grave" is about people "living in the shadow of atomic fear."

Possible Image Themes

As I sit here this evening, I am pondering a theme for my image collection. I am feeling morbid and I am leaning toward a violent theme, perhaps war in general. This is easy to apply to a historical context, as their are no shortage of wars to discuss, but it may present a problem when I have to scan an artifact and have an original photo.

I am also thinking of several bands that I like to use for my image theme...perhaps Slayer. Slayer may come in handy because so many of their songs are about war, so perhaps I can work them into my war theme. I can bring in one of their album covers to scan, and I might have a few pictures I can take of some merchandise which incorporate war imagery.

Megadeth

Here is another explanation of one of the songs in my side gadget. "Symphony of Destruction" is one of Megadeth's biggest songs, and it has been a staple in their live set since 1992. The lyrics describe the ascension of a tyrant and his eventual downfall.

This is a good track to use in conjunction with material on the rise of Fascist states during the 20th century. It almost perfectly describes the political situations in Germany and Italy leading up to WWII.

"You take a mortal man/ and put him in control/ watch him become a god/ watch people's heads a-roll..." What more needs to be said? Hitler and Mussolini were simply mortal men who rose up to power, and they did indeed become demigods of sorts, at least in the eyes of their followers...and unfortunately, many heads did roll during the war. The war itself could be what Megadeth was talking about when they wrote the words "swaying to the symphony of destruction."

You ought to look up the song...it also has an interesting video which depicts a political leader being assassinated. The assassination is not of any particular figure in real life, and I don't really have an answer as to why the band used that idea for the video. Perhaps they were trying to say that the only way out of a situation described in their lyrics would be to eliminate the source. It's hard to say, but the song is definitely useful, and most importantly, IT ROCKS!

Metallica

I figured that I might want to explain why I included some of the songs that I included in my little list to the right. All of the songs were inspired by, or can be applied to, something that shows up in history class. "One" is about a soldier who has been severely wounded in battle...so much so that all four limbs have been amputated and the patient cannot speak or see. The lyrics are supposed to be the thoughts of the person, and as you can imagine, they paint a desperate and bleak picture of the results of mankind's wars. The music video is also an essential piece of this song, as it not only propelled the band to new heights, but it supplemented the message in the lyrics. Most people remark that the video disturbed them the first time they saw it...and that is good.


The lyrics were particularly inspired by a novel called Johnny Got His Gun, written in 1939 by Dalton Trumbo. The soldier in the novel was in World War I, so this song and music video could be excellent enrichment for a look into World War I. A movie adaptation of the book came out in the 1970's and that is where Metallica got the intro of the video.


The song totally rules, and has some of the most memorable double bass drumming in heavy metal history. It has classic Metallica riffs, a memorable solo, and is just all around awesome. DIG IT!

Collaboration

This evening's class was mildly exciting because I got to work with my amigo Tucker. It was nice to be able to try and apply some of the technology in this class to our specific content area. We were working on propaganda posters, and we ended up using a very popular poster from World War 2. One of the hardest parts of the assignment was deciding how many and which posters to use because their are so many killer examples out there!


I like propaganda posters from WWII and the Cold War because they were so overt in their messages and I find the artwork to be superb. Additionally, there is one anti-German poster from WWII which features a character wearing a dark helmet...one that resembles a helmet worn by a certain fallen Jedi knight in the Star Wars films.


Collaborating was fun for two reasons. First, Tucker and I get along, so it is easy for us to collaborate. Second, he and I will be student teaching at the same school this year, so tonight's class will not be the last time that he and I work together.

The Quest of the Web

I realize that I came across as a complete hater of webquests this evening, but I do not think they are useless. I did say that I quite liked one of the webquests that my group encountered, although it would be far too time consuming. This specific webquest wanted students to search the web and compile information about the Roaring 20's in America and put it all together. It involved art, music, social movements, presidents, you name it. I think that a webquest like this could be useful, and can really help to connect some different ideas and create some relatedness in the material.


I know I was tearing up the intolerance webquest this evening, mostly because the links were dead and the "task" was so hokey, i.e., creating a panacea for intolerance. I do not think that this webquest is without use; I'm sure if the links worked, it would contain some good information. I also like that the webquest offered, potentially, information about intolerance aimed at different groups, including religious groups. This lesson is an important one, as I believe that many people are fooled and think that only a handful of groups faced prejudice in their existence.



All in all, I think these quests can be useful, although it seems many of them need to be trimmed down so they can be completed in a day or two. Looking at different information regarding the Roaring 20's can be great, informative fun, but it would not be able to hold students', or necessarily teachers', attention for more than a few days.

The Greatest Wiki Ever

So everyone has heard of Wikipedia...but it pales in comparison to Wookiepedia. That is right, a wiki dedicated to Star Wars and Star Wars only. It is by far the most amazing website I have ever visited. You know you want to check it out. You can find Wookiepedia this way.

New Picture

Well, as you can see, I changed my picture. In reflecting upon this, I believe the change might be one of the best decisions I will make in 2010, as that original picture was just heinous. It was funny, but it was quite terrifying as well. I also just realized that I am not sure how to respond to the comments on my blog. Miss Lubke commented on my first post, and I would like to respond, but I am not sure if their is a certain way to respond to a comment, or if I just need to view her blog and then comment on it. Perhaps someone can give me a few pointers, or perhaps I am just making this harder than it needs to be.

I am not sure what to think of the wiki project. Part of my brain thinks it could be fun and interesting, but the other half thinks it will be a pain. I suppose time will tell. On an unrelated note, let's say I wanted to add a top ten list of songs that I want to use to illustrate historical topics...how would I go about doing so and posting it on this blog? I am thinking in terms of gadgets, or widgets, or something similar. Is there a way to create one's own gadgets that does not require much technical knowledge?

Web Evaluation Sites

I like the evaluation sources available at Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators because it contains several informative PDF files for all grade levels.

1st Blog

My main goal for this class is to become more familiar with technology. I tend to be a bit of a Luddite, and I do not use much technology outside of itunes, so I hope that this class will help me get to know how to use technology for different purposes. I do not have any particularly terrifying stories about technology, save for having to reload all of my music onto my ipod after my computer crashed a few months ago. That was not fun, and it took a lot time, but it had to be done. I will say that I feel particularly uncomfortable with file types and other technical info; I frequently save my files as the wrong file, and I have to save it as something else, and I always feel stupid after doing so. The technology that I most depend upon is my itunes and ipod. I am one of those unfortunate people who constantly has headphones in the ears, and I constantly update my itunes. While most will see this as useless nonsense and entertainment, I do plan on using my library of songs in my teaching, and my ipod will save me from having to lug my cd collection into the classroom when I need it. I feel that some students may appreciate my bringing music into the classroom, so I feel this could be a strength. This technology course may also help me to learn how to integrate sound into slide shows, that way I can deliver more diverse presentations to my students.