Show and Tell

          I definitely think that it is important for students to showcase what they have created and have a chance to be truly proud of their work.  It's nice to look at something you made and see that it's good, but being able to show it to larger audiences and have them experience it as well is exhilarating and fun!  For example, when I finished my Girl Scout Gold Award, my Girl Scout leader invited local newspapers to interview us, as well as some news stations, and she even made a blog about it.  From my own experience, I know how good it feels to have your hard work out there for the world to experience.
          I focused at looking at the different tools you can use to make students' work known and open for others to enjoy.

• Taskstream: I really liked Taskstream because it kind of looked and felt like a blog for students to use, rather than a portfolio website to show what they learned (while it does seem to do that well).  I really liked the share feature that it has, that allows you to email and post it to other places for people to see.  I believe that would be helpful for teachers to show parents how their students have grown and developed, as well as showing them how much potential and ability that their children have.  I could see myself using a program like Taskstream to help my students and their parents be proud of accomplishments and abilities.  I think that it is also good because it provides a way for students to make back-ups of their work, in case something ever happens.  Parents may not be able to post all of this work up on the fridge, but they do have something to look back on and show others.
• I liked the idea of having students create their own blogs or wikis to showcase what they have learned and how far they have come, or for them to showcase their best work for others to see.  I think I would want to use something like Wikispaces or maybe weebly to have my students create their museums to showcase themselves!  They're also fun to design and play around with.  It can also be easier to share by simply emailing someone a link and being done with it.  They also allow you to download and back up your pages, which is a plus.  Then, maybe some parents could put it up on the fridge!
• Finally, I liked the idea of making a Facebook page for the class, but maybe not for showcasing material.  Because Facebook is so open and searchable, it's hard to protect content or make sure that only the right people will see it.  Not that this is a bad thing: of course I want people to see my students' accomplishments, but I want to be able to control what gets seen or what people post without having to babysit the page too too much.  If I were to ever use this, I would want to maybe use something like Twitterfeed to control where it goes.  If I decide to use a Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr to showcase my student accomplishments, it would be helpful to use all those resources in different ways (i.e. post homework assignments or updates on Facebook and Twitter, and visual artifacts or videos on Tumblr, or some other combination).  It seemed like an easy to use tool that would save a lot of time.

Images

          One of the things that I learned in this chapter were that there are lots and lots of free image editors out there available for people to use.  I knew about and have used GIMP extensively (and love it!), but I had never heard of any others programs other than GIMP and PhotoShop.  I also learned that pixel-based drawing, like that found in GIMP and PhotoShop, are not the only ways in which to edit images.  Fryer discussed vector-based drawing and image editing, which sounded pretty sweet because it allows for scaling that doesn't skew image quality.  I learned about SeaShore, which sounds like (and looks like) and easier to use version of GIMP.  I know that GIMP took me a while to learn how to use, so in the interest of time in my classroom, I think I might have my students use Seashore instead of GIMP to create images for one of their lesson projects.  It will save so much time and so many headaches, hopefully, in terms of students having to learn how to use GIMP and in terms of me trying to teach it to them in such short a time.

          This leads directly into my exploration of the Inkscape site.  Inkscape is a video editing software that works with vectors rather than pixels in images.  This means that images can be scaled up huge or scaled down small and still keep their image quality, which is pretty crazy after I have only ever worked with pixel-based image editing (scaling up and down was a huge pain in my butt).  After looking at screenshots, however, I still like the image quality and look of pixel-based image editing, but I think I might try Inkscape out and how it handles.  Maybe I could learn to enjoy it.  The website was easy to navigate, and I'm glad it gave images of examples of things you can create in Inkscape, unlike GIMP, which didn't do much of that when I downloaded it.

          Another thing that I learned about was the idea of Quickshare image sites, such as Twitpic, or Instagram.  I often use Instagram, but I never knew that it was known as a Quickshare site (I guess I kind of did, but I never really considered it that).  I think that I would use one of those Quickshare sites for classroom lab experiments.  For example, I know that on Instagram, you can add hashtags to picture descriptions.  I was thinking about having students take pictures of their lab experiments with their phones or other devices like that and then posting them to Instagram.  I would have the students add a hashtag that was unique to their picture description.  The students would know the hashtag so that they could search for the class pictures on Instagram by searching for the hastag.  They could then do at home comparisons, answer questions, etc.  It could also be a helpful resource for absent students, because they could be given the hashtag used and search for the pictures online and look at them and still be able to potentially answer questions.

          The final thing that I learned about was voicethreading.  Fryer mentioned that it was his favorite site and his favorite way in which to discuss and work with images.  I learned about what voicethreading was, and it reminded me a lot about the videos on Khan Academy.  It was basically screencasting, but with picture manipulation and voice discussion.  It sounded like something that would be really cool to incorporate into my classroom, for lessons or for students to reference at home or when they are absent.

          Because of my interest in this, I looked at 2 websites: VoiceThread and Screenr.  The VoiecThread website was a bit hard to navigate, to the point that I could barely figure out what the website actually did, or how to get it.  This kind of made me like VoiceThread a bit less.  However, I believe that I might still use it.  It seems like a good tool to share things with students or other people, as well as give them verbal, video, or text directions to help with it.  It might be useful for video calls with other teachers from other places and stuff like that.  Screenr was something I was definitely interested in.  I love the idea of screencasting because I love what Khan Academy does with pictures, text, and voice.  It feels so seamless and easy.  Screenr also seemed easier because it didn't involve any downloads or annoying upload and rendering processes.  It was just so easy to do.  It's also good because you can play the product on any device because it is web-based.  Definitely something I want to try in my classroom.

Final Fires Reflection

          I believe that Fires is a very helpful resource to be used by teachers.  It offers such good insight into the minds of students and what they want to see and get out of their education.  It is often hard to get the same information out of own students.  However, I would not truly call this a textbook because most of the information in his book is so circumstantial.  While this book does give a lot of helpful advice and information from the perspective of high school students, there is no saying that any of this information will truly work in your classroom.  Not that I am saying that textbook give all the definitive answers, but they do give more concrete practices than what is found in Fires.  Fires is still an extremely strong resource for classrooms, though, because it gives tools that can help us modify our lessons and ourselves to create a learning environment that can benefit as many students as possible.
          After reading over my reflections, I feel as though my thoughts and opinions have not changed much.  I agreed with almost all of the practices mentioned in Fires when I first read it, I believe that I still agree with them.  I feel like I have grown, however, in my ability to determine how I should approach classroom management issues.  Fires provided me with plenty of tools that I had not considered before that could help me create a classroom that is beneficial for most students, and also what supports I can provide to students that need different types of learning.