Welcome to Susan Stone’s ePortfolio!

Reflection on ePortfolio Assignment…

This assignment for me has been a huge accomplishment. I found it very hard to workout out how to change things and add them. But overall this has been a positive experience because I have learnt a lot! I have learnt how to upload different types of media as well as how to navigate around an unfamilar program.

Through all the workshops I have gained a wealth of knowledge on different types of technology. Some of this technology includes, programs such as fireworks and excel, wordpress and blogger.com as well as understanding what ebooks and simulation are and how they can be used in the classroom.

This assignment has required me to focus on how I can present myself professionally. It has formed my thoughts towards the ideas I need for resumes and interviews when entering the workforce. Althought it has been hard work, it certainly has been worthwhile because I have learnt a lot. I now feel a lot more positive towards ICT in the classroom because I feel more confident in my ability to teach ICT to students.

Thanks everyone who has come to visit my site, I hope you enjoyed it!

See you later, Susan.

Simulation

Hi all,

This week I learnt all about simulation. The definition provided to us this week by the presenters was, “Simulation is a situation where students can assume the roles of others in a simulated environment acting according to specified rules and procedures which give the illusion of reality, without the consequences of actions that are inherent in real life situations. Simulations may be learning games or role-play”.

I feel that simulation is very important for students because it helps them to work out the consequences of an action without receiving the consequences first hand therefore, it allows them to learn from mistakes in a pretend world. This weeks tutorial used buying and selling as an example of this. 

This is very important for childrens development, we observe infants playing ‘mummy and daddy’ or ‘having a tea party’. Technology allows us to further implement these actions through mulitmedia. However, it is also important that children are aware of the difference between this simulated world and the ‘real’ world and also the difference between receiving consequences in both worlds. Another helpful presentation, well done girls!

Bye again for now,

Susan.

Authoring and Multimedia

Hi again everyone,

This weeks workshop was on the topic ‘Authoring and Multimedia’. We learnt more about using fireworks in this tutorial.. We were to create a short animated slideshow presentation. The presenters placed us into groups and were given a topic, we were then to research for information and pictures online. This would be a great task for students and easy to carry out.

Although I had roughly used fireworks in another tutorial to create the header on this ePortfolio I still found the task daunting. These tutorials are great because they allow me to reach out of my comfort zone and experiments with unknown programs. Understanding these programs will help me to teach these skills to my students, which is great!

Bye again,

Susan.

Hands on Data

Hi everyone,

Once again, there was another great presentation this week. The topic was ‘hands on data’ and by the end of the tutorial I felt very clever at what I had achieved. The presenters took us through each step of the task, we were to collect data from a database and place this information into a sreadsheet. Although this sounds simple, I would not have known how to accomplish this task without the assistance of the presenters. To place the information into a spread sheet, we were to use the program excel, which I was not very familar with, however, by the end of the night, I felt I had learnt a lot about excel and was a lot more comfortable wth it.

Collecting information is a task we take for granted, however, for children this is a lot more complicated. The presenters provided us with a safe and easy to use website that is a great resource for the classroom, it was the National Geographic Kids website.

Thanks for another great presentation,

Susan.

Ebooks

Hi all,

The presentation was very good this week. When I left class I had the feeling that I had gained a sound knowledge of ebooks. I enjoyed this presentation because I felt that I would use ebooks in the classroom. I liked the definition of ebooks that the presenters gave us, I felt it was very clear and succint, “WHAT ARE E-BOOKS? E-Books can be anything from the digital version of a paper book, to more interactive content that includes hyperlinks and multimedia. E-Books allow the reader to create and become a part of the book. What makes an e-Book unique is its animations, graphics and mediums.” Ebooks would be a great asset to any classroom because it allows students to engage in another form of multimedia. Ebooks are good because, the whole class can follow on with the teacher, which helps teachers model reading because the students can observe which words the teacher is reading and how they are spelt. Another benefit of ebooks is that the students can more easily observe the visuals in the book, and as we have been learning about visual cues in books, we now know how important this is. Well done presenters!

Bye for now, Susan.

My Group Presentation..

Hi again everyone!

Last night I had my group presentation, it went smoothly and I felt happy with the overall outcome. Our topic was ‘going online’ and our group decided to base our assignment on creating a weblog.

I found this very useful and interesting as I feel this would be a great resource for the classroom. We used the website www.blogger.com to create the weblog. However, Paul did point out to us that we need to be careful with the online security, therefore, I would suggest using a search engine such as ‘google.com’ to find a teacher safe blog site.

I found this assignment beneficial because I have never registered or posted on a blog site before. This has also helped me with this assignment as I have needed to blog.

Once again, if you have any queries or would like to comment on this resource, feel free!

Bye for now, Susan.

Learning How to Use Fireworks..

Hi everyone,

Today I learnt something new again in my tutorial. I learnt how to operate the program ‘Fireworks’. Paul navigated the class through designing a header in this program. It was a great program which I would like to use again. It was similar to the program ‘paint’, however, it had a lot more icons to use.

You can view the work I did in my profile page, as the header used is what I created today..

If you have any questions about this program, feel free to comment!

Talk again soon,

Susan.

Photography Tutorial

Hi everyone,

Today in class, we took photos of lollies and posted them in web pages. I had never attempted this before and even though it was a little tricky, through Pauls’ guidance I managed to complete two pages which I was very proud of.

Here are some examples of the photos I took of my lovely lollies:

 

Hope you like my photos, chat again soon.

Susan.

Our First ICT Tutorial…

Hi everyone,

Today seemed daunting, I thought that living in a world full of technology that I would breeze through this Information and Technology subject, however, I was wrong!

In class I learnt how to create a wordpress profile, this seemed rather easy, however, looking around the site I soon became worried about our ePortfolio assignment.

Hopefully throughout the tutorials I can become more competent in navigating around the wordpress site.

I’ll be posting regularly to let you know my progress…

See you for now,

Susan..