Assessment 2 Reflection 4

Assessment 2 Reflection 4 – Engagement activities week 5

GROUP 3 TOOLS

Prezi

Prezi appears to be a fun tool to work with. Many more new icons to manipulate to my way of thinking, or is it the other way around. Sizing, cropping and rotating button had me going for some time and then there was the text box.

Prezi can be a fun task for students and teachers to work with when presenting ideas to peers as an alternative to PowerPoint. Many icons are different to standard icons used in word and may take some time for students and teachers to use these with automaticity.   

Next issue, how do I upload it? Here goes  (Prezi appear)

Glogster  (my Glogster link)

Glogster appeared difficult to use. Unfortunately, I was unable to upload images and this became frustrating. I tried closing down every else that was open on my computer at the time to speed up the processing speed but alas no change. I consulted forums online and found that many Glogster users experienced the same problem. I decided to call it a night and tried again in the early hours of the morning.

Next morning I was able to complete the task adequately with moving arrows and other insertions. When I viewed the completed work I edited all animations out to still images as I found it too busy and distracting from the text and images I wanted the students to focus on.

I was not happy with this tool from the nickname login to the limited number of tools, fonts, views and personalisation. Doubt that I would ever use this in the classroom as I felt it was too busy, not very user friendly and quite disappointing.

PowerPoint (my PowerPoint)

PowerPoint has some similar functions to Prezi but with an infinite number of options, I don't have to open an account to use it, I do not receive incentives to upgrade and part with money. PowerPoint is also private; I don't have to share unless I choose to. At the current time with privacy laws especially in education, I have a growing concern for the continued expectation to register online to access many tools, giving away personal information and all the while becoming more complacent in doing so. Different password for everything, I don't think so. Am I starting to sound cynical? PowerPoint is also a blank canvas that allows for many styles of creation, learning and teaching.

PowerPoints can be created to help students with inquiry based learning in many learning areas. Students themselves can create PowerPoints to present research and ideas to peers. Finally PowerPoints can be used to help students in literacy, follow a story on an interactive whiteboard, write a recount, view snippets, the list is endless.

Difficulty may arise when uploading large files like PowerPoint without publicly sharing online. If image file size is reduced to create smaller overall file size the quality may be lost. Images may become pixelated when viewed on an interactive whiteboard. For example File size is limited unless you upgrade in weebly (only 5MB).

As a digital immigrant, I have found PowerPoint easy to use, especially animations, transitions and insertions of images and files. PowerPoint is easy to personalise and use in any learning areas. This is by far my favourite tool in the group 3 tools.