Weebly

On the left is a picture of my weebly website. You could check it out at www.antoniopatrick.weebly.com

1. What was your assignment?
The assignment given to us was to create an amateur website of ourselves using this innovative website called weebly.

2. What are the benefits of an online portfolio?
Updating it is simple and others could easily see it through the web.

3. What did you like/dislike about Weebly?
There really isn't anything I don't like from this site. I've created websites before and it involved a lot of HTML coding. This website though does it all. It's so easy to create one that anyone with no experience with website creation could actually make one in minutes.

4. Would you continue to use it as a future educator? How?
Of course I would. This is the 21st century so our students have to be exposed to these types of websites. On this websites, students could learn to create a digital portfolio of themselves to share to others around the world and not just within their class.

Slideshare.net

Using Technology As A Remedial Resource To Improve

View more presentations from Patrick Antonio.

1.How was the experience of using Slideshare.net?
Creating the power point was easy. Researching was the hard part. I had to do a lot of research, but aside from that slideshare.net is a great tool for showing the class and the rest of the world my power points.

2. What were the challenges?
The main challenge in my opinion is uploading the my power point and making sure all the links on my power point work.

3. What was fun? Not-so fun?
Fun is sharing, the not so fun is the research part.

4. If you had the chance to do it over what would you do differently?
I would probably add more links that’ll make it more of a hands-on-approach. Aside from that, there really isn’t much that I would do differently.

Illuminate Live

(The picture is a snapshot of Jan Reyes Blog)

1. Describe the experience with Illuminate Live.

The concept of Illuminate Live really wasn’t new to me and although this was my first time with the program, it was real easy to relate to it. The first trial with the whole class was fun because I got to add some pictures of my dog and some other funny pics that I’d rather not describe. The whole class got to see it. It was hilarious; at least for me it was. On our second attempt, we had an opportunity to chat with Bree who was an old resident/teacher on island then. This was a time I had to be serious.

2. What did you like? Dislike?

I love that fact that people could share things online and everyone would be able to see it. The one thing I didn’t like from the chatting experience is the slow reception. I guess that wasn’t the program’s fault. The connection speed on the whole island is kind of slow at times. Aside from that the program is great.

3. How would a distance-learning application like Illuminate, benefit students?

Well the one best thing about this is that students from all over the world can meet up and share information and not be in the same room with each other.

4. What are some ideas that you learned from Bree?

Honestly, I couldn’t remember much but I do remember that she told us a lot of different sites that work similar to Illuminate Live such as Officelive. The site for this is www.officelive.com

5. What will you take with you in more depth? Why?

Assuming that I’ll be teaching or studying through some long distance program, then I’ll definitely study a program of this type more in depth.

Timeline Creation

About a couple weeks ago our class was tasked on creating a timeline of significant events with our lives. The website http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/materials/timeline/ was real-user friendly. All we had to do was type in 6 events and dates on the timeline creator and voila! It was that easy.

After we had presented our individual timelines, it was time to pair up to create a lesson plan for students to use with the timeline program. I was partnered up with Nadia and we created a 3rd grade lesson plan titled- Our Last 6 Presidents. The lesson was consisted of a mini lecture and using a timeline to categorize 6 U.S. Presidents in order based on what was lectured. While we created the lesson, my partner and I also used the websites rubistar.4teacher.org and quizstar.4teachers.org to create a grading rubric and a quiz to go along with the lesson.

Overall, the three websites used for the day were all great tools a teacher could use. Among the three though, I feel that rubistar would be the most used program because it already has created rubrics that would suit the occasion and if not, you could easily modify it for you lesson.

I would definitely use these websites, especially rubistar. I would rate all these programs a good 7 or 8.

Let's Take A Ride

Today's agenda was to group up, critique, and create a slide show with an assigned slide presentation software. Our group was assigned with the site RockYou.com. This site is a photosharing website that could be linked to your favorite myspace, facebook, or twitter websites. This is what we came up with while playing around with the slideshow.

Picture advertisement presentations on Slide presentation software.

Software Evaluation:

1. Was the software user-friendly? The software was real-user friendly but the internet speed didn't help at all. This alone was frustrating, but aside from that, the site was easy.
2. Did the software have extra useful features to enhance your presentation (or just minimal)? The software was a bit complex when trying to use the extra features. If the school firewall was down, we could attach music for the backgrounds.
   
3. Is the software specifically useful for teachers? Absolutely, this is just another alternate form of way for teachers to show student work or anything fun and relevant.
   
4. Would you recommend the software for other educators? Of course, but I would also have them try out other sites such as slide.com and picturetrail.com.
   
5. If you had a choice to use this software again for a presentation, would you use it? I would, but after having seen the other group's sites, I would definitely thinker around with the other sites to compare.
   
6. What overall consensus rating would you give for this software 1- 10 (10 being the highest). I would give this site a 6 or 7.
   

Zunal WebQuest

For the past week, my group mates and I were tasked on creating a webquest project. For those of you who don't know what a WebQuest is, it's simply an inquiry based online learning activity. Creating a webquest project was simple to do, especially when done as a group. For this particular project, we chose to design one with the topic of Math Placement Values. We named our WebQuest project "Math Maniacs."

Creating the project was a "breeze!" My group mates were all able to pitch in our parts for the project and while doing it, we found the Website- Zunal to be easy and user friendly, in terms of creating one. There really wasn't much to dislike with this site and there weren't any challenges we encountered. Designing, posting, and attaching files to the site was not as tedious as I thought it would be at first and if given a chance to do it all over again, I would no doubt choose another topic of my interest. This online activity is great for children, assuming they all have access to a computer, and is a great alternative to traditional teaching.

To view my group's WebQuest project, type this link on your browser
http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=52754

Photo Editing

Today's class agenda: research a photo editing software, play around with it, and share with the class about its pros and cons.

Before the assignment had begun I had intended to edit photos with the program photoscape, but due to unforeseen circumstances I, along with Joey, decided to thinker around with the photo software Picnik. Since most photo editing softwares share somewhat the same capabilities, in terms of basic applications such as cropping, red-eye removal, rotating, resizing, etc... We instead focused on its special features. These features are really what separates all the photo editing softwares out there apart. For my part, I played around with its collage making option. There were many options to play with as well as designs to choose from however, most of the best ones were not free. There is a premium fee for the best ones and that is, in my opinion, is the downfall of this program. I would have to say this photo editing software is great for novice editors but not for professionals. I would give this a 4 or a 5 out of a scale of 1-10.