Reflection on Lesson Plan with UDL

The UDL principles are extremely interesting and provided me with a great deal of knowledge; it helped me to see how to actually implement differentiated instruction into the classroom through the use of technology. Though I struggled with creating a lesson plan at first, I came to realize that this was a wonderful experience that gave me a wealth of information. This allowed me to see the importance of differentiated instruction and provided me with excellent examples of how to best utilize them in the classroom. The examples given to us in chapter six were concrete and addressed the specific networks of the students learning. Providing students multiple media and formats, addressed the needs of several different learners through their recognitions network and strategic network. Another great strategy is providing students with adjustable levels of challenge depending on the students reading and comprehension levels. This strategy focused on the affective network of students giving them choices of how to present their final project or knowledge, this helps with students' motivation and students' interest in the subject. In my opinion, all of these strategies mainly focused on providing students choices and multiple means of learning thus empowering the students to want to learn. Technology is the driving force that allows teachers to provide students with multiple media and formats for them to learn, analyze, research and build problem solving skills, and prepare them for the 21st century.

Creation of PSA

When we first started with this project I did not know who I would be working with or how we would communicate with each other. I had doubts as to how we were going to distribute the responsibilities throughout the pre-production, production and post production of the assignment. I had worked with Roel on the first two projects and new he would collaborate with me on this project, but I did not know who else to invite to join us. Luckily, Robyn and Colleen offered to be our partners for this project and I quickly responded to them, collaborating with people throughout the state was a new experience for all of us.

Then week three came along and we started communicating through e-mails, we set up a conference over the phone so that we could all discuss what we were going to do for the project. Roel had already suggested a theme for our public service announcement (PSA) and we had all agreed with his suggestion. We had problems being able to get all four of us on the telephone at the same time, so we decided to communicate through Google Docs. We discussed who would be responsible for different parts of the pre-production and production phases of our project and discussed completion dates. Robyn and Colleen completed the pre-production assignment. Roel and I met in McAllen Texas to work together in creating the raw footage for our PSA. Roel was our actor and I was the one videotaping the different shots that we would need to create our project. Then we all collaborated in the editing of the video, we decided on a song for our background and worked on our narration. We had to narrow down the information so that we could fit it under fifty seconds. Through out this process we were all constantly communicating through phone and e-mail to collaborate on the project.

Robyn, Colleen, and I all worked on the narration for the final cut we all decided to use Robyns voice for the narration. Colleen worked on creating documentation to track all the work we had all done through out the project. After several steps of editting the project we all finally agreed on the final product. I posted the PSA in my wiki and eventually into YouTube. After I posted in YouTube Robyn and I both tried to add the creative commons license to the video in YouTube but we could not place it in YouTube. I believe our team truly collaborated to make this PSA a success, If there is anything I would change it would be keeping a more steady hand while filming so that it would be easier to chose clips when editing our project. This was a great experience for me and I enjoyed the class.

Creating a Short One Minute Movie

Though I am still working on my one minute movie, I wanted to comment on my experience thus far. I have used Movie Maker a few times in the past to create my home videos. I mainly focused on combining small clips from my camera and adding title, but I had never tried to download web clips and edit them in Movie Maker. I had a hard time figuring out what steps to take to ensure that the web clips could be imported into Movie Maker. After a frustrating day of searching and downloading then trying to import the clips into Movie Maker, I finally downloaded an update and changed my option in Movie Maker and I was able to import the videos and start working on them. I normal enjoy working with this type of project but it can be very frustrating when you run in to technical problems as I did yesterday. Once I was able to import the web clips I started working on the movie and things started moving right along.

Thank You Mom and Dad

June 7, 2009

I truly enjoyed working on this project for our Multimedia Class. Though I have used Photo Story 3 several times in the past I had never actually narrated a story. I would just add music and create a presentation for my students about events throughout the school year. I realized that the hardest part was working on creating your voice along with the story board. It is hard to believe that a two minute video would take several hours of editing to create. But it is very gratifying to see the final product after all the time taken to create, plan, narrate, edit and complete the final project. Though I was not completely satisfied with my own voice I was very pleased with the end product and would be proud to show it to my family, especially my mother. I believe that this type of multimedia is a great way to gain students interest and introduce in topics or concepts. I hope to continue using Photo Story 3 to engage students in my classroom.

Cortez/Esquivel Spring 2009

Cortez/Esquivel Spring 2009

Here are some images of our classes in the Spring of 2009.

The website I chose to evaluate is "WebQuest.Org" I chose this website because of its reliability and resourcefulness for educators and students alike. WebQuest is an inquiry oriented tool which enables teachers to access from thousands of different projects in all different content areas. Utilizing these projects engages students to learn directly from the internet through a secure and education driven site. Helping our teachers to create a learner centered environment through technology and bring our students to a level of readiness for the 21st Century. WebQuest is visually appealing and loads quickly with key links. The website is easy to navigate for the novice teachers to chose a web based project that has already been created in their content area, but provides the tools for teachers ready to create their own personalized web project. The website has excellent working links which include tutorials, useful resources, and community access for educators so that they may communicate with each other. WebQuest's content is clearly stated and provides students and teachers with challenging discussions. It provides the required links so that students may complete the necessary tasks including research. Most WebQuest projects follow the same format which includes and Introduction, Tasks required of the Students, Process this includes worksheets, instructions to complete their tasks, and other resources. Next it provides evaluation such as a rubrics and finally a conclusion. This format is appropriate for students to learn how to collaborate, evaluate, synthesize and solve problems. Since I felt this web site was very user friendly, In my opinion it did not have any negatives for neither the student nor the teacher. WebQuest relates with both educator and student objectives. Therefore, I would highly recommend it to other educators. It is a valid and reliable tool in preparing our teachers and students for this new age of technology.