Excel

At first I did not see the relevance of using Excel with students in the classroom. This project opened my eyes to a new way of using Excel for more than just numbers and data. I was able to create a worksheet that allowed students to practice their knowledge of color theory. It was nice that you were able to program the worksheet in a way that allowed students to see if their answers were correct or not right way. I found this program to be a bit tedious and not the most simple thing to use. I'm not sure that I would use this with my students or not seeing as I won't have access to multiple computers in an art classroom at once. It would be a quick way to access students knowledge and maybe gain interest being on a computer, not to mention saving paper and time for grading.

I movie

We used i movie to create our own digital stories. I choose to incorporate a list of contemporary sculptors with a list from A-Z for my story. I movie was very easy to use and simple to import images and add titles and captions to pictures. I think that is a great program for students to use to first learn how to edit and create movies. It is a more limited program and something such as Final Cut Pro would allow students a more in depth look at movie editing. Imovie is a good starting off point and requires less instruction, which is a good solution when you have less time with students such as in an art classroom.

Twitter

I explored Twitter for my Web 2.0 tool. At first I was skeptical of the use of Twitter at all, much less its relevance for the classroom. Personally, I would not use Twitter for my private use but I found it interesting to be able to follow celebrities or politicians. In relation to the classroom I found the above YouTube video that opened my eyes to the uses of Twitter. Students are used to using Twitter and texting in their everyday life and using Twitter as way of developing class discussion could be a great way to encourage participation. Having a character limit forces students to to think critically about their responses and have concise answers. Especially in a University setting I can see this as a positive form of discussion. Students that are shy are allowed to first think about their responses before sending it to Twitter. College classes are often large lecture classes consisting of hundreds of students and using Twitter allows everyone to voice their opinions in and out of class time. I feel that for class discussion in a high school or college setting this could be a great way to integrate technology and gain student interest.