Social Media And Educational Technology: Making The World A Better Place

As my final blog post for Part One of The Integration of Information and Computer Technology in Education I would like to be a little bit informal. I have been quite meticulous with my posts, they tend to be very organized, colour coded and blocked into sections but in this case I just want to share my train of thought about Social Media and Education.

I will begin with an anecdote, (those who following me will know I love these).
This Easter I was sitting at the kitchen table chatting with my family spoiling my diner with a mountain of appetizers when I noticed my ten-year-old cousin was scribbling in a little notebook. He was copying out something from his Ipad Mini. I was curious, and so I asked what he was writing? He told me that a he and a friend had been tracking the missing Malaysia Flight, looking at different news sources and twitter, and treating it like a mystery that they were going to do their best to solve. I was blown away. Later that day the same cousin’s father airplayed a video clip of my cousin reciting a speech in front of the whole school at the finals for a school wide speech competition. His speech topic was “Positivity”; it was simply about being positive, grateful and seeing the class as half full. He informed us that he got the idea from watching Youtube clips such as the one about a man with no arms and no legs who lives life never saying “I can’t”. 

I couldn’t believe it. I was so impressed at how my ten-year-old little cousin was using technology to make the world a better place. Those who work in the Tech Industry know that this term gets thrown around a lot. “We’re making the world a better place”. The term is used so often by big tech companies such as Google and Facebook that it has become a joke in the world of computer science, (side note: Watch HBO’s Series Silicon Valley it’s a hilarious parody about the Tech Industry).

We may laugh at the fact that the term is so widely used but isn’t it partly true? If my little cousin is using Youtube clips as inspiration to make a brilliant speech to inspire others to be positive then I think we really are making the world better.

Social Media is about communication. It’s about being social, reaching out and connecting to other human beings and coming together with common interests. Social Media helps educators share ideas and resources. It allows us to inspire each other and learn from one another. It even allows us to test and challenge each other as well.

Social Media allows students greater access to information. It helps them to connect with peers and gain deeper understanding of a world outside their immediate surroundings. It gives them be global responsibilities and allows them to have a global voice through tools such as twitter. It allows them to build forums such as classroom blogs for communication with each other and the outside world.

Social Media allows for better, more efficient and effective communication with Parents. Parents are also beacons of the text, type, tweet generation and they are emerging online more than ever. Many teachers communicate with parents through e-mail because that is how the parent prefers it. But think about what a classroom blog, a weekly podcast , or an online newspaper could do. Parents would get to be a part of their child’s educational life and kids might take more pride and initiative while at school if they knew their great achievements were going to be publicly shared with parents and classmates

Of course we still need to protect our children and I have posted many strategies in my blog about safety, policy, and responsibly, but why not look at the glass as half full and be positive. We have the opportunity to be pioneers of 21^st Century educational technology and I for one, am looking forward to what is to come.

Pro's and Con's of using Powtoon as a Presentation Tool

I wanted my presentation to stand out I knew that it needed to be fun and exciting to watch so I chose to try out Powtoon because after watching a few clips I thought it brought some life to the standard colourless slideshow presentations I feel I have become accustomed to seeing 


I really loved using Powtoon for this assignment It loved that it was colourful, had animations, fun cartoons and characters and great transitions. There were some ups and downs that I faced along the way.


When I was first researching different presentation tools I looked at the most popular tools that people were using. 

Powerpoint

I knew right away that I was not going to use Microsoft Powerpoint. I felt that there was nothing new to learn in using this tool. I have used it many times in the past, (high school University) and I thought there must be something better out there. I decided to Google "Powerpoint" just for my own curiosity to see what is currently being said about it. On their wikipedia page, the third sentence in the first paragraph is, "The benefits of PowerPoint are continuously debated. The term "PowerPoint hell" has been coined for long, tedious PowerPoint presentations that bore the audience". It only confirmed to me, my own thought that although PowerPoint is arguable the most commonly used presentation software, it is not exactly 21st Century cutting edge technology.

Prezi

Prezi would have been my second choice in presentation software. I really think Prezi has developed a very unique piece of cloud based software, (meaning the software is online and no external downloading is necessary). I watched a few Youtube videos including the one I will include here and I was pretty convinced that this was a very innovative way to present material.

I will definitely use Prezi in the future. The only reason I didn't use it for my own presentation is I felt more comfortable using Powtoon because the application used a slide presentation scheme for putting the presentation together; I had already started to jot down ideas for my presentation that were more compatible with a slide based program. Prezi is very different from anything I have used and because this was for an assignment I wanted to play it in-between safe, and biting off more than I could chew. Regardless, I will absolutely be using Prezi in the future!

Sliderocket

Sliderocket is very similar to Microsoft Powerpoint, but much better in my opinion. What I like about it is, like Prezi, it is also available online so no external software is required. Unfortunately Sliderocket is not currently available to users who are not currently signed up on their website. However I did look into watching a few YouTube clips to see how it works and it seems to be my choice right now over Powerpoint. This would be a great tool for University professors and high school teachers who want to transition from Powerpoint to more current technology. It's also convenient that it is accessible on the web and the presenter is not forced to carry around a thumb drive.

Powtoon Pro's and Con's

Pros

- Software is cloud based and easy to sign up for the beta version, (I used beta for this presentation).

- There is the option to sign up and with where you pay a fee and are granted many awesome tools to make an even better presentation, such as more cartoons, pictures and music.

- Many helpful YouTube how to videos make it simple to start using.

- The characters and cartoons are diverse and there are so many to choose from, even in the Beta version.

- The animations and clever, transitions make it very fun to watch and keep the viewer engaged.

- The link to the presentation is available online and once you have completed your work, you submit it, and a youtube link is sent to your computer via e-mail, (this took just over an hour) which was then very easy for me to embed on my blog.

Cons

-Because the software was cloud based I found that the worst thing was my presentation became very buddy the bigger it got. It used a lot of CPU power and my computer would heat up and start to lag as I was typing, making it so I had to type very slowly or letters would be missing in my sentences. 

- Another bug was manipulating images and text also became tedious as the computer would often not register when I clicked on an object. I would have to click different object and go back to the object I would wanted before it would allow me to click it. 

- Because of the bugs the presentation took me a lot longer than I had anticipated and it did become frustrating at times.

Overall

I am happy with my presentation and if I had many presentations to do in my career I would even think about investing in the Pro Software which is available from the Google Chrome Store.  I am hoping that the program will become less buggy over time because the finished product is really great!

A Presentation About the Integration of Computer Technology in the 21st Century Classroom

This is a Presentation I made using Powtoon for my Integration of Information and Computer Technology in Instruction AQ course.

For More Information on Presentation Software and the Pros and Cons of Powtoon, read my next post!
http://jessicajuliamarques.blogspot.ca/2014/06/pros-and-cons-of-using-powtoon-as.html