Have You Heard of PREZI?

Are you tired of seeing and making the same, boring PowerPoint presentations for various classroom projects? Have you ever heard of Prezi? Prezi is an online presentation tool that turns those flat PowerPoints into fun and engaging presentations that are sure to wow your classmates. You can even convert your current PowerPoint presentations into Prezi Presentations!
Here's a YouTube video of an awesome Prezi
It's very simple to use! Prezi is a free tool with a multitude of fun templates that take your presentations to the next level. You could of course buy Prezi, which contains more tools and templates, but I think this is a great website for students and teachers who want to make a simple, yet interesting, presentation.
There's even a free upgrade for students and teachers with an .edu email! (More applicable for college-age students, but they're still students nonetheless)
The other great part of Prezi is the "Collaboration" feature. With this feature, you're able to collaborate with up to ten people in real time--meaning you don't have to log off in order for someone else to use it. Each collaborator has an avatar so that you're able to see who is editing what.
Prezi is also available for the iPad, which I think is awesome. Now-a-days, especially for college-age students, more people are buying and using iPads to take notes in class instead of investing in an expensive computer. With Prezi for the iPad, students will be able to work on their presentations on the bus ride home, on the train, in the car... anywhere!
Ever since I was first introduced to Prezi last year, I've never made another PowerPoint presentation. I truly believe both students and teachers would love using Prezi for their future presentations. It's fun, interactive, and (most importantly) FREE!! How much better can it get?!
Have you used Prezi? What do you think?

Collaboration Canvas

This week I "remixed" another student's PLAYground canvas that focused on the creation of walls and barriers through music. As a a future English major, I'd like to show students how music and art have also managed to break walls and break barriers between different groups of people. In my canvas, I wanted to show different musicians and poets who were made famous through some of their social commentaries on race, class, sexuality, and gender. I mostly focused my lesson on Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" (which was originally a poem written by Abel Meerolpol) and how that song possibly could have impacted a highly racist society like it was during the 1930s and 40s.  I also provided links to other songs/poems that are social commentaries. I think that music is the spoken form of poetry, and it's very important as an English class to look at the literature that it's composed of. Here's the link to my canvas. Enjoy!

Do You Have a Favorite Technology?

As I thought about this week's post, I started drawing blanks. I've come to realize that in my many years of being in public institutions with up-to-date technologies, I cannot think of one technology that I truly enjoyed or even benefited from. I remember having a SMARTBoard, which we never used, and we frequently utilized the COW (Computer On Wheels) in gradeschool, but there was never a technology that made me think "Wow, I've learned so much." Even today as a senior in college I have not yet found a course that fully utilizes some form of technology that has helped the learning process.
Is this bad? Am I not giving technology enough slack?
Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate a good PowerPoint presentation, but most of the time I feel as if I'm just copying down the notes instead of actually paying attention to the lesson. I've heard of excellent technologies that actually record lectures as you take notes, but I've never actually seen one distributed in the classroom.
I want to love technology in the pedagogical world, but I truly cannot think of one form of technology that I've loved other than film. I cannot think of many technologies that I would want to bring into my classroom. Am I too old school? What do you think? Can you think of some of your favorite technologies that you would use in your future classrooms?

Unit Plan Canvas

Happy Sunday, everyone!
This week I made a lesson plan on a PLAYground Canvas regarding to my post from two weeks ago on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Without being repetitive, I just want to stress the importance of reading and fully understanding Hamlet, or any Shakespearean play for that matter. My canvas is an introduction to Hamlet's soliloquies. During my lesson, we will learn what a soliloquy is, what it does, and what Hamlet's soliloquies reveal about himself to the audience. The hardest part for me was actually making the canvas! I wasn't sure where to put what item and how big to make it. I wanted it to have some sort of flow, so I made the video (which is a great commentary video) quite large so hopefully people will understand that they should watch the video first. I also provided supplementary videos/links below to video, so again, hopefully people will understand.

Music in the Classroom

When browsing through other classmates' (including my own) blogposts, I've seen some postings about integrating film into the classroom. While I think this is a great idea, have any of you thought about bringing music into the classroom as well? If film is considered a technology, why not music? Music is something that is part of everyone's life, whether we listen to it or not, and I think it would be a great cross-curricular vehicle to utilize.
Music is the kind of audio poetry that opens our eyes--and ears--to the outside world. It brings forth memories as well as deep conversation. I stumbled over this artcle by Johns Hopkins University that emphasizes the utilization of music integration in the education system. The article opens up a discussion on how and why music can be utilized. "Music helps us learn because it will:

• establish a positive learning state
• create a desired atmosphere
• build a sense of anticipation
• energize learning activities
• change brain wave states
• focus concentration
• increase attention
• improve memory
• facilitate a multisensory learning experience
• release tension
• enhance imagination
• align groups
• develop rapport
• provide inspiration and motivation
• add an element of fun
• accentuate theme-oriented units"

Music can be about anything from current events and social awareness to even the basics such as the ABCs. You might ask, "It's easy to use music in the English and History classrooms, but what about Math and the Sciences?" Well, think back to when you were a kid: did you ever learn a song about numbers? I remember learning a song about how to count to five that I'll never forget.
Music is something that we take with us outside of the classroom. I think bringing some form of music would not only interest and engage our future students, but it is something that can be taken away and remembered outside the classroom and, hopefully, for the rest of our lives.

"Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents." - Ludwig van Beethoven

Technology and Pedagogy

I think the hardest lesson through out the high school and college experience (for English classes) is learning--and most importantly understanding--Shakespeare. The reason why I chose this lesson is because Hamlet is one of the most taught Shakespearean plays, yet a very small percentage of students actually understand it. I believe Hamlet is a wonderful play full of great lessons, and it is an injustice to students when those lessons are not taught properly. The lesson plan can be found here. I believe this lesson helps students get a better understanding of what Hamlet is really saying and the importance of a soliloquy. Although I found this lesson to be rich, I did see gaps between the lesson, strategy, and the technology. The only technology used is YouTube, which is a fantastic source, but did not really delve into other forms of technology that might help the students better understand the text. To be honest, I think it's a little hard to find multiple forms of technology when it comes to looking into drama and plays. Yes, a SmartBoard could be used, but will that really help the learning process? I believe watching a YouTube or film representation of a text is sufficient, and even necessary, in helping a student physically see what is happening in a given text. Along with close reading and classroom discussions, a visual representation of Shakespearean text will definitely give students a better understanding of the tough language that turns students off to begin with.

Lesson Plan Spreadsheet.

Technology Dependency

This is your first year teaching and you've worked all week long on the perfect presentation: You found an inspirational, yet informative, video on YouTube, your PowerPoint presentation is absolutely beautiful, and you finally figured out how to utilize the SmartBoard and all its functions.
Today is the day of your presentation and you couldn't be any more excited. You get to class early with just enough time to prepare for your oh, so wonderful lesson. The adrenaline courses through your veins as you walk up to the podium and begin to set up. Your students start to file into the classroom-- some groggy with a Case of the Mondays, some eager to learn, and others indifferent--yet you greet them all with a cheery smile. The second bell rings as you hit the "power" button..
Nothing happens.
Taking a deep breath, you hit the "power" button a second time with just a little more force. Nothing. You can feel your control of the classroom start to slip through your fingertips as you once again hit the "power" button...

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This is the kind of situation we've seen being played out over and over again, mostly amongst our classmates. But these are the classmates who will someday become teachers, just like you and me.

This is the kind of situation that we can also learn a very valuable lesson from: do not become dependent on technology. You can have the most state-of-the-art computers, SmartBoards, and every other new and innovative technology made for the classroom, but we have to remember that these are just tools for learning, NOT the basis of learning. I feel like many of us, especially the younger generations who plan on teaching later in life, have become very dependent on technology and won't know what to do when the technology fails on us. Our first thought it to panic when we should already have a Plan B--or even a Plan C, D, and E.

Although integrating technology in our future classrooms is very important, I think that it is even more important to always, always, ALWAYS have a back-up plan that does not involve having to use any form of tehcnology. Nothing is scarier than the thought of losing control of your future classroom.