Technology Project and She came in through the bathroom window

I am not very good with technology. I know that. My parents know that. My roommates certainly know that since they have to listen to my muffled cursing that undoubtedly goes on while working on my computer. But this class has taught me an exceptional amount about technology and the importance of having it within your classroom. I hope to make technology an integral part of my teaching.

For this final technology project, I wanted to put together a Power Point presentation on Walt Whitman. I choose Power Point because I have seen countless bad Power Point presentations in my time as a student. I wanted to be able to create something that had the needed information and was interesting to listen and watch. As such, along with the Power Point, I will use Smart Board technology in order to highlight particular sections of my presentation. Using the Smart Board will also captivate my students and give them the desire to watch and see what I am going to do. I also put in two Internet links. The first is a You Tube video. It is a brief, 2 minute clip from the film Dead Poet's Society. Within this scene the teacher is encouraging the student to recite poetry by using Walt Whitman as an aid. It is an incredibly powerful scene and gives a great introduction of Walt Whitman. I also included a audio link of Walt Whitman reading the poem "America". This will interest students greatly and will allow them to have a audible example of what Whitman sounded like.

The above paragraph clearly shows that I am becoming adept with using the Internet as a learning tool, especially when using Power Point. Throughout this entire course, I have learned about Smart Board, Web 3.0 tools, blogging, wikis, Google and it's accoutrement's, etc. I feel that there is so much more that I would like to be adept in, specifically the programs that come with every computer: Word, Power Point, and Excel. I feel that there is so much that I don't know about these programs. It would be fundamentally important to know these programs inside and out since I am going to have access to them as an educator. Also, I have some slight problem with box.net. It seems to never like me, but maybe this time :)!!!