Thirty Second Commercial

This project often seems scary at first. But after picking up the camcorder and trying to relax to "ham it up", it turns to fun. Back on the computer the options are overwhelming so we just use a small sampling that produces a multi-million dollar hit. Now that we're producers, we can teach others to be producers and include yet another fun media to motivate learner in today's youth culture.

This is not a sample of a 30-second commercial.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

But is there truth in those thousand words? Your fourth blog entry will be about what you discovered in class, or out of class, or with no class at all, about electronic images and their use in teaching.

Don't play hide and seek with polar bears. They always win.

Eight? Why eight?

Have you ever wondered why they write books about 101 solutions to lives problems? Or 1001 ways to skin a cat? It sells books. I suspect the eight guidelines is also arbitrary!

Anyhow, read this article "Media Literacy: Eight Guidelines for Teachers" (http://www.ohea.org/GD/Templates/Pages/OEA/OEADetail.aspx?Page=3&TopicRelationID=108&Content=15439). Then write your third blog about what you discovered, what you learned, your reflection or reaction, how you will use this information to improve your teaching skills and enhance the students learning abilities.

What ever happened to the Fahrenheit 451 theory?

Read and Write Web

Someone in class asked what a punch card was when I included the term in my introduction. Ten years ago we were taught to design webpages by typing the God forsaken code and all we could do was read each others' webpages. Today, and for the past several years, we can read the pages, but we can all type on them. Hence the new "Read/Write" web. It's also called Web2.0, although there never was a Web1.0.

This new Web2.0 concept has explored including blogs and Facebook and Twitter. There are thousands of websites where you can write as well as read. The website go2web20.net is a great starting point to find and explore such websites. So, go there, try a couple and write about them in your blog. This is your second blog assignment.

"In the Big Inning..."

My beginning was at the end of World War II, a month before D-day. Some crazies were also developing machine that could calculate and store information. Today we call them computers. My first job was in Alaska working for the federal government helping set up some of the their first computers. After I quit that job and became a full-time live-off-the-land toymaker in remote Alaska, I bought one of the first personal computers and soon was training teachers in public schools how to use their new Apples. Now I just try to keep from hyperventilating while watching the electronic world fly by. I've been doing that at WOU since 2000, the same year I earned my Masters here.

What about you? How did you get connected to computers?