I am so frustrated right now because I spent most of today typing my reflections about my experience with Flickr and Picnik, only to hit the ‘post’ button in my blog to get an ‘error’ message! I was devastated to say the least so here I am with a second attempt!
I spent quite a bit of time (perhaps I was procrastinating a little), looking for a suitable image on this website to upload to Flickr – as I have just learnt is an online repository for images. I ended up choosing this picture because I feel it represents a good analogy of how I am feeling at this point in the course. It is a picture of the world caught up in a technological web, and yes this is how I am feeling. On a positive note, I realise that the frustrations that I have experienced along the way form part of my steep technological learning curve and we all have to start somewhere. I am hoping that in years to come I can look back at this post and have a little chuckle to myself. All the activities I have engaged in so far have taken me a lot longer than I anticipated and I seem to always manage to find the longest and most confusing way possible around things. Is it just me? I find myself asking this question a lot!
I found Flickr easy to register with and a wonderful way of uploading personal pictures/photos to the Internet where you can store them in one accessible file. I uploaded some personal family pictures and also the one used on my blog for this activity (which I am unable to upload right now). I then set up a Picnik account and uploaded some pictures to play around with and manipulate. I am stoked to find something that can get rid of ‘red eyes’ in photos. I had only ever heard of PhotoShop before but never actually used it. I spent a few hours experimenting with the resizing, chopping, rotating and red eye functions, and found this program to be a very useful tool indeed. Of cause there are many other software packages available that can alter images but these require additional cost and some time to become expert in I would imagine.
So how do these technologies fit in with the pedagogical frameworks discussed throughout this course so far? Well, I believe students can incorporate these technologies when they prepare presentations in PowerPoint or include images on a wiki for example. Flickr and Picnik are just a couple of examples of the wide variety of software tools available for design, planning and making presentations to enable students to do more sophisticated and complex tasks. Technology provides an electronic learning mileux that fosters the kind of creativity and communication required to nourish engagement (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999).
As of tonight I will be offline for 1 week as my family and I drive from Brisbane to Mackay. Yes we are finally making the move and I have mixed feelings about it, believe me!!! I am very sad to be leaving my family and friends, but also trying to remain positive about embarking on new beginnings. I will literally hit the ground running in regards to my embedded learning placement (Here’s hoping I have a school to be placed at by then), as I will commence the day after our furniture gets delivered to our home. I look forward to catching up on all your Blog’s in 1 week! I hope you all have a very safe and happy Easter break, and I do apologise that you are unable to view my image.
References:
Kearsley, G., & Shneiderman, B. Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning, sourced from: http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm
