This week in class we worked with digital images and were sent in groups on a scavenger hunt around campus. My group had to take pictures of opposites like hot and cold, short and tall, etc. Afterward we resized the images and created this Picasa Web Album slide show:
As well as this Google presentation:
Things that went well:
- I enjoyed the group work component and we had a lot of fun walking around and trying to find creative pictures to take.
- Uploading the images, resizing them, and renaming them was fairly easy once it was explained to us in class.
- I like the way the Google presentation turned out. I find it very visually appealing and it was very similar to Powerpoint which many students will likely be familiar with, only with the added benefit of online sharing capabilities.
And not so well:
- Figuring out how to embed the videos on our blogs was frustrating. There were several unclear steps and it took a while to figure it out. Also, once I did so on Picasa Web Albums I assumed I would be able to figure it out on the Google presentation, but ended up having to Google a solution.
- It was a bit tedious renaming, resizing, tagging, adding captions, and adding every picture to the slideshow. I can see why several of these steps would be beneficial in the future, but it did seem time consuming.
- I do not necessarily find the Picasa Web Album slide show very appealing so I will likely not opt to use it in the future.
Potential uses in my future classroom:
Overall, I enjoyed the scavenger hunt and actually taking the digital images. The process of making the slideshows however was not as enjoyable. Hopefully with practice, it will become a quicker process and something that I can integrate into my classroom.
- I really enjoyed the scavenger hunt activity and that it was assigned in such a way that we could easily recreate the activity with our students. The list given to my group would be specifically useful for a lesson on opposites, but other groups had topics such as colors, social studies concepts, etc. that I could also use.
- I can use the knowledge of Google Presentation or Picasa Web Albums to create slideshows for various lessons in my class.
- I can have students create a slideshow using either tool for class presentations, group projects, etc.
Overall, I enjoyed the scavenger hunt and actually taking the digital images. The process of making the slideshows however was not as enjoyable. Hopefully with practice, it will become a quicker process and something that I can integrate into my classroom.
