EDUC560

Google Drive

Cloud based storage in general is almost essential in an era where physical storage and electronics are susceptible to physical damage, and this is doubly so for Google Drive which benefits from being a part of the Google ecosystem. This means we can use drive and docs, sheets, and slides on the drive itself rather than work locally then upload to the drive.

Cloud based storage

As for benefits to teaching, teachers can create a public drive for the students and, with the right amount of  access and limits imposed on students, they can access worksheets that can be assigned for HW, have access to slides from the classroom, and even access grades on a public Sheet if the school does not provide them off of the website. They can also hand in their assignments on the drive and see comments from the teacher and even have them editted out.

Activinspire

One of my less favorite assignments we worked on, Activinspire still has quite a few uses in the classroom. First, it has many tools that allows students to interact, which is something that has very few substitutes. It allows their work to be showcased to the entire class when they are doing activities, and allows for the movement and manipulation of graphical objects, something impossible to replicate on a whiteboard. I did not like it personally because, coming from Photoshop, its tools seemed very limited so designing certain activities that had very specific requirements was not possible or, at least, required multiple programs. It's still an incredible tool that every school should utilize to some extent.

Pecha Kucha

I thoroughly enjoyed the Pecha Kucha primarily because it plays into one of my strengths; presentations. Pecha Kucha had the requirement of 20 slides with 20 allotted seconds for each slide, which meant timing the slides properly and being prepared was essential. I did this via using animations, which gave me hints as to when the slide was about to end, this is mainly because 20seconds is a very long time to predict a slide's ending, but if I animate it so that the last object appears 5 seconds before the slide ends, then I can be far more prepared for the recurring slide and make a quick conclusion based on it. I saw that this is where most students faltered; either the next slide appeared too quickly or they were sat waiting for the current slide to end.