Tech Tasks

Tech Task #1

Hello and welcome to my blog!
About Me:
My name is Matthew Bresciani, I'm currently in my final semester of my Middle Years Education Degree at the University of Regina. I hail from Regina, Saskatchewan and have lived here my entire life.  I come from a family of teachers (my mom is a Teacher, my dad is Principal and my only brother is in his second year of Secondary Education also at the U of R). A few of my hobbies include: Staying active with Intramural Sports (I usually play Soccer, Floor Hockey, Football, Innertube Waterpolo and Dodgeball each week), watching my two favourite sports teams (Saskatchewan Roughriders and Edmonton Oilers), Watching my favourite tv shows each week (I have too many to mention here, that would be it's own blog post alone), and many more!

My Thoughts on Technology:
Technology is a wonderful thing! I'm not sure I would be able to survive without my computer. I use it for so many things (Email, Photoshop, iMovie, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, just to mention a few) During my internship I don't know if I could have been able to teach as effectively without the use of technology in my classroom.  I loved using youtube videos and our systems moodle videos to help enhance my lessons.  Setting up a class blog was something that I also found worked really well and really seemed to engage the students and help them to take responsibility for their own learning.  Here's the link to my class blog if you are curious as to how it was set up, however you will not be able to read any of the content because kidblog.org protects posts from public viewing. 

Since technology is so prevalent in today's society,  most students are using and becoming familiar with new technology all the time.  As teachers we need to find a way to use and adapt this technology into our lessons as a  means of engaging our students in their own learning.  Instead of viewing technologies that students are actively involved in as a negative, we could use new technologies (Twitter, Youtube, Cell Phones, Social Media, etc.) as a tool in our teaching to actively engage our students in their own learning.  Engaging students is fundamental to learning, so why not use technology as a means to achieve this?

ECMP355:
I am very excited to be a part of this class as I feel it will truly help me to become a better teacher.  I expect to learn about different kinds of technologies (after one class I've already learned a bunch!!) that I will be able to use when I have my own classroom.  Once I have completed this class I hope to have learned how to implement new technologies into my teaching, Successfully create and maintain a Professional Blog, Successfully learn how to play the Ukulele, and many more things that will come as a surprise to me over the course of this semester!

Tech Task #2 

Wow, so I just finished watching the Youtube video "An Anthropological Introduction to Youtube" by Michael Wesch.  I'm not going to lie, over the past four years whenever a Professor would assign some boring video that was over the length of 3 minutes, I would usually just jump ahead to random sections of the video and look for answers to respond to (I'm sure that I'm not alone in this).  I must confess that the same thought crossed my mind for this task the minute I saw the 55:34 length of this video.  In the back of my mind I was thinking "Okay, this is way too long! The second half of the 49's game is going to start in a half hour. I'll just look for something that I can say was interesting and write a response about it".  Unfortunately for the slacker inside of me, the minute the video began, I was hooked! This video was incredibly interesting and it really made me think about the actual community that is Youtube, and how do I fit into everything Michael is saying. I've got so much to talk about, but I don't want to write too much or chances are you won't read this post and I'll be lucky if you've read this far on my post!
Originally I viewed Youtube as a place where people can post videos as a means to get attention.  I never really thought of it as a "New form of empowerment, New form of community, or a new way to connect in ways we couldn't before" As the video continued I began to think more and more about these words and how I use Youtube now.  I quickly came to the realization that I am actually an active member of this Youtube community.  Initially, I used Youtube solely for the purpose of listening to music or watching music videos.  However, almost two years ago I decided that I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, but I really didn't want to pay for lessons.  After some searching for tabs online, I decided to search Youtube to see if there were videos that would teach me how to play.  I typed in the words" How to play Our Song on guitar" (Yes the first song I wanted to learn on guitar was a Taylor Swift Song) To my delight, I found thousands of videos that could teach me to play this song.  I watched a bunch of different videos that people had posted of themselves playing the song and learned how to play my first song on guitar! When I look at it now, this is actually really amazing because the first song I ever learned on guitar was taught to me by people whom I've never met and have absolutely no idea who I am. Yet they connected with me through the images of themselves they posted on Youtube and I, for the rest of my life, will always remember "yourguitarsage" and "kfarrow77" as the people who taught me how to play my first song on guitar.
Here's kfarrow77's video that helped me to learn the song:



Another idea from the video that really caught my attention was the idea that people can actually form a new identity or mask in a new community space where "everybody is watching but no one is there".  It's interesting how comfortable most of the people in the Youtube community are when they are posting videos of themselves on the Internet.  Lots of these people are posting videos of themselves doing things that they might not be inclined to do at first in a public setting.  This in itself is kind of ironic because there would probably be less people watching if they were to do a live version of their video for say 100 people, then the millions that are able to view their video on the net.  An example that I immediately thought of was the "Single Ladies Guy" dancing in a leotard in front of his camera to the song all the "All the Single Ladies".  In the video he seems incredibly comfortable showing off his dance skills to the world, but the question in the back of my mind is "When he posted this video, if he had the choice to perform the dance in front of his webcam (in the comfort of his own house), or on stage, which would he choose?
Here's the video by Cubbyradio:



As it turns out, after this video gained immense popularity online, and he became a Youtube Sensation and was actually brought out during a Beyonce concert to dance with her on stage.  So again my question remains "Did he always have the confidence to perform in front of thousands of people, or did Youtube give him the confidence to perform in public after performing for millions, alone from the comfort of his home? It's much easier to remain anonymous and hide from others comments on Youtube than it is in your everyday life.

Tech Task #3

 
For my Third Tech Task I needed to create a budget spreadsheet on google docs using the data provided to me by my professor. Once I completed entering in the data and all doing the calculations(the SUM formula was great for this), I couldn't decide how to make it an attractive spreadsheet. My impulse was to centre everything, but some of the data looked out of place, so I kept everything aligned to the left. The other impulse I had was to make all the columns different colour's because it would look cool. However, once I did it I had trouble reading some of my labels, so I decided to stick with plain white text and colour the background of the cell instead. My last touch was to colour the background of every second cell to make my data easier to read. To see my final product you go to my Spreadsheet on Google Docs. 

Here's a humourous picture I found online that reminded me of my mindset when I first learned Microsoft Excel! 

Tech Task #4

For my Fourth Tech Task I was asked to create a parody of a Master Card "Priceless Commercial" using between 4-5 pictures.  The assignment gave me the option to complete this task individually or to work on it in a group of about 3 people.  Naturally I jumped at the opportunity to work with others because I hate individual assignments and love working with other people.  I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to work with such awesome group members, Kirk Fiege and Nick Barnes on this tech task.  At first we weren't sure what we wanted to do our "Priceless" commercial on, but after some spit-balling of ideas we landed on the idea of creating a commercial about "Bromance".  We also enlisted the help of expert photographer, Cynthia Schultz to help us take actual pictures of us for our assignment.  In the end we used iMovie to throw it all together, and here's our final product:

Let us know what you think!

Tech Task #5

For my Fifth Tech Task I was asked to browse through the images in the Flickr group, "Great quotes about learning and change" and create my own picture based of the examples I had looked at.  Before I even started looking of pictures that I could use for my task, I needed to think of a good quote to use in my picture.  After some googling for quotes to use, a different quote entirely popped into my head, "For every turned off electronic device there is potentially a turned off child"  These words were spoken by Stephen Heppell in the video "Learning to Change, Changing to Learn", a video that I posted on my blog a few days ago.  I love the quote because I believe that since students today are so engaged in technology, we need to embrace it as a learning tool otherwise we may loose them.
Here is my final product for my task using Adobe Photoshop CS5:

There was also an optional part for this Tech Task that I chose to do as well.  For the task I had to make my own album cover using the instructions from meme. This was actually quite fun to do as I was able to once again use Photoshop to make my album cover.  I would highly recommend trying this task out for yourself if you are bored and want to have some fun!
Here's the info that I had to work with for this assignment:
The random name that Wikipedia gave me was Edith Picton-Turbervill.
The last four words of the random quote that I got were one. Like with pie.
The random image that I got off of Flickr was:

 And here is my final product for the album:

Tech Task #6

For my Sixth Tech task I was asked to create a short digital story using any of the digital story telling tools that are available online. Believe it or not I actually struggled with this task for quite a while! As soon as I saw this assignment I figured it would be super easy for me to do, but for the longest time I struggled with the task of thinking of a story worth telling. I had a bunch of ideas for stories but every time I began working on them, I didn't like where they were going so I quit and moved on to a new idea. Throughout the whole process I think I signed up for over 6 different digital story sites until finally settling on Google Search Stories as the means to tell my story. I never imagined that just trying to come up with a story would be so hard! However, being the big film buff that I am, I finally decided to tell a story about a young aspiring film director and I'm satisfied with the end result of my story.

Here's my final product:


Let me know what you think!

Tech Task #7

For our Seventh Tech Task we were asked to create a short Podcast and embed it in our blog. Once again I worked with Nick Barnes and Kirk Fiege on this assignment. We used Garageband to record and edit our podcast and used parts of the song "Purple Swag" as our intro/outro. Here's our polished product, I hope you enjoy it:

Tech Task #8

For our eighth  tech task we were asked to recreate our own version of the American Film Institutes "Door Scene". For this assignment I worked with some awesome partners: Heather, Rachael, Nick and Kirk.   Rather than go the suspenseful and scary route, we decided to go with a more comedic approach.  We had our entire scene take place using a car door instead of a traditional door.  To film the scene we used a Flip Camera and edited the scene using iMovie 11!
Here is our final product, hope you enjoy!


If you want to know more about the "Door Scene" check out the American Film Institutes Educator Handbook.

Tech Task #9

For my Ninth Tech Task I was asked to view the movie, "rip!: A remix manifesto", a documentary by Brett Gaylor which explores the the creative art form of remixing media as well as the evolution of copy rights.  The documentary addresses these issues using the the four points in "A Remixer's Manifesto" as a vehicle to justify their views presented in the video.  The Four Points presented can been seen in the image below:

I found this documentary interesting because up until about a year ago I didn't have a whole lot of insight into the art of creating mash-ups or remixing media.  However, last year my younger brother introduced me to various songs that had been remixed or mash-ed up to create an entirely new song.  I found it truly amazing because many of the remixes and mash-ups that I begun to stumble upon remixed songs of completely different genres into an entirely new genre.  To get an idea of what I'm talking about here's a couple of remixes by my favourite Remix Artists (Well the clean versions  that I can post to my blog)
 The White Panda: Mo Free Mo Falling (Remixes Biggie Smalls with Tom Petty)



DJ's From Mars: Enter Telephone (Mash-Up with Metallica and Lady Gaga)


Along with viewing the documentary I was also asked to respond to one or more questions found in the Educational Guide for RIP: A Remixer's Manifesto.

General: Do you think you can argue your creativity when it’s based on other people’s work?
Music: Do you believe there are forms of music that are not built on past works?

These are interesting questions because I had similar questions when I first heard remixes by artists such as The White Panda or DJ's From Mars.  I always wondered, "how can these artists claim this music as their own, if they are using other artists work?" On one side of this question you could argue that regardless of how much re mixer's alter a song or a piece of work it can never be considered their own creation because it already belongs to someone else.  However, the video raised an interesting point when Brett looked at the song "You need Love" by Muddy Waters and how he got the riff from the song by Son House and how that same riff can be heard again and again throughout various songs as the years progressed, in particular the song "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin.  If this is the case, and using other peoples work to create a new song, how can we possibly view Muddy Waters or Led Zeppelin as creative?  Technically they both used the past (the Riff from Son House) to build on a future creation.  Is this really a negative thing?
In response to the second question, I honestly don't believe that there are any forms of music out there that haven't evolved or been created without an influence from the past.  Almost all of the genres of music today have evolved as a result of music from the past.  A good example of this could be the evolution of Rock N' Roll.  This genre didn't just come out of nothing, but rather a combination of African American Blues, Country, Jazz and Gospel Music.  This example truly shows how important the past is in creating a future.  Imagine for a second,  that over 100 years ago Jazz or Blues were never created, what would today's music sound like today?

Tech Task #10

For our final Tech Task we were asked to perform a comparison between two Learning Management Systems of our choice.  Rather than work on the task alone we were able to work on the assignment in a group. Big surprise here, but I once again worked with Nick and Kirk for this assignment.  As we looked at some of the LMS options, we eventually settled on comparing Edmodo and Schoololgy.  Now I don't want to spoil too much for you in my description, but we did find some really valuable aspects of each program that would be highly beneficial in a classroom for each.  However, if you want to hear which one we would recommend and our comments about each you will have to check out our podcast found below!
Here's the second episode of the Rant Show with a focus on Edmodo and Schoology: