EDCI 3332 Post 7

For this blog posting I visited www.eduhound.com, the website that caught my eye was located at http://enablingdevices.com/catalog. Enabling Devices is a company that develops affordable learning and assistive devices that help people of all ages with disabling conditions. As a Special Education minor I was captivated by this site by the vast amount of Assistive Technology devices that I encountered. One particular device that I found interesting was a tabletop controller that adapts to the popular video game Guitar Hero that allows individuals with disabilities to play the popular game for a reasonable price. After visiting this site I would like to investigate other sites that manufacture assistive technology devices for other applications such as driving a car or operating appliances at home.

EDCI 3332 Post 6

For this blog posting I visited an Educational Technology Portal at http://www.education-world.com/. The article I read was about the gadget of the week “CamStudio by Alma Row” at http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/gadget/gadget003.shtml. I discovered a handy tool that allows screencasting. The CamStudio program allows you to create videos of what you are doing on your computer and add narration to standard AVI video files which can be easily converted to Streaming Flash videos (SWFs). The best part of CamStudio is that it is free and relatively simple to use by almost anyone. After reading this article I would like to investigate how I can use this program to create fully automated Powerpoint presentations with a voice over to narrate the slides.

EDCI 3332 Post 5

For this blog posting I visited: from now on the educational technology journal at http://www.fno.org/sept2010/overequipped.html and read an article titled “Over-Equipped? Is it possible to have too many laptops? By Jaime McKenzie. The article touched on the fact that the possession of a laptop at home or at school does not automatically create better readers, writers or thinkers. As the article states;“What matters is how those laptops are used and what pedagogical strategies teachers have employed to make the best possible uses of the tools at hand.”Furthermore, this article stressed the importance of thinking strategically about the types and the numbers of tools being used during any one lesson because there are no set rules to control what works best. After reading this article I would like to investigate additional methods that can be implemented in classrooms that allow my students to work collaboratively in groups.