Desktop Publishing & Movie Maker, Blog Post #5

I’d first like to discuss how Desktop Publishing can be used to make my job easier and more effective. When I need to communicate with students, teachers, administrators, and parents, this amazing software tool enables me to do so with speed and in professional quality. When publications look exciting and interesting, readers are more likely to be excited and interested in the subject matter. Some of the ways I can use Desktop Publishing are:

· Make creative bookmarks to pass out to my library patrons
· Advertize special programs with eye-catching signs and flyers
· Send enticing invitations to award parties
· Produce professional-quality awards for reading programs
· Create fun forms for my K-Kids organization
· Make my own business cards

Programs such as Movie Maker and Digital Photostory can be used to enhance lessons. Pictures, music and videos can be easily combined to make a film on any subject. I envision making a short video about our local Audie Murphy Museum. Better yet, students could work alongside me, and they could learn technology and local history in a constructivist setting. This past fall I hosted an Audie Murphy family night at our school and found out that many of the students had not been to visit the museum. I would like to work with the museum staff to put together a virtual tour to inspire the students to want to visit the museum and learn more about our local, and World War II, history. Along the same line, I would like to create a movie or Photostory highlighting other local historic sites. Both of these are products that wouldn’t be available for purchase or download, and could only be produced locally.

These web applications align well with my vision and definition for educational technology, in that I would be designing, developing and utilizing processes and resources for teaching and learning.

I believe that use of this sort of technology is become more and more popular in our visual society. This is probably due to the vast amount of visual media available to us through television, movies, video games, computers, etc. As educators we need to keep in step and even lead in the trend toward the use of images and sound in our methods and media.