Week 5:
Where to start! Ok so I went straight home and started to reproduce what Wendy had showed us about the image story in PowerPoint and how to then make that into a movie. So I made a really cool powerpoint demo and then was stumped about how to save all the slides as images. Then once I had another go at it at uni the next day I couldn’t even complete it because the uni computer doesn’t have Movie maker all they have is some cd creator. So I tried it and found that PowerPoint a lot like Word had so much more capabilities then I first had ever thought. Through class Wendy makes everything seem easy and I always try to write down some process of what just happened so I could try myself but didn’t get everything down. The PowerPoint complexity would definitely need some further development but as long as you know what your doing its teachable. Reproducing slides to start your movie is a simple process and you can create a really entertaining video by editing the background and the grouping. I edited the grouping of a mouse feature and found that there could be some problems here. As I removed the first feature that I didn’t want there seemed to be about 10 different lighter shades along with this one. This then made a seemingly seconds task into a five minute mission just to get it right. I then decided that it might be a lot quicker to do this in paint if there wasn’t a quicker way. Maybe I didn’t have a setting ticked to aid in this, not too sure in the end. Other then this I can see that there are many other features which can help make PowerPoint a really great a useful teaching aid. For instances the slide master tool can be implemented when students require more structure in their presentations, this tool also allows for generally more user options. Getting the students use to allowing these quick tools would be definitely beneficial in their schooling years.
Overall PowerPoint definitely has its place in modern ICT aids. It provides a great basic structure for presentations as well as allows for movie making procedures. With some simple explanation a teacher could easily display many different still and moving images. Along with audio insert boxes that enable sound into slides.

Bubbl.us came next after many failed attempts at trying to create a Glogster account and downloading googleearth. Bubbl.us is a great and easy tool which can help create your very own digital concept map. The features are very simple on the website but have easy to follow hover by instructions. You can link clouds together for similarities and create possibly as many as you want. They are easily saved to your username and the whole process is absolutely free. You can print the concept map easily and acquire the HTML address with the click of a button. It honestly is user friendly with some good tools available. The only disadvantage to this website I can see would be that the tools might be just that little bit too simple and you cannot have a multiple user page where students could adjust your concept map. You could definitely link these pages to a blog for student access or just upload the HTML. Overall it is an easy and simple tool which anyone could use without having user problems.

Unfortunately these were the only activites as I was a little daunted about the assignment but would definitely try to access these in the future. Anyways thanks for reading J