Bronwynjsmith’s Weblog

Hooray!  The semester is over!!!  Now I get to concentrate on buying and wrapping presents!  Not to  mention cleaning my house, which has definitely been neglected throughout the semester!  Merry Christmas!!!

Just finishing up a few more things and I will be done with this semester!  Yeah!

I really liked the idea of making my own website, and I am proud of it now that it is finished.  However, I really, really disliked the eZedia software.  Every time I opened my project up to work on it, it would work fine for about 5 minutes.  Sometimes even 15 minutes, but then, inevitably, it would start working really, really slow, as if I were on the internet using a dial-up connection.  The only thing I had open was eZedia, but my computer acted as if I had 50 applications running at the same time.  After about 2 minutes of it working at a snail’s pace, it would just lock up on me.  I would have to hit ctrl.alt.del and log completely off my computer to get out of it, and then re-open it, only for it to work for another 10 minutes before it locked up on me again.  As I said earlier, I am proud of my website and I am glad that I got it done, but I just wish it wouldn’t have been such a hassle to get it there.  I like my website, but I feel like I could have done a much better job, had I been working with a better software.  I would like to look into possibly buying a better software so that I can continue to update my website.  This whole website thing is new to me and I don’t know anything about this kind of software, but if it all works this way, I will never have time to update or make another website. 

 Despite my problems with eZedia, I am glad that we made a website in this class, because otherwise, I never would have thought that I could do it.  I do want to keep up with it so that I can use it in the future.  I learned a lot of great tools in this class and I hope to use them in my future classroom.  My website is at www.bronwynjsmith.info .

I really liked Marci’s at www.marciedgington.info .  She had some really cute graphics and you can tell she really put some work into it.  I also liked that she linked her lesson plans to it.  I wish I had thought of that!  I also liked Ashley’s page at www.ashleyconnolly.com .  She had a page that showed lots of pictures of her and her family, and also a page that told about her goals and passions.  I thought that was neat.  I also liked Sharon’s page at http://www.fairpoint.net/~ksstockton/Sharon%20Stockton%20Website/index.html .  She uploaded a calendar onto hers which was a really neat idea.  Her family can look on the calendar and see what she has going on for the day.  I am going to look into putting one of those on my page.

If I had to choose one, it would probably be Driving Questions, since he had a video to watch, rather than just audio.  Honestly, I listened to so many podcasts that I am kind of burnt out on them and I probably won’t be listening to any for a while.

I will try to keep up on this blog, if I can get time.  I would really like to use my website, but I dread having to go make any changes to it, considering how many problems I had with the eZedia software.  I may just see about getting some other software that works better so I can continue updating my website.  I am glad I learned how to make a website, though, because it will come in handy when I have a classroom of my own.

With my students, I will definitely be using ToonDoo.  I really think the kids would enjoy making their own cartoons.  I would like to get them blogging, but that depends on how much technology is a available at the school I end up at.  I will also be using the google notebook for any papers I have to write in the future.

I really liked the google notebook feature.  I think that will help me a lot with papers in the future.  I also liked the voicethread assignment.  That will be neat to have my students work with.  I also liked ToonDoo.com.  It was in one of the K12 Online Conferences and I really think students would have fun with it.  I am getting the hang of the blogging, and I think I’ll try to keep up with it.  Finally, I liked the idea of the website project.  To be honest, the eZedia software made the project a nightmare because it kept locking my computer up and kicking me out of it, so it took forever to make just one page for my website.  If the software had worked better, I think I could have made a much better website, and this project would have been a lot more fun.

Just trying to get everything done for the end of the semester!

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