I put long hours into producing my digital biography. I started at about midnight and sort of finished at about 6:00 PM the next day. But, I did some other things also during that time. First, I had to find a select photos. Some were in my computer files but some were in albums I inherited after my parents died. I recognize the people in most of the photos but many people's names escape me. They were friends of my parents and military friends of my father. Unfortunately, none of the several hundred photos was labled. There was one exception which was grade school photos of classes at Halstrom Elementary in Rockford, Il. I found my father's 6th grade class photo and my own from the same school. Of course, none of the students names were included. I found the vuvox site to be pretty user friendly. I had trouble initially trying to import music files. First, I had never ripped music from a disc before and when I did vuvox would not load mine. Vuvox did not like windows media player. So, I called Steve at the Help Desk and he told me to down load a free MP3 ripper, rip the music I wanted again and so I did. However, before I could make that work, I had to delete the music that I had ripped from my file. Then, everythng worked. And, I like what I came up with. There was a lot of emotion involved because I was looking at hundreds of photos of people who are deceased and I miss them. Some of them were buried this last year. Two young women died during August and their deaths were unexpected. My father was the youngest of 8. So, the demography is just what it is. To top all that off I was gone for over 35 years (out of sight-out of mind). So, I see my brothers seldom and my sister now lives in Florida. I saw her briefly about 10 years ago. She has been back to the area several times for weddings and funerals on her husbands side. There has been no extra time. We had a reunion for my siblings and I planned last Christmas in Rockford but a sneaux storm foiled our plans even for those close to each other in Rockford. Anyway, after I wrote this post I looked at the digital biography and found glitches. I added hot spots and found out that you can edit my vuvox college if I am logged in at the same time that you view it using the link below. I also saw that placement of the hot spots can be important because when the window of the hot spot opens it can highlight a feature that is not complimentary. So, I will do more editing for sure.
There were 2 values in completing the course task related to teaching. First, I now have another weapon to use in class. I am a little more competant with technology and have a greated desire to go farther. I also have more to share using distance technology like e-mails and facebook. The second value was that it made me think about the lives of students and how they vary. Some have great families; others have none or bad ones. Professor Boyer will visit Adams-Friendship this fall and I hope he meets Michelle Johnson and her husband who both teach in the middle school. I substituted for Michelle several times; she is a technologist too and a wonder with the students. I have never seen better classroom management. In a way Michelle and her husband serve as surrogate parents for a fair number of students who do not have real families. They don't like Thanksgiving or Christmas vacations because they won't be fed well again until they are back in school. Michelle told me that. So, in thinking about my family and childhood, I had to reflect on those of students who are not as fortunate as I was. I think they need extra teacher support and empathy, and they are not likely to have ready access to technology that I might want to use in class. I will think of ways to overcome that obstacle.
Whether vuvox is used or an alternative, I have a way to interact with students to get to know them better. I think having them do a similar exercise at the beginning of a term is a good way to help them become more tecnology savvy (as per DPI performance standards), engage their interest and capture their imaginations. We already have students making video productions in most high schools. So, why can't all of the students catch up to their peers? The exercise is like the old show and tell that we all enjoy. So, we can honor students by giving them a show and tell they can enjoy sharing with the class while they learn new stuff. And, I don;t mean just biographies. How about exercises like a digital project report, or a digital book report? The digital collage can be adapted to a variety of class assignments where students discover new things and simply add their findings to the collage. So now I need to find other similar web sites that they and I can use.
Mark's Digital Biography on Vuvox
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