February 16- Vidcast Reflection

The name of our vidcast is , The 5 Senses. The core that is addressed with our series is Standard 4; Objective 2 (Describe the parts of living things) in Kindergarten Science. We are describing the parts of living things. In particular, we are focusing on the five senses of human life and the body parts connected with them.
Throughout our vidcast we are exploring sight, smell, sound, touch, and tast through different pictures. In our vidcast, we have a picture of the body part correlating to the particular sense followed by two slides of pictures that represent how and what we use that specific sense for.
The reason that we chose this topice for our vidcast was because we wanted to be able to teach students about their five sense and the things we use them for each day in a way different than lecture. Each sense is connected to a specific body part. To show this we are using visual representations of each of these. Sight is with our eyes, smell is through our nose, sound is through our ears, touch comes from our hands and feet, and tast comes through our mouths. In our vidcast, we are showing the relationship between the sense and the corresponding body part for that specific sense.
We use every sense every day. But there are also individuals who do not have the sue or control over all five of those senses. Those individuals who do not have all five senses are able to use the other four senses to make up for the one(s) that they may be lacking. For example, individuals who do not have the ability to hear are able to communicate through sight. And those individuals who are not able to see, they are able to use touch and sound to help them in their day-to-day life.
Potential drawbacks would be that we are showing only specific things for each sense. Many of the pictures are mainly used for the particular sense that we are showing with them. But they can also be confused with the use of other senses. For taste, we are using many food items. But for food, we use different senses other than simply taste. We use taste, touch, smell, and sight for it. Sight is used for almost every sense, so we tried to focus on things that can only be seen, things not able to be touched or smelled.
For extended understanding this series would need to include other vidcasts displaying some items that we use multiple senses for. It would be beneficial for the learning experience to see these differences and the multiple ways that each sense can be used. We could use one picture of an item followed by the different senses that may come into play when that item is sensed. This could lead into a discussion about how one sense may trigger another one. For example, many times when we see things that are new and interesting we instantly want to be able to hold it, to touch it. Or when food is being cooked in another room, our noses pick up the scent and our taste sense is activated. Almost always, one sense causes another sense to take place as well.
We would use this in our classrooms as an introduction to our five senses. Because our vidcast is limited to under two minutes there are many things that are not included that would be necessary in the learning of our senses. It holds just the basic understandings for each sense. The best way that this would be used would be as an introduction that would easily lead into a classroom discussion.
Students would be able to gather personal knowledge about their five senses after the vidcast has been shown. This would be a good base for a discussion. Studentss would be able to look at individual items that they like or dislike through their senses. (i.e "I like tasting pizza, but I don't like tasting spaghetti.)
Maddy and I worked well together. We were able to split up the work evenly to do on our own, and then we easily combined it all once we were ready to produce our vidcast. We each took half of the pictures and different sections that we would speak on. After we had every picture and all of our ideas gathered, we put the final project together. Once all of the slides we in with the desired transitions and timings, we recorded audio for the vidcast.
I would like to have the opportunity to take this series farther. It would be good to be able to add upon the topic as lessons and discussions move on. Knowing how to make something like this will be nice to use in future classrooms. The use of a vidcast would not only be a great tool for instruction, but it would also be a great tool for the students. Getting them more involved and creating their own series about knowledge that they have gained about specific subjecst, would be a fun project and assessment for the class.

February 9- Vidcast 1

We are planning on using photostory for our project. We are going to make a vidcast about the 5 senses for a kindergarten class. We will have pictures for four of the senses, and then we will have music for our hearing sense.
The different tools available are cool. The jing program would be super helpful when trying to teach my mom stuff with her blog. It would also be nice as a tutorial for parents or students that are new to a program that will be used in classes or for different resources.

February 6- Podcast

I had never really heard or knew what a podcast was until this week. I learned that there are many things that are considered to be podcasts.
This would be a great resource for absent students or diverse learners. It can also be a fun resource to use within a lesson plan. To be able to incorporate it into an activity would be fun and a simple interactive.
Using podcasts as a way of presenting reports would be fun. It would be fun as a student to be able to record your own voice. Children like to hear themselves and they would be able to do that in a productive way. This would also be helpful in collaboration meetings. If someone is missing or something is missed during the meeting then having it recorded would be helpful. This way it can be posted online for later reference.