TECHNOLOGICAL PROFICIENCY
ARTIFACT 1 - Environmental Systems, Grade 12
This year (senior year), in Environmental Systems, we were to set up a project about an endangered species. Of course, I chose to use powerpoint, which we have learned a lot about at ISA over the years. It's the simplest, and now easiest (since we know how to use it so well), way to get your point across of present infromation to groups. The project was very interesting to me personally because I care about animals so much. It was tough to choose which animal to research, and sadly there are so many to choose from. I chose the African Wild Dog, which I fell in love with because they are very cute.
As for Technological Proficiency, we had to present our findings in front of the whole class individually. Over the years I have gotten better with not reading the screen, and just using power point for the audience to get a better idea. It's definitly a big form of communication and public speaking. Throughout the years, and what feels like more this year, we've been using power point and presenting it almost every time. This is actually really good experience. It's using technology to help us share research of info and present it professionaly.
ARTIFACT 2 - Global Leadership, 11th grade
In Global Leadership junior year, we learned a whole bunch about technology. More than I've ever learned. We also used a lot of different websites I've never used before and learned about how useful the computer really is today, and also how fast it's popularity is growing. It actually challenged my beliefs a lot, because I'm more of a "less is more" person with technology. I like to use it as little as possible. After we learned so much about new technology in the class though, I was much more for it when used it towards or with education. We had to take all that we learned and apply it to a short video we made on our own. We put this video on a website where we would share it with a bunch of people. Mine was on mobile computing (technology on the go), and I filmed Elena basically advertising smart phones on how useful they are and how much you can do on them, everywhere and anywhere you go. My video actually won an award as one of the videos picked from the site. Here is a link to the video:
http://grownupdigital.ning.com/video/freedom-with-mobile-computing
and here is a link to the website that says I won an award (scroll down after the videos and my name's under "multimedia awards"):
http://www.netgened.org/netgened-project-2010-awards.html
I edited and filmed the video. I added the music, the captions, cut the scenes, and everything else it takes to make a short video. You really have to understand the technology because movie editing can be super confusing. I used windows movie maker, which I've also learned a lot about over the years. Making this video was also working across boundaries. On the ning "grown up digital" website, tons of kids and teachers viewed the videos and shared them. This was during the rise of technology, so the videos were more likely to be more meaningful and have an impact on people.