What I Learned

 Creating a blog was something I never considered that I would ever do. Here I am at the end of a semester of Blogging and I will admit that I have enjoyed it, not at the beginning but in retrospect. being able to blog has given me a change to share the little bit of knowledge I have learned with anyone willing to read my blog. I learn best if what I am learning has a purpose, So, having the requirement to learn, then write a post about the technology tools that I learned, gave me another purpose to learn the tools. 

Thanks for the experience!

Class eBook

 This may be my last blog post and it may not! I have spent a semester learning a variety of new technology and creating and writing this blog has been part of that learning. It was in the Instructional Technology in Human Resource and Development class that I was asked to do all this learning. Each student was required to choose from a list of new technology tools to research, learn, and write an instructional paper on how to use that tool. All of these papers were complied by the graduates students in the class into an eBook. Here is a link to that book, Technology Tools for Adults spring 2022, for anyone to learn from,  https://bit.ly/3EmnUhQ.  

Last week I had the chance to do an extra credit assignment. The assignment was to create an animated video that taught or shared information. For a couple of years, I have half heartly investigated the animated video platform Powtoon. I had a reason to use the website and with the use of the eBook I learned about the website from my classmate Kristen Waring, who wrote her paper on this video making website. 

To be honest, I am a hands on learning, so after I skimmed through her paper to get the basics, I signed up and drove in. It took me about 6-7 hours to complete my video. It may not have taken me as long if I had read the paper thoroughly. Here is a link to 4 Tips to Effective Communication,  the video that I created, https://youtu.be/WlIDJpkSMB4 

I am excited to have our eBook as a resource for learning. Granted I may not use all the tools immediately but when I have another need, I hope to stretch myself and use one of the new tools to think outside my own box of learning. 

 

YouTube

 "Google it" used to be the thing that I would hear all the time when I would ask my kids about learning something. Now I get a new phrase when I ask how to do something, "YouTube It".  Anything you what to know how to do, you can find a YouTube video to show you how to do it. In fact, you can find several different ways to do the same thing and with the materials you have on hand. It's amazing!

For a different class I needed to know how to make a table of contents for a document I was creating, I got tired of trying to figure it out and went to check out my Feedly with my blogs on it. As I was browsing through one of my favorite blogs Teacher's Tech I found their YouTube channel. While looking through videos, I found the exact video I needed to learn how to create a table of contents.  

Here is the link: https://bit.ly/36oZo3h  or just watch it from here!

Learning about different technologies and how to use them has been very helpful in my Technology class but also for my other classes. I may get frustrated during the learning process of the different types of technologies, but searching YouTube has been one that has been worth all that frustration.

Screencasting

 This week in my technology class we were asked to create a screencasting video. I have watched several hundred videos of people demonstrating how to do things. I have always wanted to know how they have created those videos. Now I know and I am going to share a secret, it is not as easy as they make it look 😣! I didn't realize how much I stammer and say ummm. Your computer does not always cooperate either. So I made two short videos. My first video I demonstrated how to edit an image. It took several tries to even create something worth listening to and then several more tries to create something I might consider posting, but here it is.

Then I decided to try something that might stretch me and I did. I demonstrated the draw tool in Windows documents. This tool is something I knew very little about and I still don't know much. Here is my second video:

So I used Screencast-0-Matic  to create these videos and here is a link to a short tutorial on how to use it,  https://bit.ly/3CEIGsv.  Even as I made these videos, I wondered if there were even better ways to do the things I demonstrated. I guess that will be another learning experience. Until next week!

Audacity

 I would love to say that I am an expert when it comes to Audacity, but I am not. I won't even say that I know enough to really be telling any one about Audacity. I will share the very small amount that I know about it. '

Let's start with what Audacity is. If I don't get this right, someone please feel free to correct me or add to this post. Audacity is a "Free Open Source Cross-Platform Audio Software" and that description is taken from the Audacity website. I will not pretend to understand what a cross-platform is, but audio software gives me the ability to create, export, and store audio recordings. 

I started by downloading the Audacity app onto my computer. The good thing about using a lot of technology these days is that it is "Granny" friendly, which means that who ever creates the apps make it very simple to use. I then watched this Audacity Basics YouTube video and I created an audio recording. Since I have worked with children most of my life I read one of my favorite books, or at least part of it. 

When reading a children's book you need to turn pages and when I turned pages I had spaces of dead air. I went back in and using the selection tool I could select sections of my recording to cut out or I could even add space in the recording. I thought I would like to add music to my recording, but I discovered that I do not have any music downloaded on my computer. I do not have a headset so the quality of sound was not the greatest. 

Even though this is not a tool that I would use in my job right now, I never know. I am glad I know a little bit about Audacity, because I never know when I will want to or need to use it!

Snip & Sketch and PowerPoint

 This week for my technology class I learned more about Snip & Sketch. When I started my job three years ago, I was introduced to Snip & Sketch. I did not know much more than that I could take a picture of something on my computer screen and save it to different places in my computer. Then I noticed a coworker, who was younger than myself, highlighting things that she had snipped. I started exploring and found the highlighter and I learned that I had to highlight the snip before I saved it or I could not get it highlighted. (I was sure there was a way to do that but then I didn't know that trick.) Then I noticed that same coworker snipping something and pasting it directly into a document instead of saving it and then copying and pasting it into another document. I again starting trying things and I discovered that after I snipped something I could then just go to the document I needed to put the picture and click & paste and my picture appeared. 

I know that you are all thinking, wow this lady really doesn't know much, but this is me and I don't!

For my job I need to email people different instructions on how to go into our database and find things they need or  how to use different tools in that database. So this week for class I had the chance to make a "How To" handout as Dr. Robin called it. WOOHOO I figured this out. So now I can take a screen shot of something and put it on a Power Point slide and add arrows pointing to something or circle the place to click or highlight  something on that screen. 

I have only used mostly the shape and picture formatting in Power Point. As I have more time to explore, I hope to learn more, become faster at creating and become more efficient over all at using these tools.

Capturing and Image Editing!

 This week's learning has been exciting and beneficial for me! A couple of semesters ago I took an Adobe Creative Cloud class. In that class I used Adobe's Photoshop, In Design and Illustrator. This was a great class, but I realized that I had no desire to use these tools professionally. I knew there had to be tools that were a little simpler to use. Tools that my amateur self could use and understand. And this week Dr. Robin showed me where those tools were and how to use them. You can find these tools in Windows Power Point or just in Windows Word. You can edit or add effects to pictures.

Example:

Or You can even create your own pictures out of other pictures like this:

I have been using Snip & Sketch for a while, and I learned some new things about that as well, that will really be helpful to me in my job. Some of the things I learned I have used this week in another class! This week has been a good week of learning for me.