Reflection on Visual Learning Tools

            This week our class focused on several different visual learning tools.  Prior to class I had little experience in working with any of the tools; however I found them all to be very user friendly and useful.  I am looking forward to incorporating the use of these tools into my professional, educational, and personal life.

            Screencast-o-Matic and other similar websites make creating tutorials very easy.  At this time, I am not quite sure how I could use this tool with my kindergarten students; however I see many benefits and possibilities in creating tutorials for older students and parents.  The school district could create a tutorial for parents explaining how to use Skyward Family Access, which is an online program that allows parents to see their student’s grades.  At this time I believe the district has an instructional handout for parents to use as a reference in how to use the program.  By creating a tutorial, parents would be able to see exactly how to utilize all of the features of the program.  The tutorial would be available at all times.

            I am very excited about the possibilities there are with YouTube.  I currently use YouTube and TeacherTube to share educational videos and songs with my students. However, now that I am able to upload my own videos, I could record student performances, special events, writing celebrations, and so on that could be uploaded to YouTube and linked to my classroom website.  Parents who were not in attendance would still be able to enjoy the performance. In addition, students would be very excited to watch their performances and be proud to share them. How engaging! One issue that I can foresee is privacy.  There may be parents who do not wish for their child to be videotaped or photographed, so that could make it difficult when recording. 

            I enjoyed using the many different photo editing programs, however the options were a little overwhelming! I think it will take some practice for me to get the hang of all the tools.  I have used Picasa 3 as my photo editing program up to this point.  The program was free to download, and it is easy to use.  PixLr has significantly more options and tools, however.  At this time I use photo editing programs for my own personal use when scrapbooking.  However, I could use PixLr when I add photos to my weekly newsletter. 

            This week’s lesson on visual learning tools was very beneficial.  Being a visual learner myself, I can see how engaging the use of visual learning tools is.  I plan to continue using YouTube videos as educational resources in addition to trying to create some of my own videos.