The Role of Technology in Young Adult (YA) Literature

Check out my SlideShare Presentation:

The Role of Technology in Young Adult (YA) Literature

View more OpenOffice presentations from guest1f21a2.

My Del.icio.us URL

Here is the URL to my Del.icio.us account. I hope that you find some of these resources as useful as I do!

http://delicious.com/rdobbs07

Thanks,

Rachel

Emerging Technology Post #3- Applying Web 2.0 Technology to Teaching English with Wordle.net

For my third blog post on emerging technologies, I chose to highlight a great website called Wordle. As a future high school English teacher, I can definitely see myself using this application with my students. http://wordle.net/ is a creative website application that allows you to create “word” pictures out of text. It is simple and easy to use. All you have to do is click on create, paste in your text, and click submit. Wordle will take all of the major words out of the text and arrange them in a form. The thing that I find to be really interesting is that the program determines the size of the words based of the frequency of their use in the text. So, the more a word appears, the larger it appears. I think this tool would drive home the idea of author repetition extremely well. For example, I put Hamlet’s famous “To Be or Not to Be” speech from Shakespeare’s play into the program, and the largest word turned out to be sleep. I find this interesting because Shakespeare is known for repeating words for a very specific reason in his plays, and this word in particular ties into the play’s main theme of time. Hamlet has a lot of trouble with taking action in the play. As a teacher, my students could do something similar with a famous text and then give me an analysis about why they felt the “largest” words were repeated so much. You can view my word picture here:

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/916081/Hamlet%27s_Famous_Speech_%22To_Be_or_Not_to_Be%22.

While Wordle is great for analyzing famous texts and passages, it is also interesting to just make up your own. For my second word picture, I used text from one of my personal poems called “Land of the Midnight Sun.” I not only wanted to see what word appeared the largest so that I could determine what was dominating my thoughts when I wrote the poem, but I also wanted to play around with the color scheme and form to match what I personally felt my poem was all about. This would be another great exercise to do with my students because it would teach them something about themselves that they may not have realized, and it would give them a chance to express their personal creativity. Plus, Wordle is just plain fun! Here is the link to my second Wordle picture:

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/916102/%22Land_of_the_Midnight_Sun%22.

In short, I would describe my experience with Wordle as AMAZING! The program is extremely user-friendly, and I was definitely able to make a Wordle without any trouble. As the website so eloquently states, “You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.” All I had to do was click on Create, paste in my texts, and then modify my text using the task bar located above the newly created Wordle! Other people can post their Wordles, and you can view them directly from the site. My only suggestion to first time Wordle users is that you spend some time experimenting with different layouts, fonts, and color schemes. It’s surprising what you can create. The randomize button is a wonderful tool as well, so be sure to use it!!! Also, don’t be afraid to tell the program to include minor words as well! It’s fun to see how frequently words like “the,” “a,” and “an” appear in a text!

Emerging Technology Post #2- Online Scrapbooking with scrapblog.com

For my second blog post on emerging technologies, I decided to explore the world of digital scrapbooking with a site called Scrapblog. The IP address is www.scrapblog.com/default.aspx. They even let you test drive the site before you are required to sign-up for an account. While the account itself is free, as are the pre-made pages, you do have to buy credits if you want to permanently get certain things like stickers, backgrounds, etc. The good news is that you don’t have to do this if you use a pre-made template, so that’s nice. I think you get 300 credits for $5.00, and up to 2800 credits for $50.00. Again, I’m a poor college student, so free is good!

Once you sign up for an account, the digital scrapbook creation process is relatively simple. If you want a tutorial before diving in, simply scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Quick Tour.” I chose to do this so that I could get an idea of the site and see if it was really a good fit for me. You can also choose this option without creating an account. To begin making a Scrapblog, you click on “Create New Scrapblog,” and the site takes you to the builder. You can use a preset theme, or simply start with a blank page. I went ahead and began with a template since I am still new to the process of creating a Scrapblog. Hopefully, in the future, I will be proficient enough with the site to the point that I can create Scrapblogs from scratch. I enjoyed getting to upload my pictures, and mess around with their order, color, and appearance. I especially appreciated the crop feature! Making text spaces for comments was fun too. There is so much that you can do with font size and color in this program! Even though I am a traditional album scrapbooker and I doubt that will change anytime soon, I enjoyed getting to learn how to utilize technology to help me accomplish one of my favorite hobbies.

While the site was definitely what I would categorize as “user-friendly,” there were a few things that bothered me. For starters, when I went to upload my pictures, I had to upload them one at a time. The control feature didn’t work in this site like it did in Animoto. Also, I don’t like paying for things, especially online, though in this case I can understand why a site like Scrapblog would do that. Still, when you don’t have that much money, unforeseen payment options can be a real bummer on a site.

Still, all in all, I really like Scrapblog! I think it is a unique technology that can really bring out your creative side! I hope you enjoy my sample scrapbook! It features someone near and dear to my heart: my pet hamster, Hamlet! Check it out below or follow this link:

http://www.scrapblog.com/viewer/viewer.aspx?sbId=1893989.

My Scrapblog Page

Emerging Technology Post #1- Digital Storytelling With animoto.com

For my first blog post on emerging technologies, I chose a website called www.animoto.com. Animoto falls under the category of digital storytelling in the technology world. The best part is that Animoto.com is a free site, so all you have to do is register. I like Animoto because it creates videos out of pictures. You can add captions to explain what is in the video, and the website also lets you add a music track to the video. The website is very user-friendly. After you sign-up, you just click “Create Video.” You then choose whether to create an Animoto short, or to create a full-length video. A short contains 12-15 images according to the site. Of course, the full length video requires video credits, which I would need to purchase. Since I’m a poor college student, I decided that the 30-second video would be just fine! I clicked on that option, and then I just had to upload pictures into the program from my computer. It was that simple! Another great feature on the site is that they provide a button called “Tips for this section” during each step of the video creation process.

I think that this website is useful for creating a digital memory album. I could see myself creating a class photo collage for my students to view at the end of the year. They could even make their own videos, and we could use them to learn more about each other. This website could be a great icebreaking activity to do at the beginning of the year. Plus, it is a great technology to use for personal reasons as well, since it cuts down on paper and is good for the environment.

One tip that I have for anyone new to the site is to be sure to hold down shift or control when selecting what photos to upload to the site. Control is the better option, because it will select individual pictures, whereas shift selects all the pictures between your two mouse clicks. Also, make sure to click “Add More” and not “Continue” between uploading your files. Otherwise, the program will prompt you and ask if you are finished uploading photos. I kept hitting “Continue” by mistake, so that was annoying.

All in all, I give Animoto a solid 10. They provide users with great tech support, and the end product is wonderful! They even have a feature under the pushpin icon at the end that automatically posts your video on Blogger! So, be sure to check it out, and enjoy the sample video I created below.

My Animoto Video

It's called: IU-A Tour of Colorful Proportions

**Please remember to pause the blog music icon located on my sidebar before attempting to play this video. Thank you!***

Please Enjoy!

A Link To My Wiki

Here is the link to my PB Wiki. Once there, you can view my 6-8 paragraphs from the Critical Thinking Module. Enjoy!

http://racheldobbs.pbworks.com/Integrating+Technology+In+The+Classroom-Article+Response

A Note on the Blogging Process

While I have experienced blogging before in a collaboration setting for my ENG-E 304 (Literatures 1900-Present) class that I took at IU last fall, this is the first time that I have actually set up my own blog. In my class, we used Blogger to post personal comments and questions that we had about the novels we were reading. My professor set up the blog, and all I had to do was post on it once a week. Now that I have been through the process of setting up my own blog, I really appreciate the work my professor went through to get our class blog up and running. While creating the blog itself wasn't challenging, my perfectionist tendencies really made the customization options into something of a nightmare. I am still a little angry about the fact that there seems to be no way for me to change the font color of my title at the top of the blog, nor does there seem to be any way for me to move it further to the left. I wish to do this so that the white font won't get swallowed by the light spots in my background rock climbing picture. The title was a lot bigger originally, and I wish that there was some way I could fix it, but I have come to the conclusion that the whole problem originated with my decision to use a pre-programmed template, and unless I learn html coding, I don't think that it is going to change. Being a perfectionist has other downsides as well. It's hard for me to do anything to my blog without having to check how it looks on the real thing multiple times. To do even one small thing, I'll find myself going through a process that looks something like this: I'll make a change, view the change, edit the change, view the change, keep the change, discard the change, make a new change, and so on and so on. This process is quite time consuming, so I hope that I'll get more proficient and less nitpicky with time and experience. So, for now at least, I'll just have to put my perfectionist-self aside and deal with the imperfections on my blog.

Despite the problems I've encountered, I still absolutely LOVE the features that Blogger offers its users. I was able to create my own quiz, which can now be viewed on the sidebar. I think that the quiz gadget is an amazing feature, and I plan to change it weekly, so be sure to check back! The other gadgets that you can add to your blog are really superb. I added a picture and plan to utilize some of the other gadgets, like the slideshow, quotation, and picture of the day gadgets. You can even add game gadgets! I've gone gadget CRAZY!!! I would definitely recommend Blogger to anyone, because it is user friendly and fun!

A Little About Me

Hello! My name is Rachel Dobbs, and I am a junior at Indiana University. I am majoring in Secondary English/Language Arts Education, which means that I will be able to teach any middle school or high school grade English class once I graduate and obtain my teaching license. I am also minoring in Creative Writing. I am an aspiring poet, and have always dreamed of getting published. My work has already appeared in Labyrinth, a literary magazine published through the IU Hutton Honors College, and I am currently sending my poems out to numerous literary magazines around the country! The review process for any given magazine takes several months, so I hope that I'll receive notification of an acceptance for one of my poems this coming fall. Besides reading and writing poetry, I am also heavily involved in outdoor activities, as you can guess from the picture of me rock climbing at the top of my blog. I love to go whitewater rafting, rock climbing, spelunking (caving), zip lining, kayaking, camping, creek stomping, backpacking, and just about everything else. I have been camping since I was less than a year old, and I have enjoyed being in the outdoors ever since. My obsessions include penguins and Star Wars, and I am always willing to lend a helping hand to those in need! My personal motto is The Golden Rule: Treat Others the Way You Want to Be Treated.

I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I love writing it!