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Today I missed my Windows PC. Yes, yes I know ….. but before you mac’ers shoot me with bows and arrows, hear me out.
Over the past few weeks my 5th graders have been creating Lines, Angles and Polygon digital learning stories for 3rd & 4th graders at our school. The purpose was to create an introduction digital story using photos taken around our very own school environment showing just how math exists in the “real world”, and teaching our younger students a few introductory things about Geometry.
Now we are a mac elementary school and I am a mac user at home (but have recently come from eight years in PC schools). Last year I did a similar project with my Year 7 students but used Photostory3. This year I made the project a little simpler for Grade 5 (Year 6) but used iMovie since there is no Photostory3 equivalent for the mac.
iMovie is a great programme, but it’s not as simple to use (with students) as Photostory3. I am however very proud of the work that my students did with their digital learning stories as we finished them off today (just in time to be watched by 3rd & 4th graders before Christmas break).
Today we accomplished the following things:
1. Recorded our voices (after preparing a script) into our digital learning stories in iMovie
2. Created our own background music in Garageband
3. Added titles, credits and words to our digital learning stories
Thank goodness our fabulous 21st Century Digital Learning Specialist, (and my very good friend) Ms Cofino was with us in class today. She spent three hours with us as we finished off this project. Her help was invaluable as she most definitely knows more about iMovie & Garageband than I do!
I know you’re all busy thinking why on earth would you do ALL that at once??? And I must say that wasn’t the plan at all! We have an issue with the available space for each student on our server. Their flash drives are not big enough to store an iMovie project (and you know how BIG those are when you’re working on them!!) Plus our laptops are set up to clear everything on the laptop when the students log-off or shut down (which is a good thing really). We didn’t really have a choice but to get our projects completely finished and rendered before we had to let another class use the laptop carts.
Reflection?
I love this project based learning. I learnt a lot about the way my students work together, and already have some particular skills to pinpoint and polish next semester regarding collaboration.
I need an alternative hard drive so that my students aren’t forced to finish their work in a hurry.
I really need to make sure that I am using the right tool for the job. Was iMovie really the right tool for this job? Could VoiceThread have done the same thing? (That would eliminate the server/saving problem). And will I do it again? Of course I will, and I’ll be tweaking it a bit more next time too.
PS: In the next few days, we’ll be embedding our digital learning stories for Lines, Angles and Polygons on our class wiki math page - so take a look if you have some time. We’d love some feedback on the discussion tab if you have time too.
Cross-posted at To Argentina and Beyond
When you teach in Thailand, you are required by Thai Law to complete a Thai Teaching Certificate. We are completing modules every 5-6 weeks and this week’s module was about Thai Culture through Art, Dance, Music and Drama. Part of the module included a wonderful performance by the Joe Louie Puppet Theatre. This was a truely enjoyable performance. I would highly recommend you go see the Joe Louie Puppet Theatre if you are visiting Bangkok.
The following slide shows don’t really do the performance the justice it deserves. However, I was pleased to see how well the shadows came out in the photographs I took (considering all the trouble I’ve been having with my camera lately).
If you want to hear the music that accompanies each slide show please click on the speaker in the top left hand corner.
Note: I had so much trouble trying to embed the slide show in edublogs that I decided to just link the images to my travel blog where the slide shows were much easier to embed.
The first slideshow is photos documenting the meeting the puppets and learning about how they move and how gestures without words are made.
Slideshow #2 is the actual story of how Hanuman, the very cheeky monkey god wins the love of the very beautiful mermaid Supamatcha. Together they have a son who resembles his father but also has the tail of his mother.
Sideshow #3 is the same story but captured in the shadows.
Just in my inbox ……from the fabulous team at Breathe Technology (whom I miss very much!!)
“ Becta is encouraged by the support it has had from the industry for the project to develop an interactive whiteboard file format that will meet the needs of teachers, lecturers and tutors. We have been spurred on in this work by the level of interest of user representatives in England and internationally.”
Becta has received commitments to adopt the common file format from the following providers of interactive whiteboard technologies:
- eInstruction (Interwrite Learning)
- Hitachi
- Luidia
- Mimio
- RM
- Sahara Presentation Systems
- Smart Technologies
- TeamBoard
Steve Lucey added: “We are keen to do what we can to ensure all providers understand the benefits this specification has to its users. We therefore intend to work towards adoption of the specification by other providers and continue to encourage their involvement in the project.”
Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous! I have a wealth of IWB resources that I’ve developed over the past 4 years using the Interwrite Interactive Whiteboard (eInstruction). Now I’m working in a school that uses SmartBoards (Smart Technologies) - so all my Interwrite files were rendered useless to learning in our classroom.
Can you see why I’m thrilled with this company’s incredible initiative and vision?
Go Becta - You ROCK!
Every week, without fail, something gets delivered to my inbox. It’s like receiving presents at Christmas - but it’s weekly!
This week one of the diigo groups I belong to, Interactive Whiteboards in Classroom, had a bookmark link shared to Shambles in S.E Asia. I was lucky enough to meet Mr Chris Smith in person during the Learning 2.0 conference in Shanghai earlier this year. Sam the Kiwi (our class mascot) proudly wears his my life’s become shambles badge every day. What better reason to go take a look?
Here’s what I stumbled upon: Imagination Cubed. A nifty little flash program that automatically animates drawing. It offers drawing tools, shapes, stamper, type and line. It speeds up your animation automatically - so it replays smoothly.
You then email the link to yourself or you can send the link to others, so the email address used has to be real. It would be better still if you could chose from an embed code.
Here’s the link to my little off-the-top-of-my-head thinking about how to use Imagination Cubed in math - created in 4 minutes.
Click this link to see a drawing come to life at Imagination Cubed
My immediate thought for use? Students could make each other demos of their problem solving thinking.
Any other ideas on how you could use this tool?
After having this pop up twice in my google reader first by Crucial Thought (Chris Craft) and then by Langwitches (Silvia Tolisano), I couldn’t resist ……………
You can only make rain using 1/60 sec.
Rules:
* Get the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence - either here or on your blog.
* Copy these instructions as commentary of your sentence.
* Don’t look for your favorite book or your coolest but really the nearest.
Some days are just an absolute joy to be at work. Wednesday was one of those days. Wednesday was the day the doors of our classroom got wide open and in streamed a little bit of Iceland.
I was really lucky to meet and get to know Alan Levine (aka CogDogBlog) at the Learning2.0 Conference back in September this year, in Shanghai, China. During one of our many meet ups with fellow conference goers staying at the Forte Hotel, Alan happened to mention that he was going to be spending a month looking after the house and animals of an Architect, in Iceland. My ears and my “cheekyness” levels immediately perked up - so I asked him if he would skype with us when he was in Iceland.
On Wednesday we did just that. At 7.30am Thai time and 12.30pm am Icelandic time, these two vastly different places in the world connected. One blasted by heat, the other being buffeted by wind, rain and snow. Today my students got another piece of the “exploration and how/where does that fit into the world I’m living in right now” puzzle. And it was such a simple thing to arrange. All you have to do is ask. (Nicely of course).
My students were great participants. They watched the skype conversation via our smartboard if they weren’t up at the laptop asking questions. We’d prepared our questions before hand and that helped the conversation flow. Even when we’d gone through all of our original questions, more questions followed and I was impressed with the thought and maturity that they all displayed.
When talking with students at the end of the day most talked about how Mr Levine helped them believe that each and everyone of us really is an explorer, that you don’t even have to find a place that hasn’t been discovered yet. If you’ve never done it or been there then you ARE exploring it. Even some places can be explored many times over and you still find things you never found the first time. Of course meeting Skinna was a definite highlight for the girls - and everyone will not forget that a meal of reindeer meat is coming up next week for Mr Levine to try.
Thank you Alan, for letting us ask you all those questions. Enjoy the rest of your time in Iceland and I’m looking forward to seeing what Strawberry, Arizona looks like through the lens of a skype call!
I was just curious to check (visually) what words I’m using most frequently at the moment. Interestingly, K-12 Online Conference Presentations makes a substantial showing.
How cool is this?
Need to plan? Need to collaborate but can’t seem to find a time when you’re all free at once?
Invite one colleague over for dinner, skype in your other colleague who lives an hour away and open google docs. One collaboratively planned project ready to start with students.
Simple? - YES!
Collaborative? - YES!
Fun? YES!
Seemed like work? NO - well, not to me.
I love the play on words for LAN - traditionally known as Local Area Network - and it’s use lately for local educators getting together to watch and discuss the K-12 Online Conference offerings.
The extremely wonderful Kim Cofino, graciously hosted ISB’s first K-12 Online Conference LAN party last Saturday morning, in downtown Bangkok. She’d already downloaded most of the videos, set up the TV and sound-system AND had breakfast on the table with helpful supplies from us all. Of course I must mention that Kim has a presentation along with another fabulous educator, Jen Wagner in this years K-12 Online Conference. “ Connecting Classroom Across Continents: Planning and Implementing Globally Collaborative Projects” in the Kicking It Up a Notch strand.
Bangkok K-12 Online Conference LAN Party
The conversation was flowing, rich and authentic as we shared with our fellow colleagues what we thought might be of interest to them to watch. The two presentations decided upon were Chris Betcher’s and Alice Barr, Bob Sprankle and Cheryl Oak’s Keynote in the Getting Started strand. This was to be the 3rd time I’d seen Chris Betcher’s presentation “ I Like Delicious Things: an introduction to tagging and folksonomies“ and STILL I learnt more tips from it. The amazing Silvia Tolisano skyped in from Jacksonville, Florida and did a fabulous job of explaining the difference between delicious and tagging to one very keen teacher sitting in the room who really wanted to understandwhat she’d just witnessed in a presentation.
Our LAN party was so successful and so authentic that it was decided we just could leave it at one party. This format is now set to become a regular occurrence, rotating between venues close to school and venues downtown. It will always be open for everyone, anytime they feel they can make it. There’s a wealth of talent and knowledge and ideas out there just waiting for us to tap into. And the conversations that arise out of just watching a presentation for 12- 15 minutes is phenomenal! I really can’t think of a better way to receive personal Professional Development. What’s even better is the K-12 Online Conference is available anytime convenient to you. Heck, there’s still K-12 Online Conference 2006 and 2007 presentations on my list to watch that I still have access to!
Here’s to the next LAN party in two weeks time - if you live in Bangkok - hope to see you there - if not, and you think you might want to skype in and be part of the conversation, we’d love to hear from you!
I wonder which presentations we’ll watch this time?
It was an absolute pleasure to be invited by Silvia Tolisano to skype-join in the conversation at their school’s K-12 Online Conference LAN party “last night” or earlier this morning (for me.)
The timing was perfect - albeit they were having a wine (early evening) and I was having a coffee (early the next morning), the conversation was very interesting and most enjoyable.
My understanding of how Silvia had set up the LAN party was there were several rooms set up with various conference presentations running in them so that teachers could choose which presentations interested them the most. Then when those presentations had been viewed, everyone met together in one room and discussed what they watched and what they understood or took from it.
The power of sharing ideas, thoughts and understandings, whether you are having conversations face to face or skyping into them is so strong. The power of discussing what you’ve seen, what you’ve heard and how that affects you is even stronger. There were presentations I heard teachers talk about that I hadn’t considered watching but now I will because I’m curious and inspired by their thoughts. I’m now personally connected to some of those teachers even though the chances of us meeting face to face are relatively small.
If you haven’t considered watching K-12 Online Conference 2008, I really think you ought to. And then find someone who’s watched it too and have a conversation with them - they don’t even have to be living in the same place as you! Better still, inspire someone else to start watching K-12 Online Conference presentations too.
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