Blabberize

Donna Desroches posted a link to Blabberize on Delicious the other day and the eight year old inside me fell in love with it right away. The problem is how to use it in the class.

I am spending some time during the break planning how to spruce up my Charlotte's Web unit for my Grade 3 class. Much of the stuff I have been able to think of is pretty mediocre.

Then I remembered Donna's link to Blabberize. It may seem pretty immature but I think it would be a great way to post a character sketch online at any age level.

Thanks to Donna for the link, coders who share my juvenile sense of humor, and social bookmarking!

PS - The embed doesn't seem to show up in Google Reader. :(

Digital Photogrphy In Art

We were learning about lines in our art class and I had a chance to use a class set of cameras. We decided to go out into the neighborhood and find examples of differnt types of lines. We took about 400 pictures and posted them to Picasa Web Albums and then the students chose three to download, edit, and post on their blog. Not all students are done and many who think they are have some editing to do but I think it worked well. Here is a link to our class blog.

The students seemed to really enjoy the process and they were able to frame their photos much better than I would have expected.

VoiceThread Success!

Well, we tried VoiceThread earlier in the year and experienced some major difficulties.  We tried it again to retell First Nations stories from a unit we are doing about stories from around the world.

The Process:
1) Read the Story
2) Make jot notes
3) Write script from jot notes
4) plan and make pictures
5) upload
6) Narrate

Issues:
1) The mics cut out frequently (still don't know why).
2) We had trouble loading the pictures onto a thumbdrive to upload to the server (we have gmail now).
3) I forgo to develop a rubric with the class first (oops).

The Product:

Class Blogmeister

Well I started my students on Class Blogmeister and so far so good. They are writing a couple of stories: "The Worst Day of School Ever!" and "The Best Day of School Ever!" When they say, "I'm out of ideas." I reply, "How could this get worse/better?"

So far so good. They seem to really enjoy it, and they are using their word wall words. If this goes well I want to try VoiceThread next.

Working With Words

I have started the four blocks program for reading with my students.  I am trying to implement the working with words block right now.  One of the activities is called "Guess the Hidden Word" and I made a Keynote (Mac version of PowerPoint) for my class.  The students were very interested and even my most reluctant students participated at a very high level.

I have tried to imbed a flash version of the presentation using a website called SkyAlbum.  Not sure if it is working.

Presentation

Breaking My Own Rules

I am going to break one of my own rules: Never run more than one major tech assignment at once.  Its a good rule and I have always followed it but I have another problem;  my students are ready to fall asleep the second I say it is time for social studies.  We are learning about pioneers and the unit is very dry so I am going to have them make a PowerPoint about a topic and then post them.  I will make a set of questions for the students to complete about each presentation.

Making Movies

During ELA we are going to try and make short documentaries about knights and castles.  The students have been split into seven different groups with seven different topics.  They will research their topic with books and websites that I provide for them.  They will then make a model to go with their research and write a script explaining what they learned.  We will put the model and script together into a movie to share on the class website.  I will then make a webquest for the students to learn about the other projects.

I've got my fingers crossed.  :)

Animal Classification Movie

The students and I have been trying to make a movie about Animal Classification in science class but the computer system has been so unstable that four or five random students begin the class by starting their project over again.  On the positive side the constant repetition has reinforced some basic skills using Windows Movie Maker and when the system settles down we can try again with a similar project.

Getting Started

Blogging is weird.  Publishing random thoughts and deep musings for public consumption is not something I am comfortable doing.  But I ask my students to do it daily.  So, here I go.

This blog is about sharing my thoughts, great successes, and catastrophic failures dealing with technology and kids.  As we get started hurdles present themselves daily but if it was easy everyone would do it.  :)