Voice Thread

VoiceThread is a great tool!!

I loved using VoiceThread, and found it pretty easy to use.
At first I was confused on how to access Picasa, in order to post a slide show I had in my web folder there. I was not able to download to VoiceThread from Picasa, but was able to copy the entire slide show to my desk top and down load from there. Adding comments was intimidating at first. Eventually though, I did get the hang of it and was able to avoid the awkward silence at the beginning of recording a clip.

Any upper elementary aged student (grades 4-6) using this application could easily figure out, with instructional help from a teacher, how to make, add voice comments, and post a video clip to an online project, blog or website.

I think that this application could be used by schools very easily. When my daughter, Eva, was in the third grade, she and her cousin from Wisconsin visited each others schools. Eva invited her cousin first to come to Fairbanks, because school let out later in the spring in Wisconsin. To prepare her cousin, and her cousin's class, the cousin's teacher proposed that this be a long distance, class information exchange. The Wisconsin class sent the Fairbanks students information about Wisconsin; it's economy, their cities; what the students at the Wisconsin elementary school did in school, and their interests outside of school. The Fairbanks students sent books, donated by The Fairbanks News Agency, to first be used in the classroom, and then to be donated to the Wisconsin school library, essays that the Fairbanks class wrote about the city they lived in, information about the state of Alaska, and the city of Fairbanks , and any other information they felt would be useful in educating their Wisconsin counterparts about our state. Eva and her cousin spent a week in school together here in Fairbanks; and then left for Wisconsin to spend a week in the cousin's class.

Both teachers felt that this was a worthwhile endeavor, and helped each group to learn about the other. I think that if VoiceThread had been a reality then, it could have been an invaluable tool to help each group of students teach the other about their hometowns and the state they lived in. The teachers could have facilitated lessons, questions, and general exchange of information between the two classroom's, via use of VoiceThread.

It is common now, for schools to have partner schools, in sister cities. VoiceThread is a good, easy to use tool for them to use to teach each other about their lives.

As I have stated in previous blog entries, this is an excellent tool to use to make the student the teacher. There is no better way to boost confidence and self esteem than to allow a student to teach someone what they already know. It is good experience for a student to go through the process of writing a 'lesson plan', in order to be able to work through the process of sequencing information, in order to impart knowledge.

Check out Tammy's blog for her ideas on this useful tool as well.

Online Story Book

The assignment to make a story book, using an online book making website, is an awesome idea.
My partner, Janice, and I were not sure what our subject should be. Then we decided to just present ourselves, as our lives, our hometowns (villages) are pretty different. After we got over our initial jitters over how to do it and where to start, I think that we had fun.
The website, Mixbook.com, is laid out fairly well, and is easy to use. I love all the choices for page layouts, page back rounds, and the decorative stamps. I went from being unsure if the finished product would be what I pictured in my mind-to being very satisfied with the finished product.
I do not like the prompts on every page that ask you to order the book. As an adult, I can choose to ignore that aspect of the website, I am not sure what to do to mask it for use with kids.
I love the idea of using the website to make books for use in the classroom. We use books of photographs of classmates, sort of a classroom yearbook, to help facilitate verbal interaction between students in our classroom. We have not found a more powerful tool than a book full of pictures of classmates interacting, and sharing daily activities. If we were able to use this website to make books to use in the classroom, possibly to also send them home so students could practice verbal interaction with their families-it could be a powerful tool. (Because, if students have the pictures for the parents to use as a starting place to start a conversation, the parents can then help further verbal skills.) For older students to use this website, I think could be powerful for them. They could document the group efforts that went into a project, they could use it to make an 'instructional manual' to teach a skill or lesson-the possibilities are endless. I think that I might want to use it with upper elementary aged students, right up through high school.

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

Picasa Slide Show

The PICASA assignment was a great idea. I enjoyed doing this project very much. I found Picasa to be a little better at editing than iPhoto; I can straighten and fine tune my photos a little more carefully. I also like the Black & White with a color spotlight option, it is unusual, but interesting.
I can see where, just as with iMovie, how this application could be very fun for students in the upper grades, 4-6, to use. It gives them the power to use their own, fine-tuned media to teach a story or concept, while having fun with technology.

My slide show is about a trip I took to Alaskaland. ( WE refuse to call it Pioneer Park)
My daughter works as a Park Aide there during the summer. This is her first year away from home, at college in Ft. Worth, Texas. She called one day, very homesick, and asked if I would take some pictures of PPland. (what we call it as a joke.) She then asked if I would post them to my Facebook photo album - so she could look and not feel so homesick. She says she looks at them pretty often........

Comic Life Poster

Comic Life is a little used application that has been on my computer, unused, since I turned it on for the first time in 2005. I actually opened the application to see what it was all about, oh about a year later, and closed it again without exploring it very much.

I like the application, Comic Life. It was really easy to use, once the steps were explained to us. This particular application could easily be used by even 2nd and 3rd graders, it was that simple to figure out. Basically it is just drag and drop, then decide if you want shadows, dialogue boxes, & borders around the pictures inside the panes.
I used some family photos to make a colorful poster. I tried many of the styles for the picture, and decided to use both the colored pencil and comic styles, as well as the drawing style to give my photos a unique look. My finished product is a poster that I plan to use as a backdrop for a 12 month calendar.
I think that Comic Life would be a practical program for classroom use. This is an alternative to the traditional written book report format and the colorful presentation will make any resulting pages interesting, with a natural flow, if the artist decided to insert page or pane numbers. Best of all, a student could tell a story using Comic Life in a short period of time, allowing more time so that others could also present. This could also be used for student based lessons; the student could use Comic Life as a teaching tool.

Awesome Digital Video!!!!

This was a great assignment. I loved making my digital video. It was really easy to open and use iMovie 7, and I believe that any student would feel the same.
Using iMovie to complete assignments, such as reports on Modern Literature and instructional videos, is a great way to illustrate understanding of material, as well as teach concepts. It makes the material fresh, and makes it relevant to students living in today's world; students who are very tech savvy and who use the internet and computers for all types of things-including learning.

A short introduction for the video I made. My kids are almost all grown and have left home-either for college or to start their own lives. The year before my oldest daughter graduated from high school, in May of 2006, I started documenting my kids. I photographed our lives together, each child as themselves, the kids together, their friends with them etc. I discovered that it was just as hard to watch their friends leave home too. I also discovered something I already knew, that you can't stop them, you have to give your blessing for your children to go.

Thanks for watching my video.

Using PowerPoint as an Instructional Tool

This past week we were given an assignment that required us to use PowerPoint to teach a short 'lesson'. Although I had used PowerPoint before, I had never published my work to the web.
This was an interesting lesson for me to accomplish, and think it could be an invaluable method of teaching students to create and publish to the web.
For a classroom that is using computers to research, create, complete, and implement lessons, both on a classroom level and on the web, short PowerPoint tutorials are an excellent tool that will help keep students on task and productive; and making tutorials is a good method to use to teach the skills necessary for future success in manipulating the web for educational and communication purposes. Students could use these skills to produce and post their own instructional PowerPoint presentations or slide shows using jpeg images.
I am looking forward to learning more of these types of skills. I finished this assignment feeling like I had accomplished a great deal.
I chose to make a PowerPoint lesson using the QX3 computerized microscope. I have one of these scopes because my daughter expressed an interest in it when she was around 9-10, so we got her one for her birthday. She was excited to use the scope, but found the Windows interface a bit juvenile and limiting. I used Apple software to run the microscope and it has a totally different interface; it is much more scientific and there are more possibilities for exploration. My daughter is now 16, but admitted that the Apple software made it much more usable as a scientific tool and less like a "kiddie toy". This is a great tool to get kids exploring and interested in using the scope.

Relaxation is a must!

I love four day weekends. The possibility to relax is magnified exponentially! Or, I could say that I do not feel so guilty if I take an extra couple of hours to read the new Patricia Cornwell book, "Scarpetta", instead of doing homework. I can easily rationalize extra pleasure reading time, especially if the book is a really good murder mystery.
This was an interesting weekend because it was Valentine's Day. I went grocery shopping at Fred Meyer on Saturday. It was a madhouse, with all the men looking for roses for their sweethearts at the last minute-I had forgotten all about what day it was. In a former life, as in years ago, I was the florist at Fred Meyer on College Road. I really loved the job. I have some floral design experience, as well as an A.A. in Horticulture and Ornamental Plant production, and that education made it an easy job to do. The best part of the job was when people came in and asked you to make them a bouquet, or design an arrangement, or give advice on/and make bouquets for a wedding, without any pictures or visuals, and they really love the finished product! That made it a rewarding experience. No one realizes that, in order to have all those roses, carnations, and lilies in stock for their gift giving convenience on Valentine's Day, means that you have to order the flowers up to 6 months in advance, so that the flowers can be grown, and for 3 weeks beforehand the florist needs to slave to make room for the extra inventory, as well as increase the number of bouquets and bud vases that are made to sell, cash and carry, by about 500%. This does not include the bouquets that are made to order, or the single roses that are meant to be wrapped in paper. This 'holiday' is a real sap on manpower, you have to work like a dog.
My teen aged daughter and her friends tried to go out to dinner, as the "Singles group". They did not make reservations anywhere ahead of time, and gave up trying to get a table anywhere by 9 pm. They came back to our house because they decided to try to cook something at home, rather than continue to make the rounds with no success. By 9:30 they had eaten chicken sandwiches, and by 10 pm they were finished pouring through cook books and had decided to try their hand at bread baking. Since they had never made bread before I agreed to stay up and act as a consultant. By 1:15 am we were eating fresh baked bread! They learned some valuable lessons: proof your yeast beforehand, if your liquid is too hot it will kill it. Then you have to start all over again. They also learned that the amount of flour actually needed for the recipe varies with the weather. If it is cold and dry you will need less flour and a bit more liquid, if warm and humid you will need more.
A fun time was had by all-the girls who learned to make bread, and the parents who stayed up into the wee hours to get to eat it.