Conversations

This is a free service called Conversations. I found out about this from a previous ITSer last week at our ActivLoudoun Plus conference. The thing I like most about this program is that it can be used at home or school, seems to have unlimited storage space, and is very easy to use! Oh, and did I mention it is FREE!?!? As a teacher, that is like music to my ears.

To use it, click Allow in the pop up box. Then, just log in with your name (don't worry, you don't have to save at the end). Click the Real Time button. You will see a video of me and you should hear me talking to you. Of course, my laptop hates recording, so the sound is not very loud or clear (sorry!). Once my question is over, it will start recording your response. When you finish your response, click Stop Recording. You will then see me again and hear a second question. I have three questions set up. You don't have to actually say or do anything of course. At the end of my third question, you will have to click Stop Recording and then Cancel. If you click Submit, it saves your recording (and if you have a webcam, your video too) and I can go log on to the website and see/hear it. The nice thing about listening to the responses is that you can skip listening/watching yourself and only see the student response. Pretty neat, eh?

This is going to be used a lot at my school next year, by me! I love the idea of having a real "conversation" with each of my students like this. I could even have a native speaker make the videos and then this becomes even more authentic.

Voki is fun!

I was introduced to Voki this past week! I used it to do review with my 5th graders for their big final test that we do in LCPS for all 5th graders take. It is sort of like an exit exam. I also have instructions for embedding them directly into PowerPoint. When I put mine together, I made objects on the slide and then hyperlinked the shapes to the Voki. The students loved them!! They clicked on one to hear a question, then they were to think about their own answer. Then, to check themselves, I made a second video for each question that had a sample answer. I believe the students were very engaged in the activity and learned a lot from it. I heard from many of my students how much they liked the activity. I look forward to using it more next year!

Oh, and there is a Voki Classroom link on the top right corner. Some teachers at my school have a Voki classroom, but I don't know anything about it yet. If you have your own classroom, you might want to check it out!

Video editing

Well, I can't say much about video editing honestly. I have done video editing by myself for an after-school activities class, but I haven't really done this with students. I showed those students how to do it, but we were too busy with the other steps of making a video (writing the treatment, storyboarding, rehearsing, taping) that there was no time for them to do the editing at the end. Perhaps next year when I am teaching in a middle or high school, I will have the opportunity.

I am using videotaping with my third graders right now. I know I've written about it here before, but I didn't really talk about how it is going. My students are so excited about this project! We have discovered little things that students do not know though. I talked with my students about writing out our skit during all our discussions, but I started referring to it as a script. I wrote the character's names on the board for them (waiter, customer) and talked about writing out the person's name for each of their lines, because otherwise it would be impossible to know who was talking when. I thought that my detailed instruction was enough. After working on the scripts for a day, I visited each group and really looked at their scripts. I had 2-3 groups (total, out of 20) who had basically done nothing! I talked with them and realized, they have no idea what a script is! They were unable to put together my details about what they are writing with the word "script". This is such a silly little detail that I would never have thought about, until now. I was actually impressed with myself for planning out a lesson on how to do the script, but I never thought to actually define the word itself.

This just goes to show, we really learn something new every day. On Thursday, I learned to always define new words or phrases that I plan to use often, just in case.

GoAnimate!

I haven't found many collaborative Web 2.0 tools that I can use in my current program. I only see the students for 30 minutes at a time and our curriculum is bursting at the seams. One tool I have managed to use in class that is quick and wonderful is goanimate.com. I got the idea from Lori when she used it for our online class this semester. I have used in a few of my classes now and the students love it! Not only does it capture their attention, it also affords something I cannot do: it shows adult characters speaking in Spanish, using the vocabulary we are learning. It is very difficult to find any videos out there that use the exact thing we are learning, much less in Spanish! With goanimate, I can make a dialogue using vocabulary and sentence structure that I am teaching quickly and for free (!!) to model something, rather than trying to do it all on my own. I have had students not understand that they are having a conversation with another person and try to say both question and answer on their own because of not being able to more properly model this skill. Now, I can set up a video beforehand that students can watch to see how things are really supposed to go.

This tool has other affordances also! I can easily get the laptop cart and put the students in small groups to make their own videos, showing that they understand the material in a different way. My students have plenty of opportunities to speak in front of one another and are bored out of their minds with it. If they were watching each other's videos, I am sure they would be more interested and could have the opportunity to learn new things from each other. They would have to design their dialogue beforehand on paper, of course, which would require a lesson on designing. They would also need some way of saving the videos so we could all watch them together. I wonder if I could get headphone splitters and just have them leave the videos open on the laptops and circulate around the room watching and listening to them? That would certainly make it faster and easier than trying to save them all and open them on the computer attached to the Promethean board. Or, I could just attach each laptop directly to the Promethean board. So many possibilities...

There are so many things to think about when trying a new tool in the classroom! I have found that even with all that thought, if I talk about it with other people, they will always have a different perspective that leads me in a new direction (hey, isn't that collaboration?). Of course, I am so energetic about this stuff that I can't help but talk about it with my colleagues (and sometimes even parents).

Holy smokes! This stuff works!

I just had to post what I just received via email from a parent. To make sure you fully understand this, let me give you some background:

Our FLES program is being cut completely from 1st-3rd grades for next year and the 4th-5th grade is being reduced to only once a week, down from twice a week. We have tried as a FLES department to educate the School Board on how terrible this decision is, but we are not really getting through to them. We have a Facebook page and a petition out there too (which you are welcome to sign!) that we are trying to use to prove that people in this community are not happy with this decision.

Also, you need to know that my second unit for my practicum this semester is dealing with restaurant and food. The authentic problem I came up with (with a lot of help from Priscilla :) ) is to have the 3rd graders make videos teaching manners in restaurants for Sesame Street. So, I have started this project and the students are in HEAVEN. They are so excited, the entire school is talking about it.

So, back to how "this stuff works". I just got an email from a third grader's mother saying that she emailed the School Board in favor of FLES (she included the email and it was awesome!) and that she has signed our petition and emailed it to 30 of her friends (yay!!). She ended the message by saying:


"Thank you for all that you are doing to teach our children about the world outside of Loudoun County.   Brendan is very excited about the Sesame Street puppet show that you are working on with the class!"


This makes me think that the real reason she is being so outspoken and standing up for the program is because of the authentic learning her son is experiencing in my classroom!! I know the other part is how great of a teacher I am, of course ;). 


I hope you are as excited as I am right now!! I hope that word gets out more and parents see how an effective teacher can inspire real learning-something which we should never be removing from our schools. 


:D

Let's Go Shopping!

Over the summer, we developed an online project idea that could not use Web 2.0 ideas. My project idea was for a telefieldtrip dealing with shopping, food, and money. The idea was that anyone could submit a video to me of them giving a tour of a store and talking in their native language about the prices of things and what things are in general. They would then go through the check out and talk us through the purchase. The videos would be posted to a website for viewing only. This project was meant for all languages and age groups, so as to be more global.

Now that we can think about it in a Web 2.0 environment, I am seriously considering implementing this idea. I could very easily create a wiki that is open for public input. There would be pages for each language and then a listing of the different type of store (grocery, clothing, hardware, etc). The nice thing about it being Web 2.0 is that is would not require as much work from me, while at the same time allowing me to moderate the project to keep it age appropriate. Also, it would be search-able, which would be more difficult to do in a Web 1.0 environment. Also, people could write comments to each other. The only problem is having enough server space to keep all the videos up. To alleviate this, people could just upload them to youtube and then just link to the videos on the wiki. Creating an account with youtube and uploading a video is very easy and free! I just did it! The best part is you can set the privacy settings to make the video only available if someone has the link or if you designate them as a viewer.

This has so many applications in the classroom. Wouldn't it be cool to post a video of your students doing something and then send home the link to the parents? It would be like the parents were really there and they could see all the learning going on in your classroom. They could share the link with anyone they trust and not have to worry about the video being available to the public. Or your school could post a video of a school assembly that only the parents can view. But I digress...

The people submitting to the shopping wiki could put a short description of the video along with the link, to make it more like a resource than just a listing. I think this project could really bring people together in a different way and would make learning a foreign language and using math skills more meaningful. How cool would it be to see what stores look like in Japan or South Africa or Peru or Iran?

I hope you enjoyed the video of my cat, by the way ;) He doesn't freak out nearly as much when we put the harness on him now. That was his first experience, as you can tell.