Looking for a user friendly site that will allow you create online quizzes and tests for your students? Checkout my friend Mark’s RILS, which focuses on the site Schoology. Located below is the link to Mark’s RILS:
SIMPLIFYING SCHOOL WITH SCHOOLOGY
Looking to have your students create a video of information they have learned over a subject in your class? Checkout my friend Renee’s RILS, which focused on the amazing site called Masher. Below is the link to her RILS:
How did everyone do?
Coming into the activity, I was expecting the be able to do a far more advance writing assignment to go along with the technology. However, the incoming group of students were far lower than I expected and had to simple everything up. Once things were simplified and switched to creating a class story, instead of individuals, it flowed quite well. The ones there were obviously more advanced flew through it and were able to record their pages right away. Knowing that they were capable of navigating and creating on their own, I let them go to log in on theirs and play around and explore. The others will eventually get there, but took some time for them to get the pencils moving. Overall, a successful activity and will only get better as time goes on.
What did they think?
The writing/copying down the sentences was like pulling teeth for some, but once they saw the first ones start to type and record their sentences, they started plugging away. For the first story we did, I scan their pictures they drew on paper in order to speed up the process and not have them taking up time drawing on the actual program. They voiced how they are excited for the next story to come, so they can create their own pictures online. I saw a lot more positive attitudes to writing and story telling than in the past, when it was just paper and pencil.
Pros:
Cons:
Changes for next time:
The next time I plan on using Little Bird Tales in the classroom, I will be focusing more on individual groups. That way I can assign more advanced story topics and ideas to the students that are comfortable with the website and more copying sentences/generic story topics for the ones that may be struggling.
Overview: The purpose of this RILS is to provide my students the opportunity to bring their stories and writings to life, using the digital publishing tool known as Little Bird Tales. (www.littlebirdtales.com)
Target Audience: My target audiences are the sixteen 1st and 2nd graders in my class in Russian Mission, AK.
Materials:
Objectives:
STUDENT WILL BE ABLE TO WITH GUIDANCE:
Emerging Technology: Little Bird Tales (www.littlebirdtales.com) is a free website that allows students to create and share digital stories.
Social Participation/Social Learning: After brainstorming a class story, we will quickly create an example on Little Bird Tales, displaying it on the Smart Board. The students will then think of their favorite thing they did this past summer. Next, they will brainstorm and draft their response. Then, they will share with the class before being able to publish it online.
Making Connections:
Procedure:
Assessment: The key components that will be looked for during this project are its layout, content, grammar, and delivery.
Reflection:
The students will grade each other’s stories based on the rubric. The students will then use the feedback and what they see from other stories to use for future and more in depth stories we will be creating.
You will be observing the process for any needed technology assistance and/or writing assistance. You will then observe the progress of your students from the beginning to the finished product.
VIDEOS:
HOW TO CREATE A CLASS:
WHAT DO YOU SEE? (Created class tale)
I have just completed the iMovie training and will be taking what I learned over the past 3 hours and put it towards creating two movies I’ve been waiting to create. The first video I will be working with comes from my school’s security cameras. I was able to pull footage from the hard drive last year, but have been waiting to actually put them together and create a video for the footage. The security footage is silent, so to add to it and make it humurous I plan on adding music to it as well.
My second movie I plan on creating is putting together my best man speech I made for my brother’s wedding back on July 21st. This video will include the actual footage from the reception, but I created a short movie that was included in with the speech. Since the video is small and grainy in the video recording, I want to squeeze the actual created video to go in the middle of the speech where it would truly be found during the speech.
Both of these videos I used two different types of themes (sports for the security camera video and movie filmstrip for the speech). I hope you enjoy the videos!
**Rebecca Black’s “Friday” was purchased off of iTunes and I acknowledge the third party message YouTube sent me that the copyright belongs to Rebecca Black and Sony.
Security Camera Video (Master VS Grasshopper: Round 1)
Best Man Speech
Woohoo!!
With the video clips I have taken throughout my first year out in Bush Alaska and over the past summer, I feel will be able to be used to make some great movies using the featured effects. I will be going back and forth with stage 6 of the iMovie lesson. Over this next year, I look forward to taking not only videos, but pictures as well from my experience out in Russian Mission. Lesson 6 has taught me how to incorporate pictures that overlap actual video along with adding titles. These key steps will be able to allow me to take certain videos, and slow down key parts for the audience to actually enjoy and take in certain shots or views that normally would just zoom by. Come winter time and video of snowmobile rides, it will be nice to lower the volume and brighten and enhance the picture quality of the view. This will hopefully help counteract the lack of sunlight during the winter season. There are also some non-outdoorsy videos and shots, I look forward to making using the movie trailer features which includes set transitions, titles, and effects. If you’re looking to do anything other than just put videos together and export, I would definitely suggest checking out Lesson 6 on Lynda.com. You will greatly appreciate the information through the provided videos (running time 52 min.). Soak it up and have fun!!!!!
Below is a sneak peek screen shot of one of the videos I’m working on 🙂
Going into this assignment where I will be learning off of Lynda.com, I have created iMovies before. However, these movies were very basic. They were either just connecting video footage for a longer video or just recording a video straight through iMovie. I have been looking forward to learning more about this software and taking a few videos I have had waiting from last school year and this summer from my brother’s wedding. Here goes my journey of taking iMovie much further and hopefully making some great videos I can keep forever! Stay tuned for finished and edited videos in PE3_iMovie!!
LET THE FUN BEGIN!!
This past school year ’11-’12, I took my first and second grade students on a virtual field trip to the Great Barrier Reef. We started it off by just providing the students with some ocean and reef books and some short videos to spark their interest. This also gave me an understanding of their knowledge of what is being covered. Before the evening we did the teleconference, I had my students write down any and all questions they might have during the presentation. It started off videoing in with an employee inside the Great Barrier Reef Museum, where she provided a brief overview of where she is, what they do there, and what they all have at the museum. She then taught the students hand signals to help out for later on in the presentation. Once they were trained and ready to move on, she took us into a dive tank where there was a diver with an ear piece and microphone. This allowed our class to interact with the diver as he was swimming around showing us all of the species the reef have. This is where students put their signals to use, by doing them into the camera, which then the employee inside would inform the diver that something has been spotted around him (i.e.- shark, turtle, or jelly fish). The students loved the experience and the opportunity to see everything they had to offer. The questions were priceless and the providers took the time to answer them all! Great experience and I can’t wait to do many more this upcoming school year!!
Below are some pictures taken during the presentation (I passed out a permission slip at the beginning of the year allowing for pictures to be taken and used):
***Interacting with the presenter inside the museum
***SHARK!!!!
***JELLYFISH!!
Center for Interactive Learning Collaboration is a website that allows educators to do a wide range of activities via teleconferencing. The site provides the options to collaborate with other classrooms around the world that are possibly working on specific units. If you’re an educator looking for professional development options, there are programs that are provided through CILC. The main source of activities that I find that could be useful for teachers in Bush Alaska are all the content providers. These content providers provide up to 1,300 programs, or virtual field trips for classrooms that range from K-12. It allows remote students to visit and explore places they may never be able to see or even know exist.
FEATURES:
USABILITY:
NAVIGATION:
RELIABILITY:
CONTENT:
APPROPRIATE AUDIENCE:
PRIVACY:
COST:
WEBSITE:
Going off my previous post about Symbaloo and how it helps with your bookmarks, I would encourage you to look at my friend Mark’s take on this site. He takes a much more in depth look at Symbaloo and compares it to Netvibes. ENJOY!
Digital Education Connection:
Found a great new site that helps with presentations over on Think Outside the Quadrilateral. Renee is a beta tester for the site Powtoon, which allows for great insight and knowledge of what you get when joining. This site looks like a great way to publish and make presentations a lot more engaging and exciting. Take a look at what Renee has to say about Powtoon and other links she has that will help provide more additional information for you.
Click image to head to Renee’s site:
Thoughts Ideas Opinions = BiBi Bennett
Melanie Zakrosky is turning light bulbs on.
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Imagine • Improvise • Ignite
Check out my short stories, poems, videos, photography, graphic design, and English lessons.
Math Musings and More by Renee Williams
Forde Below Zero! 